This week we saw the issue of interventionism rise up from its seemingly permanent exile from the pallet of respectable/plausible policy options. The vote by the Arab League gave cover for nations some hesitant, some enthusiastic, to back a UN Security Council mandated no-fly zone and the recent bombardment of Libyan air defence systems it has enabled.
Libya has divided opinion unlike the other regimes who have fallen in the recently christened ‘Arab Spring’. Relatively quickly it became apparent that Qaddafi would not go quietly into the night. Mubarak and Ben Ali despite their numerous faults, recognised when their position had become untenable, and reluctantly left office. Qaddafi quickly made the decision however that the storm could be weathered out, and that the deployment of domestic security forces, augmented with foreign mercenaries and his own air force would see off domestic rebellions centred around Benghazi, which has a historically adversarial relationship with Tripoli.
However the series of victories that Qaddafi has won, while pushing the rebels back to Benghazi has coalesced international opinion against him into something a little stronger. However while NATO and other allied nations may now be able to protect Benghazi from the final onslaught that Qaddafi was about to unleash, national leaders must now decide the limits of their ambitions vis a vis Qaddafi. The intervention by international forces will most likely swing domestic opinion behind the Qaddafi regime. The regimes rhetoric suggests this change in confidence, shifting from its focus on Al Qaeda to resisting Western imperialism and protecting Libya’s own oil reserves from a rapacious West. If this does come to pass then Benghazi might become all the more isolated as peoples sympathies realign from the rebels to this nationalist and anti-colonialist message.
If this is the case then Obama, Cameron and other leaders will be faced with the choice of for how long they are willing to protect Benghazi as an outpost of resistance to Qaddafi, especially if the country swings back to him in response to the air strikes? For the rebels this conflict has now be transformed from an emancipatory objective, to one of survival. The international community has intervened to protect Benghazi from the slaughter Qaddafi was to commit. However with regime change spearheaded by Western forces off the table, how long will international forces agree to protect the city and the rebels from a regime which controls the rest of the country. While certain Western leaders such as Cameron and Sarkozy have been more enthusiastic about intervening, none have any appetite for a long mission to maintain Benghazi as an Libyan West Berlin within the surrounding country.
International forces rightly stayed out of Libya during the early stages of the civil war. Any intervention would have undermined the rebels credibility and undercut their ability to win popular support. However what the recent air strikes have done is to protect Benghazi and its inhabitants but at the cost of the wider popular appeal of the anti-Qaddafi movement. If this is the case then the UN backed forces will have found themselves in the middle of a civil war, and will be forced to take sides.
International opinion must decide to what extent they are willing to protect the citizens of the city from Qaddafi, if they aren’t prepared for a potentially long deployment to protect the city with a no fly zone then a deal will have to be struck with the regime in order to gain some amnesty for the rebels. Although it is hard to see the regime honouring such a commitment when the eyes of the world are drawn elsewhere.
We can only hope that popular opposition does throw him and his family out of Libya, however if it does not some difficult questions lie ahead.
As always other commentators provide more stimulating, insightful and intellectually coherent takes on these issue. Here are some of the best I’ve found.
