Sudden Silence Over R2P

The slow agony of Yemen's collapse was both easy to predict and difficult to watch.  At the level of the individual, the failure of Yemen is a tragedy.  On the macro level, however, it is a type study in what can happen when no outside force sees anything to be gained by seeking an intervention.

The "international community" is highly selective in its invocation of the Responsibility to Protect convention signed a few years back in a fit of remorse on the part of some states over what happened in Rwanda and in a spasm of me-tooism on the part of governments which desired to be seen as "progressive," "liberal," and "humanitarian" such as China and Russia.

At the time many Western states were in an orgy of self-congratulations over the intervention in Bosnia, an intervention which would serve unfortunately as a prototype for the concept that air power could effectively end atrocious behavior on the part of obnoxious governments.  Why this meme took flight is hard to fathom considering that the real impact of air delivered death and destruction had impact only after Serbian civilians died under NATO bombs and missiles.

The presumed efficacy of air delivered "shock-and-awe" stood behind the Sarkozy/Cameron driven UN resolution allowing the imposition of a civilian protection program and no fly zone in Libya.  To date the efforts of the operating agent for this R2P based Security Council authorized program, NATO, has been nowhere near as successful as the Bosnian conflict progenitor.  Perhaps this is due to the low cost of Libyan civilian lives.

Libya may or may not be the graveyard for the Gaddafi family enterprise.  That question is still open regardless of the highly optimistic statements of UK Defense Minister Fox or the NATO Secretary General.  Rather more certain is the proposition that Libya is the tombstone of R2P.

The corpse of this well-intended creation of the lofty thinking and tender hearted of the global community may have its grave marker in Libya but its place of burial is Yemen.  Yemen is every bit as worthy for the application of R2P as was Libya.  Arguably, had the Libyan situation been a bit slower to develop and Yemen a tad more rapid to fall apart, the NATO jets would be hitting targets in and around Sana'a rather than Tripoli.

But, perhaps not.  Libya is close to Europe.  There are a number of European interests in play there ranging from the economic to the fear of being overrun by hordes of refugees.  Yemen has neither.  It is small, faraway, lacking exportable resources, and generally without any direct importance to either France or the UK.

Even without the Libyan anchor hanging around the necks of Western leaders, there is no real sense that any national or strategic interest is at stake should Yemen collapse.  Without this impetus, moral imperatives of R2P so vocally engaged a few weeks ago in the Libyan context are now seemingly absent.  Not even the US can work itself into a flurry of concern beyond the pro forma despite the fact that it has some very real national and strategic interests potentially in play with the collapse of Yemen.

This is at it should be.  Even the existence of national and strategic interests--such as the high likelihood that AQAP will find an even finer home than that which currently exists or the potential for the pirates of Somalia to be joined by colleagues from Yemen to the further detriment of maritime commerce--does not override the governing reality that peace imposition in Yemen would be an even greater "mission-impossible" than doing such in either Somalia or the FATA.

Even the Saudis, the people with the most cows in the regional herd, have limited their efforts to a combination of cash and palaver.  Whether jointly or individually, these two traditional pillars of Saudi influence have done nothing definite to solve the rapid decay in Yemen.  At the same time, the House of Saud knows perfectly well that were it to dispatch a powerful enough ground combat force, the result would not be peace for Yemen but a horrid combination of forever war there and increased domestic instability back in the Kingdom.

The Saudis are not going to risk their internal security by sending troops to Yemen.  The Kingdom would be reluctant to lower its internal security capacities in the face of Shiite based threats not only in their Eastern Province but in Bahrain.  Experience has shown even the few fire eaters extant in the Kingdom that the barren mountains of Yemen can swallow whole armies without a trace.  Well, that is an exaggeration, but the reality remains that the army would be cut up without victory as a payoff.

As any, well, at least most, observers have noted over the months and years, Yemen is a place without any real reason to exist as a state.  The Yemeni are people with tribes but without a genuine and compelling national identity--provided you leave aside a very small number of educated members of the elite and Saleh's inner circle.  Beyond that, it is a geographical expression currently being torn not only by the out-with-Saleh movement and its tribal adherents but also by two insurgencies, one offensive and the other, in the south, defensive in nature.

This combination means that there simply ain't no way to impose peace let alone a national identity, a national and representative government, or to build a nation-state in Yemen.  The attempt would be very, very prolonged, equally lethal, and ultimately crowned by abject failure.  In this respect, as in so many others, Yemen is Somalia--on steroids.  Even humanitarian relief operations of the Somalia sort would most likely end as did the ill-fated effort there in the early Nineties.

The abject failures of good intentions in Somalia and the less than breathtaking success in Libya to date ought to serve as clear warnings to the high minded and lofty thinking folks who want somebody to rush in and do something, anything, to stop the killing and relieve the misery of the locals.  As the neocon ninny crew should have realized from the outcomes to date in both Iraq and Afghanistan, there are very real limits to both doing good and using military force to protect and project the doing of good.

All hands need to get a grip on a foundation truth: Limits of intervention regardless of the precise nature of the intervention are imposed by the intended recipients of the intended good.  The locals have to work out their own destiny, their own future, their own systems of society, polity, and economy in their own way and at their own pace--even if this means much suffering, and much spilling of blood.  There is no shortcut to this process as we in the West ought to know from our own history.

It may be hard to stand by and watch as people slaughter one another.  It is most difficult to do so today without the aesthetic distance and emotional detachment afforded in former days by slower and less comprehensive communications, but it is the only path to final peace and stability.

The most difficult and problematic task of any government is to recognize when neglect is in fact the most benign policy.  It is even more difficult and problematic for the monstrous legion of NGOs dedicated to doing good to accept a hands-off approach.  It is most difficult and problematic of all for the UN and its inferior agencies to realize the limits of the "international community" and keep out of the local morass.

There are times and places where the least-worst thing to do is let the internal violence of a place and a people drown in its own blood.  Yemen is such a place.  Now is such a time.  Get a grip on it.