The Great Debate

By Daniel Serwer
The opinions expressed are his own.

With the press focused on scenes of joy in Tripoli and Benghazi, continued skirmishes with regime loyalists, and speculation about where Gaddafi might turn up, it is time to lift our sights and focus on the really difficult transition ahead. If another autocrat succeeds Gaddafi, the transition could be over soon. But if Libya embarks on an effort to create a more democratic state, unified and inclusive in many dimensions, we’ll need to wait the better part of a decade to know whether it has succeeded or not.

There are no magic formulas for how to go about this. Each contingency has its own requirements. We have seen many more partial failures than full successes: think Iraq and Afghanistan.

Certainly in Libya security will be job one. The immediate goal is public order, so that people can move freely without fear of large-scale violence. But there was public order of a non-democratic sort in Gaddafi’s Libya. What the rebels have done in areas liberated in recent months is as clever as it is remarkable: they have organized local councils to try to ensure security and other immediate requirements. This does not always happen in civil wars but it suggests a way forward. There were at least four councils in Tripoli before Gaddafi fell. Can they step in to organize local communities to protect themselves from the inevitable aftershocks of Gaddafi’s fall?

Even if that works, it is only a temporary expedient. Libya will need a retrained and re-oriented police force, one that seeks to serve and protect rather than intimidate and repress. International assistance in this regard has become the rule rather than the exception, but there is little unused international capacity, because of Afghanistan, Kosovo and other requirements. It is tempting to suggest that Arab countries take on this task, but difficult to imagine that they will do it in a way that encourages the kind of community policing that is needed. Even training and retraining 1,000 per year, it will take at least the better part of a decade to put in place a police force Libyan democracy would want.

Even well-trained police are no use if there are no courts where the people they arrest can be fairly tried and sentenced, as well as prisons to put them in. Courts require not only judges but also prosecutors and defense attorneys, not to mention court recorders, registrars and bailiffs. If the formal court system fails to provide fair and rapid justice, Libyans will turn to informal methods of dispute resolution, especially where tribal structures are strong in the countryside. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but there are difficult issues to be resolved concerning the interaction between tribal and formal justice systems, and the treatment of women in tribal systems.

By Mark Ensalaco
The opinions expressed are his own.

Thomas Jefferson once said “rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.”

The Arab Spring is reminding the world that struggles for dignity, freedom, justice and human rights spring from our deepest aspirations as human beings. At the same time the dictatorial violence in Syria and Libya remind us of the evil that springs from the insatiable will to absolute power.

The repression in Syria has claimed more than 2,200 lives according to the United Nations. Thankfully, the bloodshed is coming to an end in Libya, but it must be remembered that in Libya, unlike Tunisia and Egypt, it took a bloody civil war and NATO intervention to destroy the decades-long tyranny of Muammar Gaddafi.

Events in Libya compel us to reflect on fundamental moral questions that are larger than geopolitics and the price of petroleum. But it is impossible to reflect on those moral questions without scrutinizing the compromising attitudes that stem from our acute concerns about national security and access to cheap oil.

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.

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.

On Monday I went to Bloomingdales, the Gap and Starbucks but passed on a visit to Magnolia Bakery. Instead I  stopped by the St. Moritz bakery where you can order hot chocolate and sit by a video of a cozy winter  fire that overlooks the indoor ski slope and is just around the corner from the largest candy store in the world, which happens to face an aquarium that occupies an entire wall on one side of the world’s largest shopping malls. This by the way is opposite of what claims to be the world’s largest candystore whose mission statement is to make every day “happier’. Earlier, while exploring the watery depths of the bright Pink Atlantis Hotel (one of the white elephants of the property crash of 2007) I knew it was really the last kingdom because the fish swam around two cracked thrones and other kitschy stone artifacts.

Dubai is utterly overwhelming, the kind of  dystopia that blogger Evgeny Morozov sees in Huxley, a consumeristic paradise where mind-numbing shopping replaces real thought. Most of the I had no idea where I was except that my passport had been stamped Dubai  and many of the mall-going women were shrouded in black. After a few hours I sank into a state of ennuie. Given boatloads of oil money in the 1970s and the chance to build a whole new city, who on earth would decide to build a series of shopping malls?

It’s not like the developers didn’t have ambition, what with the architecture that demands superlatives — the gondolas, medieval stone houses and soaring illuminated sky scrapers and islands built in absurd never-before-seen configurations. But why not build a museum with, say, the most incredible collection in the world or a university with the finest research laboratories? With so much money why build this Disneyland? And what about the workers who make up most of the population?

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?

By Erik Mielke, who is a partner at Namir Capital Management LLC, a New York-based investment management firm that invests in emerging markets. The opinions expressed are his own.

The winds of change are forcing fundamental political and economic shifts across the Arab world. But one area of economic reform is likely to be brought to a stop as regimes respond to popular protests with populist measures. These initiatives include extending and expanding the region’s massive energy-price subsidies. For the rest of the world, this matters tremendously. One additional barrel consumed in Tehran or Riyadh is effectively one less barrel for the export market, and that means higher global oil prices.

Fueled by petrodollars and subsidized oil, energy consumption has been rising rapidly throughout the region. In the 10-year period to 2009, oil consumption in Middle East and North Africa rose by 50%, or 2.7 million barrels per day, second only to China’s rate of growth. In the same period, the region’s oil production only rose by 2.5 million barrels per day. The net result was a decline in oil exports from the world’s key producers.