The Great Debate UK
from The Great Debate:
Libya’s revolution pushes democracy forward
By Michael Ignatieff The views expressed are his own.
We like to think we made it happen. First in Kosovo, now in Libya, we believe our air power made it happen. Western politicians are taking the credit, but the truth is, we didn’t make it happen, any more than we made the Arab Spring happen and the air operation itself would never have been approved at the UN without the green light from the Arab League. The people of Libya, the peoples of the Middle East made it happen. We all need to understand how little of this is about us. Otherwise we risk succumbing to the illusion that we can shape the future in the Middle East.
The power we exercised in the sky gives us little control over what happens next. This is not just because we don’t have boots on the ground. Even when we did in the Balkans, we never controlled the way events rolled out after the air campaign was over. The people of the Balkans wrote their own history after the intervention and the people of the Middle East will do the same.
We called Libya a civil war and intervened to help one side win, as we did in Kosovo. But Libya was not a civil war. The dictator didn’t have deep enough support to turn it into one. It was a revolution, a people against a regime, rising up without any instigation from us, with nothing but rage, humiliation and hope to guide them. We gave them air cover and they made a revolution.
Let us not be romantic about revolutions, but let us also remember the hope they carry . The revolutionary moment—the discovery that ‘we the people’ brought the dictator down--gives the Libyans a chance to come together and build something out of the ruins. The people have discovered themselves. They have discovered their sovereignty and they will not willingly surrender it to gunmen or extremist Islamists, here or in Tunisia or Egypt. In Syria, in Yemen, in Algeria too, the people will see what the sovereignty of the street looks like and long for it too.
All revolutionary situations are poised between exhilaration and terror, and Libya is no exception. There are too many guns in the street, too many militias, too little authority and order. Revenge will be taken. Scores will be settled. Theft and vandalism will be legitimized as justice. Revolution could topple into civil war unless an army and a monopoly over the means of force are re-established. But those crowds, men and women all waving the same flag, the kids with their hands on their hearts, singing the anthem perched on their parent’s shoulders, are actually stronger than the men with guns, if they only could find a politics to express their power.
The future of Libya and the entire Middle East depends, not on us, but on something momentous and unpredictable: whether people who have never had the chance to do politics before can learn to do it now.
from The Great Debate:
A new beginning for Libya
By Stefan Wolff The views expressed are his own.
The fall of Sirte and the death of Colonel Gaddafi today most likely represents the finishing blow for the remnants of the old regime in Libya. They are a highly valuable prize that the National Transitional Council (NTC) fought hard to obtain and that should trigger the formal transition period that Libya’s now widely recognized government has envisaged to lead to democratic elections and a new constitution. Comparable only to the fall of Tripoli in late August, today marks a momentous achievement for a popular movement that twelve months ago was hardly conceivable, let alone in existence. For all intents and purposes, Libya’s is the only successful uprising of the Arab Spring to date.
Though Libyans and their allies across the world are right to celebrate, we must not ignore the challenges ahead. Building a new and legitimate state in Libya remains a difficult task. Gaddafi’s death may well take the sting out of any loyalist resistance for now. The question of what the NTC will do with Gaddafi – try him in Libya or extradite him to the International Criminal Court – no longer exists, but there are others from his inner circle that will have to be dealt with in the future. Both trials at home, like Saddam Hussein’s, and trials abroad, like those handled by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, have their different problems and neither option is likely to avoid a sense of victors’ (in-) justice among Gaddafi loyalists.
There might now be fewer Gaddafi supporters, but those that remain will be no less determined and might find a new leader in any of Gaddafi’s inner circle that is still at large, initially most likely in his son Saif al-Islam. In other words, the security threat is likely to diminish, but will almost certainly not evaporate completely or quickly. At the same time, NTC forces must resist the temptation of vengeful retribution. The fierce fighting in Sirte in particular was highly costly, but as much as the NTC benefitted from a UN Security Council Resolution that mandated a military operation to protect civilians, as much does it now have a responsibility to make sure that crimes are prosecuted through the courts, not by lynch mobs.
As the government no longer has to focus on its military operations, much of its capacity can now be directed at dealing with the political challenges that it faces. The loose coalition of anti-Gaddafi forces needs to remain focused on building a state that serves its citizens and that deserves their respect and loyalty. This will require a concerted effort at unity among the different factions of the NTC, agreement on the broad parameters of how they will work together during the transition period, their gradual transformation into political parties capable not only of contesting future elections but also of participating in a political process that will see some of them in government and others in opposition.
Taking Sirte and Gaddafi’s death also mean that pressure on the Libyan government is going to grow to make quick and decisive progress on rebuilding the country economically. There has been progress, at times quite remarkable, on this front over the past two months, but with the war now well and truly over, Libyans will want to see a real peace dividend. The quicker Libya manages the transition from a country in war with itself to one that has decisively moved on from the violence of the past months, the more assured investors will be and the faster the Libyan economy can be put back on a track of sustainable growth. Libya has the benefit of vast resources, but they need to be managed carefully and for the benefit of all Libyans.
Paintcan,
There is a limit to the time I can spend here with you and it’s over. Try to hold the ramblings above that spring forth from nowhere and sprinkle them in as appropriate in future debate.
‘bye
from The Great Debate:
Top ten myths about the Libya war
By Juan Cole The opinions expressed are his own.
The Libyan Revolution has largely succeeded, and this is a moment of celebration, not only for Libyans but for a youth generation in the Arab world that has pursued a political opening across the region. The secret of the uprising’s final days of success lay in a popular revolt in the working-class districts of the capital, which did most of the hard work of throwing off the rule of secret police and military cliques. It succeeded so well that when revolutionary brigades entered the city from the west, many encountered little or no resistance, and they walked right into the center of the capital. Muammar Qaddafi was in hiding as I went to press, and three of his sons were in custody. Saif al-Islam Qaddafi had apparently been the de facto ruler of the country in recent years, so his capture signaled a checkmate. (Checkmate is a corruption of the Persian “shah maat,” the “king is confounded,” since chess came west from India via Iran). Checkmate.
The end game, wherein the people of Tripoli overthrew the Qaddafis and joined the opposition Transitional National Council, is the best case scenario that I had suggested was the most likely denouement for the revolution. I have been making this argument for some time, and it evoked a certain amount of incredulity when I said it in a lecture in the Netherlands in mid-June, but it has all along been my best guess that things would end the way they have. I got it right where others did not because my premises turned out to be sounder, i.e., that Qaddafi had lost popular support across the board and was in power only through main force. Once enough of his heavy weapons capability was disrupted, and his fuel and ammunition supplies blocked, the underlying hostility of the common people to the regime could again manifest itself, as it had in February. I was moreover convinced that the generality of Libyans were attracted by the revolution and by the idea of a political opening, and that there was no great danger to national unity here.
I do not mean to underestimate the challenges that still lie ahead– mopping up operations against regime loyalists, reestablishing law and order in cities that have seen popular revolutions, reconstituting police and the national army, moving the Transitional National Council to Tripoli, founding political parties, and building a new, parliamentary regime. Even in much more institutionalized and less clan-based societies such as Tunisia and Egypt, these tasks have proved anything but easy. But it would be wrong, in this moment of triumph for the Libyan Second Republic, to dwell on the difficulties to come. Libyans deserve a moment of exultation.
I have taken a lot of heat for my support of the revolution and of the United Nations-authorized intervention by the Arab League and NATO that kept it from being crushed. I haven’t taken nearly as much heat as the youth of Misrata who fought off Qaddafi’s tank barrages, though, so it is OK. I hate war, having actually lived through one in Lebanon, and I hate the idea of people being killed. My critics who imagined me thrilling at NATO bombing raids were just being cruel. But here I agree with President Obama and his citation of Reinhold Niebuhr. You can’t protect all victims of mass murder everywhere all the time. But where you can do some good, you should do it, even if you cannot do all good. I mourn the deaths of all the people who died in this revolution, especially since many of the Qaddafi brigades were clearly coerced (they deserted in large numbers as soon as they felt it safe). But it was clear to me that Qaddafi was not a man to compromise, and that his military machine would mow down the revolutionaries if it were allowed to.
Moreover, those who question whether there were US interests in Libya seem to me a little blind. The US has an interest in there not being massacres of people for merely exercising their right to free assembly. The US has an interest in a lawful world order, and therefore in the United Nations Security Council resolution demanding that Libyans be protected from their murderous government. The US has an interest in its NATO alliance, and NATO allies France and Britain felt strongly about this intervention. The US has a deep interest in the fate of Egypt, and what happened in Libya would have affected Egypt (Qaddafi allegedly had high Egyptian officials on his payroll).
Given the controversies about the revolution, it is worthwhile reviewing the myths about the Libyan Revolution that led so many observers to make so many fantastic or just mistaken assertions about it.
renceD….Please explain how you get at the trillion dollar figure for this conflict? Every source I check has it in 10′s of billions tops, that is 2 orders of magnitude difference.
from Breakingviews:
End game in Libya could herald oil slump
By Una Galani The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.
The end game in Libya could herald an oil price slump. Like the rebel advance into Tripoli, Libyan supplies to the global market could come sooner than expected. Brent has slipped by almost $3 to almost $106 per barrel in a matter of hours. A resolution in Libya, coupled with concerns over global growth, means tight markets could soon look oversupplied.
A return of Libyan oil production to pre-unrest levels of 1.7 million barrels per day, or 2 percent of global supply, would take until 2015, according to a June estimate of the International Energy Agency. The forecast may now look too pessimistic, with the rebel-controlled Arabian Gulf Oil Co., Spain’s Repsol, and Italy’s all suggesting normal supply could resume much faster once the crisis is resolved. Analysts reckon production could reach up to 1 mbpd within a year.
Oil prices have already eased almost $20 per barrel in four months. A supply increase, just as the U.S. and European economies look vulnerable to a new recession, will further weigh on prices. And Saudi Arabia’s recent effort to offset the disruption from Libya, taking production to a record high of almost 10 mbpd, will inadvertently act to compound any supply glut, as will the IEA release of emergency reserves.
Yet any price slump is likely to be much less severe than in 2008, when oil prices crashed by more than $100 per barrel in six months. This time around, credit lines remain open to businesses. And oil demand remains strong from non-OECD countries like China, which now account for almost 50 percent of the total compared to 44 percent in 2008, according to Barclays Capital.
Politics will further support prices. Investors remain alert for any signs that the protest movement could yet spread to larger oil producers, namely Iran. And even if prices do continue to fall, high-spending Gulf oil countries have a big incentive to cut production quicker than before. Saudi Arabia needs roughly $84 per barrel to break even compared to around $50 per barrel three years ago. But with Brent prices some way off the pain threshold for producers, there’s still room for a significant adjustment.
from The Great Debate:
Why is Obama giving Libya to the Russians?
By John Bolton The opinions expressed are his own.
With President Obama’s Libya policy staggering from one embarrassment to another, last week he and Secretary of State Clinton outdid themselves. They publicly welcomed Russia’s effort to insert itself as a mediator, an act of such strategic myopia that it must leave even Moscow’s leadership speechless.
Permanent Security Council members Russia and China abstained on the initial resolution authorizing force to create a Libya no-fly zone and to protect innocent civilians. By not casting a veto, Russia thereby tacitly allowed military action to proceed. As they did, Russia repeatedly second-guessed and harshly criticized NATO’s operations. Now, as a mediator, Russia will, in effect, have the chance to rewrite the Council’s resolution according to its own lights.
Given the uncertain trumpet sounded by both Obama and NATO, and the still-inconclusive outcome of the “kinetic military action,” the reputation and credibility of U.S. and NATO, militarily and politically, have been gravely impaired. The President likely doesn't appreciate these wounds as he leans over backwards not to be seen as the regime-changing unilateralist he imagined his predecessor to be.
We should hope that Russia fails. Mediation was never the correct answer here. NATO, once committed, must prevail by force of arms, as it still could with a modest demonstration of American leadership. Make no mistake: Welcoming Russian intercession between NATO and a military opponent like Libya is nothing less than a massive humiliation for the Western alliance. If the Obama Administration’s misguided worldview favors mediation, whatever happened to the likes of Sweden and Switzerland?
Not only does Russia now have the possibility of reshaping the Libyan morass to its own ends, it is also well-positioned for a dominant role in post-conflict Libya. From the outset, U.S. critics of the intervention raised legitimate questions about the bona fides of the Libyan opposition, embodied in the Transitional National Council (“TNC”), now recognized by over three dozen countries. Last Friday, the United States joined the crowd, while also unfreezing Libyan assets to make them available to the TNC.
mheld45 are you aware of the News Corporation scandal? The chief of the Wall Street Journal(a Murdoch holding) and president of the Dow just resigned. The FBI(incompetent) and the Justice Department(corrupt) are investigating News Corp.’s activities in the States. Corporate America and government is a Swiss Cheese of conflict of interests and loop holes. Swiss cheese smells and tastes a whole lot better.
from FaithWorld:
Libyan clerics in rebel-held east see big role for Islam after Gaddafi
(A Libyan woman wearing a niqab with the colours of the Kingdom of Libya attends Friday prayers in rebel-held Benghazi April 22, 2011/Amr Abdallah Dalsh)
An Islamic revival is taking hold in rebel-held eastern Libya after decades of tough curbs on worship by Muammar Gaddafi, but clerics say this will not be a new source of religious extremism as the West may fear. Restrictions on Islamic piety have become history in the east of the Arab North African state since its takeover by anti-Gaddafi insurgents, and clerics see a much bigger role for Islam in the country if Gaddafi is ultimately driven from power.
Under the autocratic Gaddafi's idiosyncratic brand of communal socialism overlaying Islam, worship was carefully regulated and any apparent manifestation of political, or militant, Islam drew harsh security crackdowns. Yet Libyan society remained religiously conservative in character and that is now flowering anew in the rebel-held east.
In signs of greater Muslim piety, some rebels have grown longer beards, public prayer has become ostentatious, religious books are selling well and plans are afoot for more centres for the study of sharia, or Islamic law -- all of which, under Gaddafi, could have led to arrest and imprisonment.
"The situation in free Libya will revert to its natural state -- the natural state of the practice of religion in life, in the morals of the people, their ways, their return to the mosques," said Osama al-Salaaby, a well-known cleric and professor of sharia in Benghazi, the rebels' de facto capital.
The rebels' slow battlefield progress has benefited the cause of Islam in Libya, said Salem Jaber, the most senior cleric in the east and head of its mosque oversight body. "We've been mixing, and the Islamists and the secularists are coming together to create a middle road," said Jaber.
from The Great Debate:
Why democracy will win
Philip N. Howard, an associate professor at the University of Washington, is the author of "The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam". The opinions expressed are his own.
The Day of Rage in Saudi Arabia was a tepid affair, and Libyan rebels have suffered strategic losses. Only two months ago, popular uprisings in Tunisia inspired Egyptians and others to take to the streets to demand political reform. Will the tough responses from Gadaffi and the Saudi government now discourage Arab conversations about democratic possibilities? It may seem like the dictators are ahead, but it’s only a temporary lead.
Ben Ali ruled Tunisia for 20 years, Mubarak reigned in Egypt for 30 years, and Gadaffi has held Libya in a tight grip for 40 years. Yet their bravest challengers are 20- and 30-year-olds without ideological baggage, violent intentions or clear leaders. The groups that initiated and sustained protests have few meaningful experiences with public deliberation or voting, and little experience with successful protesting. These young activists are politically disciplined, pragmatic and collaborative. Where do young people who grow up in entrenched authoritarian regimes get political aspirations? How do they learn about political life in countries where faith and freedom coexist?
The answer, for the most part, is online. And it is not just that digital media provided new tools for organizing protest and inspiring stories of success from Tunisia and Egypt. The important structural change in Middle East political life is not so much about digital ties between the West and the Arab street, but about connections between Arab streets.
Research has demonstrated three clear democratizing effects of the Internet, especially among young people in the region: more individuals are using the Internet to openly discuss the interpretation of Islamic texts, more people are forming individuated political identities online and creating their own media, and more citizens are actively debating gender politics and pan-Islamic identity. Satellite television has fed a transnational Middle East identity for several decades. But it is only in the last decade that people have started transnational conversations about politics and shared grievances.
Some experts thought the Internet was going to be a boon for radical voices and fundamentalist Islam. But it turns out that digital media more often push such extremists to the side, and bolster the networks of civil society groups over terrorist groups. Individuals learn that they can become sources of information, and that Dropbox accounts, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Google and a host of other tools provide ways for people to spread information beyond the reach of their despot.
“Democracies” can be a very broad range of governments. The word “Democratic” appears in the names of countries western liberal semi socialist democracies would consider autocracies or anti capitalist societies.
The countries that claim to be democratic are not necessarily going to be best friends or agree on fundamentals. .
The big disadvantage of the Internet is that it is most accessible to the affluent and techno-savy segment of society. It is also easy to post false and misleading information. There is little “quality control” and that is almost impossible to define. But “repressive” regimes seem to be those that exercise censorship of any media content. Freedom of the press is a commonly accepted belief at the UN level and is one of the principles of Human rights, but it is also subject to interpretation.
The large principals of human rights and good government are being established by agreements made in the UN and the administrative affairs of one’s native country are being subtly and not so subtly guided into conformity of global standards of practice and belief.
The US and Euro zone will be happiest with democracies that allow them the greatest opportunities to cross invest. The fundamental goal of all the governments of the world – of living, not failed states – is to provide the best possible standard of living for themselves. They want to profit from their relationships. They disagree internally on how that standard of living is distributed.
The west sells a market oriented way of life. All values are subservient to the market or appear to be. And ideally everyone has access to it on as equal terms as possible. During most of my life the west has even been characterized as libertine by not only puritanical communist regimes, or arch conservative Islamic parties but also the Catholic and fundamentalist Christian Churches. Israel and the Palestinians both have their under worlds, as do most all the countries on earth. And even religions have their living black markets or underworlds. There are such things as the governments of the ungovernable.
One could almost suggest that what the western Democracies want is the right for as much liberty shading into underworld activities as it can maintain without loosing itself in its own luxury and vice. The regimes it fears most are those that want to tone the “party” down too much. They tend to be depressing, brutal and bland. They tend to be systems that speak louder than those than live within them. The advanced economies don’t like things “sub-standard”. The UN also does not like substandard but its terms are broader than what is commercially defined.
But lets not fool ourselves: societies can be totally controlled by a few when they are most full of people distracted from the main sources of influence and power. And no political system can entirely protect its citizens from that. In fact the elites of all types of governments like as few hands stirring the pot as possible. Why else are elite schools so expensive?
from Breakingviews:
Egypt needs a reconstruction fund too
By Hugo Dixon The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
LONDON -- Egypt needs a reconstruction fund too. Japan will be spending tens of billions of dollars on rebuilding after its tsunami. Egypt can't afford to finance an equivalent fund after its political tsunami. But foreign powers could help by showing they are not just interested in bombing neighbouring Libya.
In the long run, the most important thing is to accelerate free trade between Egypt and the industrialised world, notably the European Union. More immediately, as the country teeters on the brink of recession, foreign countries can show they really care about Egypt's transition to democracy by financing a fund to invest in physical and social infrastructure -- such as power generation, transport, housing and education.
Over the two months since the Egyptian revolution began, nothing concrete has emerged -- despite much talk. Western countries want to help but are strapped for cash. There is also an understandable desire to link help to the achievement of the milestones on the road to democracy. Meanwhile, first the Japanese earthquake and then war in Libya has distracted attention from Egypt.
But it's not too late to grab the moment. Nor is it impossible to raise cash. The main source of new money is the Gulf. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar are bubbling with petrodollars. Even if these sheikhdoms don't obviously have an interest in fostering democracy, they certainly have an interest in good relations with the Arab world's most populous country. Meanwhile, Western countries could write off governement-to-government debt or convert it into equity in infrastructure projects. Of Egypt's $34 billion external debt at the end of June 2010 (78 percent of which was owed by the government), 31 percent was owed to European Union countries, 12 percent to Japan and 10 percent to America.
Ideally, a reconstruction fund should be run as a public-private partnership (or a series of such partnerships) at arm's length from the government. Given that it would be invested largely in infrastructure, it should then be able to raise more money through borrowing. Added to the money from donations and debt-for-equity swaps, total investments of around $20 billion -- just under 10 percent of GDP -- might be possible.
It could be argued that such a plan would do little to solve Egypt's short-term problems of rising unemployment and inflation. But this is only partly true. An external vote of confidence could encourage industry to push forward with its own investment plans; and the government would be able to direct its own limited resources to priorities such as subsidising food if it knew cash was coming in to help take care of structural problems. Investing in democracy would be money well spent.
from Afghan Journal:
United States begins a new war, what happens to Afghanistan?
The United States has said the scope of its military intervention in Libya is limited, but it nevertheless raises questions about what happens to the two other wars that it is waging, especially in Afghanistan. The last time Washington took the eye off the ball in Afghanistan was in 2003 when it launched the Iraq war and then got so bogged down there that a low level and sporadic Taliban resistance in southern Afghanistan grew into a full blown insurgency from which it is still trying to extricate itself.
The question then is will the U.S. attention again shift away from Afghanistan and to Libya and indeed other African and Middle East countries where revolts against decades of authoritarian rule are gaining ground, and unsettling every strategic calculation. Already U.S. Republicans are saying they are concerned that U.S. forces may be getting drawn into a costly, long-running operation in Libya that lacks clear goals. If it ends in a stalemate - a possibility recognized by Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen - how focused can America be on Afghanistan where you can argue that the stakes are arguably less now that al Qaeda has largely been pushed out, and the fight is almost entirely with the Taliban.
Just by way of recap, here's broadly what happened to Afghanistan when America's attention and money were drained toward Iraq. Militant groups reconstituted themselves, more safe havens sprung up, and they were financed by a resurgent opium economy . Post-war reconstruction was curtailed as blood and treasure was invested in the war in Iraq. In some ways, it was a throwback to another U.S withdrawal from the region when it almost overnight lost interest following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 after a decade of arming and financing the insurgents against its former Cold War foe
The other unintended consequence of the U.S. military action in Libya is the anger it will stoke in countries such as Afghanistan where many see it as an attack on an Islamic nation, the latest of a string of nations so targeted. Regardless of its good intentions, the intervention will be depicted as aggressive, predatory and anti-Muslim, as Edward N. Luttwak, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote in the Los Angeles Times.-
Indeed the war may have just become hotter for the troops in Afghanistan, with the Taliban seizing on the intervention in Libya as the latest onslaught in a broader war on Islam. The Taliban in a statement said the Western intervention was aimed at weakening the Islamic nation and seizing its oil reserves through a full scale invasion. For good measure, the Taliban scolded the Libyans for fighting among themselves and thereby giving an excuse to the West to intervene.
(Photograph of scene at an Afghan army recruitment centre in Kunduz after a suicide attack this month.Reuters/Wahdat.)
Mr Karzai is a representative of the Taiban group. What is interestig to note that apparently alqueda and its followers have silently slipped out of the south east asia and have gone back to the Arabian arena, including libya. They must be in the forefront to have the supply of weapons from the CIA!
What a frce, Pashtoons or talibans would have to clean up the mess! The question is what about the USA dream to set up a base in Bagram?
Rex Minor
from UK News:
Libya crisis could scupper British aircraft carriers once and for all
So the world has unfurled a no-fly zone over Libya, apparently undeterred by the lack of Royal Navy aircraft carriers. Judging by the uniforms gracing the steps of 10 Downing Street on Friday and the attacks launched over the weekend, Britain’s military top brass haven’t been put off either.
Liam Fox and General David Richards in Downing Street
The Libya crisis has, until now, provided a platform for the “Save our Aircraft Carriers Campaign” to champion its cause but in the process they’ve thrown down some whopping red herrings.
First we were told Britain could have done a better job extracting citizens from Libya if it had an aircraft carrier. In the event nature’s own aircraft carrier, Malta (immune to rough seas and mechanical failure) proved a perfectly good operations centre from which to manage rescue efforts. If Britain’s response was slow, that had more to do with the speed of decision making than the available military hardware.
Even if HMS Ark Royal had been in service, victualled, crewed and ready to put to sea from Portsmouth, she would have taken a good four days to reach Benghazi sailing at full steam the whole way, through still waters. Had she been in the Gulf of Oman supporting operations in Afghanistan, it would have taken closer to five days at best. Once in theatre she would have required defence from air attack and even the threat of submarines should any of Gaddafi’s Soviet-era vessels still be operational.
