Given how the Security Council has acted with regard to Libya via Resolution 1973, many have queried its failure to act in other situations, such as Bahrain, Yemen and Syria. The lethal responses by the governments of those countries to pro-democracy protests are appalling, but it cannot be said that the crisis in those States has reached the proportions of Libya. After all, humanitarian intervention is war.
Once again, the Persian Gulf is threatening to become a tinderbox and Bahrain is emerging as ground zero. Saudi Arabia, the Gulf’s preeminent power, is playing the role of antagonist in chief. Riyadh is unnecessarily provoking a stand-off with its long-time nemesis in Tehran and is leading the region into another potential crisis. The tragedy of the current course is that it is entirely avoidable. But the autocrats in the Gulf have made clear that they are willing to use any means necessary to cling to power.
Arguably, the most significant fact in international relations at the beginning of the 21st Century is the gradual emergence of China as a regional and global power, and the relative decline of what can be loosely termed the ‘status quo powers’ and their most powerful member, the US. A number of mini-crises in the South China Sea this year, are sparking concern about China’s rise and the potential for Sino-US conflict.
The Libyan opposition has shown great courage and serious miscalculation. Principally, they failed to take into account the loyalty, training, and resources of Colonel Ghaddafi’s forces. They also failed to realize that revolutions such as theirs depend on non-violence. Influenced perhaps by calls for no-fly zones and other forms of foreign military intervention in Egypt, they have failed to understand both the importance of non-violence and the importance of self-reliance.
Rather than unambiguously backing the cause of freedom in Libya, Western governments seem to be reconciling themselves to the possibility that the regime of Muammar Qaddafi might remain in power. If this is the case the world must prepare for the possible re-emergence of a global threat, Libya’s WMD program.
NATO’s lack of success to date in Afghanistan can be attributed to four factors: the reluctance to make difficult choices in state-building, the failure to confront Islam, the failure to confront Kabul, and the influence of China. While NATO may still eventually win, it will have been at tremendous cost and time, and Afghanistan will have posed a great opportunity cost for other NATO objectives.
When security forces, meant to protect people, are instead let loose in a killing spree, the state itself becomes the prime perpetrator of atrocities. With precisely such an unfolding scenario, Libya today is the place and time to redeem or renege on R2P’s solemn pledge.
In today’s world the prosperity, security, liberty and civil liberties of those at home cannot be separated from events beyond our borders. The era of a global recession and the global threat of terrorism prove that to any residual doubters. A belief that you have responsibility beyond your borders is not, as some would have it, ideological, but, a necessary response to the world in which we live.
The enduring mismatch between the US and Chinese fleets is no guarantee of an equally lasting US naval supremacy in the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean. Beijing is pursuing imaginative antiship missile technology. If rocketeers stationed ashore can keep the US Navy out of important waters, the Chinese Navy can accomplish its goals, even with an inferior fleet.
Turkish-Russian rapprochement should not be viewed by the West as a menace or even irritant, but rather the platform upon which regional knots of contention might find resolution. The regional political landscape of western Eurasia has shifted dramatically in the past decade; we in the West would do well to adjust our perceptions accordingly.
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