Barely had a new door to international action been opened by the UN resolution than it seemed to slam shut
Barely had a new door to international action been opened by the UN resolution authorising military action and a no-fly zone in Libya than it seemed to slam shut, when Libya's foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, announced that Libya would abide by it and called for an immediate ceasefire. The shelling of Zintan and Misratah continued, however, and Britain, France and America all had a ready response. It was the actions of Colonel Gaddafi's forces, not the words of his henchmen, that mattered, they said. Assume for a moment that a ceasefire does not start ? or if it does, that it does not hold ? and the planning for air strikes by British, French, Canadian and possibly Arab jets co-ordinated from the Nato airbase at Sigonella in Sicily goes ahead.
The first thing to say is that David Cameron has achieved a firmer legal framework for military action than anything Tony Blair could concoct for the invasion of Iraq. Mr Cameron laid out three tests that warrant interference in a state's internal affairs: the demonstrable need to prevent a bloodbath in Benghazi, a city of one million inhabitants; regional support both in terms of a strong statement from the Arab league and the Arab countries who are expected to join the coalition being assembled in Paris today by President Nicolas Sarkozy; and the legal authority of the UN security council.
Legitimacy of the vote
The use of force in Libya, authorised under a Chapter VII referral, has international legal backing. Countries like China or Russia, which might have been expected to veto, abstained. Three members of the African Union, including South Africa, voted in favour. The legitimacy the vote conferred on a no-fly zone befits a crisis where the revulsion caused by Gaddafi's actions is widespread, especially among Egyptians and Tunisians who braved live fire from their own security forces. Libyans who rose up against 42 years of tyranny did not choose the weapons they are now using for this fight. They were chosen for them. Within five hours of them gathering, Gaddafi's troops opened fire. From that moment on, there was only going to be one outcome. It was either him or them.
Starting a fight is a different matter from pursuing one, let alone ending one. Is this intervention going to be seen through the prism of Sierra Leone and Kosovo, or Iraq and Afghanistan, where regime change was swift but where civil war then ensued? Mr Cameron, still being branded a brave failure in his determination to intervene in the lead-up to a vote everyone expected he would not achieve, may be tempted to regard the UN resolution as success in itself. But Gaddafi's forces were still 160km away from Benghazi. The city was not about to fall and no lives have yet been saved. Push past the justification, and on to the question of what the objective of this intervention is, and the consensus starts to crumble.
Paving the way for partition
Doubts were inherent in the reaction in Benghazi yesterday to the announcement that Gaddafi's forces would cease fire and comply with the UN resolution. It was a stalling tactic, said some. We should fight on, said others. They are right to be alarmed at the possibility that Gaddafi would comply with the resolution, or with subsequent demands from Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, that the regime's forces should pull back "a significant distance" from the east. Both imply that Gaddafi could live to fight another day. This falls far short of what this revolution is all about.
The National Transitional Council (NTC) in Benghazi might under these circumstances get the heavy weapons its fighters have been asking for. But that would still leave it fighting for recognition as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people. It would not have sovereignty and it would cease to be national. This intervention could merely be paving the way for partition, the worst of both worlds: the tyrant and his sons would still exist and the revolution, half finished, could halt on tribal lines. The Libyans, Egyptians and Tunisians who revolted against their dictators did so in the name of their nation. They eschewed sectarian or religious symbols, choosing national flags instead. The Libyan revolution will only succeed if Gaddafi is toppled and the NTC forms a national government. But there again, how would that be formed ? If Gaddafi goes, what constitutional order or transitional mechanism is there to replace him? And what is to stop a victory degenerating into tribal splits and civil war? Letting the Libyans choose their own leader would by then look a tired formula.
Nor is Libya the only consideration. The Arab spring is still blooming in Yemen, whose pro-western dictatorship will probably be the next to fall. Last night the tourism minister resigned after a shooting attack that killed dozens of protesters and injured over 300 others. Barack Obama condemned the carnage, as he has done the repression meted out in Bahrain, another ally and home to his fifth fleet. But there will be no foreign intervention here. There are tremors just below the surface in Saudi Arabia, which sent in troops to support the Sunni monarchy in its Bahrain backyard.
So what new international order has been created by this resolution? Is it one in which the US discards some of its former allies but keeps others for its own strategic interests? Which of the many states in the region are regarded as too strategically important to keep ? too big, like the banks, to fail? And where do human rights, international law and a values-based foreign policy fit into all of this? Far from supporting a democratic revolution across the Arab world, a foreign intervention in Libya may indeed be imperilling it. One of the main strengths of the revolution was that it was universal and generational. It did not require outside help and it generated its own dynamic in each country. Its ability to cross national borders was not only a function of the similarities in the military regimes and the grievances they generated. It created a possibility of an Arab commonwealth of nations, a region without visas where people could travel freely. Wild aspirations, maybe, but this is now looking less likely with an intervention which will inevitably entail its own political consequences.
Arab fig leaf
The resolution rules out a foreign occupation and western leaders repeatedly vowed that the objective was to let Libyans choose their own leaders in freely held elections. But where and when, in the whole sorry history of western intervention in the Middle East, has this happened? Were Jeffersonian shells fired from US tanks invading Iraq, planting the seeds of democracy in the craters they left? Or does the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, now behave increasingly like another regional strongman ruling over a country bearing the permanent sectarian scars of a civil war?
Today in Paris, much will be made of the fact that this intervention will be unlike any other since the first Iraq war, in that it will have active support from the Arab League. After the league endorsed the no-fly zone last week, five member states seemed likely to participate. This has since been whittled down to two small Gulf states, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and possibly Jordan. This cover is looking more like a fig leaf than active regional support. As British Tornados, French Dassaults and Canadian F-18s prepare to patrol the skies over Tripoli, it will be business as usual ? an intervention which looks much like all the others. Let us hope it has a different outcome.
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