Down With The Nation-State!

The end of the cold war was marked by more than merely the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact "empire."  The unfreezing of the bipolar icecap which had put a heavy and quite repressive hand on global politics as well as the internal politics of the component parts of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact subordinates started a series of escalating attacks upon the nation-state generally.  After centuries of unquestioned dominance as the basic unit of international relations, the seemingly eternal nation-state was under threat on two fronts.

One axis of attack was both predictable and fully expected by observers of global affairs: the internationalists, particularly those of the Western European and American elite.  Some sang the praises of supra-national organizations both regional and global.  Others gave one shout-out after another on behalf of transnational business entities.  Both groups damned the narrow, parochial focus of the nation-state with its preoccupation concerning national and strategic interests.

With far more joy than sorrow, infinitely greater anticipation than regret, members of the several elites drawn from both the Left and the Right consigned the nation-state to the status of museum curio while anticipating that the new age of globalization and supra-national organizations would mean a better future for all people everywhere.  Abandoning the nation-state for new, bigger, better forms of organization would, it was repeated, usher in a world of peace and plenty, of prosperity and environmental purity.

Slightly less than ten years ago, the presumably unilateral George W. Bush did his not inconsiderable bit to further the cause of the supra-nationalist camp.  Far from being a robust adherent of the go-it-alone school of international relations, George W. Bush showed himself to be squarely in the middle of the American version of multilateralism.

It would have been politically and diplomatically possible, arguably even preferable, to have declined the offer of assistance given by NATO in the wake of 9/11 and dealt with Afghanistan, Taliban, and al-Qaeda with purely American means.  The later seeking of a UN figleaf to cover the policy genitalia of the Bush/Cheney administration with respect to regime change in Iraq did the US no useful service while holding the American effort ultimately hostage to the views, policies, and politics of other countries.

By seeking the support and agreement of supra-national organizations, the Bush/Cheney administration stood solidly in the diplomatic tradition of Harry Truman and LBJ far more than in the footsteps of his father who relied on a US constructed ad hoc coalition when he went to war a decade earlier.  By so doing, the allegedly unilateralist George W. acted to lessen the future freedom of the US to act as a fully sovereign nation-state.

George W. Bush shared the common view of the American and Western European elites that the nation-state should be lessened in the exercise of untrammeled sovereignty.  Regardless of his sometimes less than temperate rhetoric, this President Bush had a faith in the ability of supra-national institutions to restrain the nation-state from pursuing its national interest regardless of the costs imposed on others.  He was also a deep believer in the capacity of transnational business to increase stability and real wealth.  In essence, he stood on the Right but leaned to the Left.

Over the past decade the view of the nation-state as being an obstacle to creating solutions to global problems has grown greatly.  Whether the problem at hand is one of keeping the peace, protecting the environment, creating greater economic stability, assuring access to food and clean water, providing employment and fairly distributing wealth, or assuring human rights, the default position has been to seek the proper supra-national organization, public, or private.

During the past decade, the UN has constantly sought to extend its reach.  Along with its subordinate agencies, the UN has looked for ways by which it can intervene in the domestic affairs of member states.  There have always been good intentions in play: protecting refugees, protecting civilians against repressive acts by their governments, assuring human rights.  Typified by the convention based on the doctrine termed "responsibility to protect," the UN's reach has far extended beyond its practical grasp.

In the years since the end of the cold war, there has been a proliferation of defensive insurgencies by ethnic and religious communities chaffing under the governance of majorities coming from different groups or beliefs. What has been observed ever since the blood letting in the wreckage of the artificial nation-state once called "Yugoslavia" has been a real world application of the self-determination of nations, a doctrine first given form by Woodrow Wilson nearly a century ago.

From Kosovo to the Northern Caucasus to Darfur and South Sudan, defensive insurgencies (aka separatist movements) have resulted not only in massive loss of life and even more massive refugee streams but military interventions or the calls for such interventions.  In all cases the calls have been directed to and answered by supra-national organizations ranging from the UN to NATO to the African Union.  There is no indication that the trajectory of defensive insurgency has reached its apogee yet.  This means there will be more demands for more international intervention in the future.

In recent months, offensive insurgencies (revolutions) have joined with the defensive sort as a very popular pastime.  This has resulted in one more outpouring of demands for outside intervention by the "international community."  The demand has been answered in Libya by a combination of three supra-national organizations, the Arab League, the UN and NATO.  Similar demands with regard to Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria have yet gone unanswered.

The single greatest reason the latter three states have been given a "pass" and left unmolested by missiles and bombs delivered by aircraft operated by governments responsive to the doctrine of R2P is the existence of two countries which do not share the negative view of the nation-state so prevalent in the West.  These two countries are Russia and China.  Neither accept the proposition that the nation-state is either evil or obsolete (or both.)  Neither go along with the belief that countries have the right to intervene in the internal affairs of another if given the OK by the UN or some other supra-national organization.

But all the foot dragging on well-intended, forceful interventions is not confined to the Boys in the Kremlin or the Trolls of Beijing.  Nor are the Boys and the Trolls the only people who reject the negative view of the nation-state.  In a delightful irony the views put forth in the Kremlin and the Forbidden City are shared by the common folk, the hoi polloi in both the US and the countries of Western Europe.  Blinded by an arrogant certainty in the correctness of their own multilateral, multinational, multicultural beliefs, the political, media, and academic elites of the US and Western Europe do not understand that their view of the nation-state is rejected completely by their own fellow citizens.

As recent elections in Europe have shown, there is a strong rejectionist current running among the European citizenry.  "Populist" right wing parties have done very very well at the polls in large part due to their rejection of the primacy of supra-national organizations.  While not yet tested in an election in the US, there are strong hints that We the People are not ready to embrace the notion that American sovereignty should be ceded in part to supra-national organizations.

The number of challenges to the nation-state by defensive insurgencies will probably continue to grow in the nest few years.  It is also to be expected that there will be an ever increasing call for international intervention not only in the case of defensive insurgencies but also under the doctrine of R2P.  At least some of these demands will be answered by one supra-national organization or another.  Even if the UN Security Council does not heed the call due to the ever present Russian or Chinese veto, some other entity will pick up the slack.

Even in the event no structured supra-national organization does take responsibility to intervene, one or another of the oft maligned and purportedly obsolete nation-states will do so--if its interests require.  From this it is legitimate to infer that the number of nasty little wars of peace imposition will grow in the years to come.  Practically speaking this means the number of asymmetric wars will grow apace.

Against the backdrop of asymmetrical wars it becomes conceivable, even desirable, for states to use proxy conflicts as an instrument of policy.  This will go beyond the past practice of governments such as the Syrian to use terrorist groups as instruments of state policy.

Not too pretty a scene to contemplate, eh, bucko?  Makes you wish for the good old days of the cold war when affairs might have been risky, but the world was remarkably stable.  Looking ahead, the only thing which gives grounds for thanks is that the elites have been wrong.  Tomorrow more than ever it will be the self-interested nation-state which serves as the bulwark against raging instability and war.

In a world full of candidates for devolution, the only genuine force for stability, peace, and some semblance of prosperity is the self-centered nation-state.  It and not the supra-national organization is and remains the last, best hope of human kind.

It is time the elites and their iconic figures such as President Obama and Secretary Clinton get a grip on that defining reality.  Otherwise, their delusions of a UN inspired heaven on Earth will be the death of us all.

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.

A Fiftieth Anniversary--And An Object Lesson For Today

Cuba went all giddy a couple of days ago.  The reason was the Fiftieth Anniversary of the failed Bay of Pigs "invasion" of Cuba by an American trained and equipped motley brigade of refugees.  The initial plan for the operation came during the closing days of the Eisenhower administration.  The plan was predicated upon highly overly optimistic projections of weakness on the part of the Castro regime plucked from the imaginations of recently arriving political refugees.

The Eisenhower administration passed the plan along to the incoming Kennedy people.  The bunch surrounding JFK was comprised of steely-eyed cold war liberals eager to show how the job of containing and rolling back communism should and could be done.  Propelled by faith in their ideology, the New Frontiersmen backed the evermore ambitious plans of CIA for their proxy army.  A glittering assemblage of unjustified assumptions and fond hopes was assembled.  By the time it was necessary to make a final go/no-go decision, all hands with the exception of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had convinced themselves that the operation would succeed.  Even the handful of doubters took comfort in the belief that should the operation stumble, the US military would come to the rescue.

When push did come to shove as it must, the belief that the cavalry would back the play of the invaders was proven false.  For reasons good or bad President Kennedy refused to allow the US Navy, which was offshore with aircraft fueled and bombed up, to take part in the rapidly failing effort.  Our aircraft were limited to making demonstration passes safely offshore, and the Marines most assuredly did not land.

Within two days it was all over.  The invaders were all dead or captured.  Castro was more firmly in control than ever.  The US was humiliated.  And, a valuable lesson should have been learned--there is no such thing as a plausibly deniable military operation after the administration of the United States had declared that a given foreign leader was unacceptable to it.

Before embarking on his strangely bifurcate effort in Libya, President Obama would have been very well advised to revisit the misadventure in Cuba.  After all Mr Obama had made it clear that the policy goal of the US was the removal of Brother Leader Gaddafi (or choose the alternative spelling you prefer.)  Once these words had passed the president's lips, the whole world knew just what the US, the purported front porch dog of the Free World, wanted in Libya.  The real deal of the attendant UN Security Council resolution, for all its diplomatic pap (inserted so that neither Russia nor China would exercise the veto) about protecting civilians, was that the US in conjunction with at least two other Great Powers, France and the UK, sought the removal of Gaddifi.  The Colonel would go, peacefully if possible, violently if that was the only option.

Every halfway thoughtful observer knows perfectly well that the removal of an obnoxious regime is not difficult.  The US did the job in a matter of days in Afghanistan and mere weeks in Iraq.  The removal part of regime change is easy to accomplish.  The problems in both Afghanistan and Iraq came later--in the bootless attempt to create a modern Western style nation-state in Afghanistan and the very difficult task of seeing Iraq create of itself a reasonable simulacrum of a functioning nation-state with some aspects of democracy and rule  of law.

In Libya the same paradigm would have applied if the Obama administration had not opted to retreat behind the screen of proxies, in this case NATO.  When this choice was made, the path to a replay of the Bay of Pigs was charted.

Showing an abysmal ignorance of history--even very recent history, Mr Obama confused the removal part of regime change with the what-next? effort of seeing a new government created by a society unused to the freedom of creating its own polity.  He also failed to understand that there is no way the US can hide the bright light of its policy under the bushel of a proxy.

Had the US gone full bore into Libya, including the use of ground forces for combat against Gaddafi's loyalist units, Brother Leader would be gone already.  It is important to note that by removing the obnoxious leader the US would not have accrued an automatic responsibility for maintaining the good order within Libya.  Nor would it have taken the burden of turning Libya into a modern, pluralistic Western style democratic nation-state.  Both of these are misapprehensions.

The sole responsibility of the US would have been the execution of its declaratory policy--removing Gaddafi and by so doing protect civilians against the harm created by his loyalist forces.  The follow-on of creating a national polity from the tribal matrix of Libya would have been up to the Libyans with whatever assistance from other states or international organizations they might request.  The doctrine of R2P does not impose an unending task upon whatever state or states removes the threat to the civilians in need of protection.

Obama like Kennedy wanted to eat his cake while retaining it intact.  Both presidents wanted to abate a nuisance to American policy interests but had no desire to carry the long term freight of reconstituting the polity.  To this end both sought to use proxies.  In part Obama has seen the rebels in Libya as the equivalent of the exile Cuban "freedom fighters" with NATO playing the role which should have been undertaken by the US at the Bay of Pigs.

The Libyan insurgents are an even weaker reed than were the exiles at the Bay of Pigs.  This implies strongly that the Libyans would need even greater amounts of outside aid than did the Cubans of a half century ago.  An acceptance of this ground truth places an even greater onus on the US to use effective military force against Gaddafi and his loyalists.  Passing the buck to a divided and force impaired NATO set the stage for a stalemate in Libya and a loss of credibility for NATO.

Fifty years ago JFK made the worst decision possible.  If Castro was as American declaratory policy had maintained completely unacceptable to us, a threat to the peace and stability of the Western Hemisphere and a potential threat to CONUS, the right decision was to send in our forces in sufficient numbers to abate the nuisance quickly and decisively.  If, on the other hand, Castro was in fact a mere annoyance, a diplomatic conundrum, an embarrassment, the proper choice was to do nothing.  The worst option by far was the unsupportable attempt at covert invasion by proxy forces.

So it is in Libya.  If Gaddafi really is a challenge to national or strategic interests as Mr Obama's rhetoric holds, then the proper option is to go in fast and hard so as to remove the man and his forces.  If, to the contrary, Gaddafi is a threat only to his own people, then the US should have stayed out.  Or, if R2P is now to be a cornerstone of US policy, the correct choice is once again to move in openly, fast, and hard and then, after the removal of Gaddafi, back out and turn affairs over to the Libyans and whatever leaders they find in their midst giving only such aid as may be requested and justified.

From that list Mr Obama had a two in three chance of getting it right.  He didn't.  He chose the only bad option in the lot--the proxy effort to achieve American declaratory policy.  He sought to justify his blunder by what must either be spectacular ignorance of recent history or flat out tergiversation.  His use of Iraq, his "we have been down that road before" remark is a complete misrepresentation of what happened in Iraq.  The regime was changed in mere weeks and the consequent internal war was in large measure the foreseeable and preventable consequence of an ill-founded effort at nation-building which could have been avoided by the simple expedient of leaving the matter up to the Iraqis and providing only such aid as they requested specifically.

The same could have been accomplished in Libya.  All that was necessary was the assurance that the political goal was carefully and narrowly defined and that military force was crafted to achieve that goal.  Bereft of any implied responsibility for giving the Libyans a turn-key modern Western style state (which they don't want in any event) the task of directly turning declaratory policy into actual events would have been easy.

JFK is one of Obama's heroes.  It is too bad that the Nice Young Man From Chicago could not learn one simple lesson from Kennedy's second biggest blunder.

Libya And The Credibility Of NATO

NATO has been with us for more than a half century now.  It served its purpose well during the Cold War by providing Europe with a credible capacity to commit suicide.  It was this American furnished capacity which convinced the Soviet Union time and time again that there was nothing to be gained by either invading Europe or merely threatening to do so.  Occupying a radioactive wasteland was not a profitable foreign policy course of action.

With the ending of the Cold War, the demise of NATO was cheerfully forecast in numerous quarters both in the US and Europe.  As was the case with Mark Twain, reports of death were premature.  Still the Big Question remained: What role would NATO serve with the end of the Warsaw Pact/Soviet threat?

The affray in former Yugoslavia which marked so many of the years otherwise dominated by Whitewater and assorted Ladies of the Oval Office appeared to provide an alternative mission for the semi-defunct alliance.  At the time, you may recall, there was debate over whether or not the US had a bull in the Bosnian herd.  More than a few Deep Thinkers of the Clinton administration believed it to be a purely European matter.  A few held the contrary opinion, that the fate of ethnic and religious minorities in the rapidly and energetically disassembling one time country presented a challenge to American values and norms.

The European house was divided on the issue.  Some political leaders and public intellectuals remembered that World War I had its origins in the conflict zones of Bosnia and adjacent areas.  While the analogy was both poor and unconvincing, it did take hold on some imaginations.  But others held different views.  Germany, for example, stood back while providing assistance to one of the successor mini-states, Croatia.

Finally, the US did what the US was expected to do--make a decision and provide leadership.  The Clinton administration having been convinced by advocates of air power that a few strikes from the blue would suffice to bring the Serbs to their senses authorized an air interdiction effort to be conducted under the official auspices of NATO.  With the aid of a few anemic air forces from others of the alliance, the US did "shock and awe" the Serbs.  There were more than a few collateral civilian casualties as when the bombers visited Belgrade.  The deaths and destruction did not do the trick, so ground forces were ultimately (and quite reluctantly) added to the force package.

The US did step back a bit after the opening weeks of the intervention, but there is no doubt the heavy lifting was performed by American forces both air and ground.  When the dust settled, there was a general agreement that NATO had passed the test, imposing peace and saving Muslims from the killing fields.  This conclusion can be debated but was nonetheless almost universally accepted.  NATO had a new lease on life.

The Bosnian precedent was in play when NATO after 9/11 invoked Article V of the charter for the very first time and joined with the US in the invasion of Afghanistan.  This nasty little war started with whoops of unrestrained enthusiasm.   Now, a decade later the enthusiasm is not even a dim memory, and most of the NATO contingents still in country are seeking the earliest departure date possible.

Other NATO members who joined the invasion have long since gone.  Part of the reason for the early bailouts and reluctant remaining can be assigned to the pathetic leadership offered by the Bush/Cheney administration, particularly their decision to march off to Iraq with the job in Afghanistan barely begun let alone finished.  The Great Adventure in Regime Change in Iraq was not widely supported in NATO.  Even in those NATO members which accompanied the US on the road to Baghdad, the support was not deep and had no real potential to be prolonged.

The combination of "mission leap" in Afghanistan and invading Iraq undercut the capacity and political will of NATO for out-of-theater operations.  Worse, the style and strategy of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld crew severely eroded American leadership in the alliance.  A widespread distaste for being seen as instruments of a made-in-the-USA policy with no authentic European interests grew to the mutual disadvantage of both the US and NATO.

It is within this context that the NATO operations in Libya must be considered.  The actions must also be viewed against the backdrop of the Obama understanding of multi-lateralism and American leadership in such.  Context and backdrop frame the current operations in Libya.  The manner in which the framing operates does much to explain why and how the credibility of NATO is at stake.

The importance of credibility resides not with the continuation of NATO.  The alliance will soldier on.  Rather it lies with how NATO is seen by states hostile to either or both Europe and the US.  This list includes the obvious--Iran--and the less self-evident or longer term such as Pakistan, Russia, China, and non-state actors having state support or safe haven.

To be a credible instrument of deterrence, the alliance must be seen and generally understood as possessing both the military means and political will necessary to wage effective war at all levels of the intensity spectrum from the smallest asymmetrical conflict to full bore conventional war with or without a nuclear aspect.  Any perceived failure by NATO in either military means or political will can erode the deterrent potential of NATO as it can that of any individual nation-state.

When the newly muscular Nicholas Sarkozy determined that France would be on the mythical "right side of history," he could have opted to put together a "coalition of the willing" in the manner of George W. Bush on the eve of invading Iraq.  There was at least one other "willing" state, the UK.  Between them, Sarkozy and Cameron could have induced (dragooned?) other states into joining the coalition.  But, Sarko and Cameron did not take this route.

The reason is easy to see.  As had been shown so plainly and painfully by the US and its "coalition" in Iraq, such ad hoc assemblages have lesser legitimacy than that possessed by older, well established systems such as NATO.  The most legitimate but most inhibiting route of all was that taken by Sarkozy and Cameron--a Security Council resolution with ultimate execution under the flag of NATO. The biggest insect in the ointment was not the Security Council--even though, as might have been anticipated, the resolution was too limited to allow the accomplishment of the ultimate goal, the removal of Gaddafi--but rather the role and attitude of the US as defined by the Obama administration.

The US had even less national and strategic interests in play with respect to Libya than it had in the Bosnian affray.  The uber-realist Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, could adduce only the most hazy of interests in play--that of regional stability--to justify any American involvement in Libya.  Had American decision making been left to the dictates of realism, there would be no US aircraft in the sky over Libya.  However, idealism had its very effective advocates within the administration, the Three Furies of Hilary Clinton, Samantha Powers, and Susan Rice.

Siding with the Three Furies, the Clueless Guy In The Oval then had two critical decisions to make.  The first was definition of the goal of military operations, would they  be restricted to the no-fly and protect the civilians substance of the Security Council resolution or would they be expanded to include the president's expressed desire to rid Libya of Gaddafi.  The second was the role to be played by the US: Would we lead the exercise which implied doing the majority of the heavy lifting or would we hand off to some other executive entity such as NATO and retire to a support position in the relative shadows?

As was to have been expected, Mr Obama split the difference or, to err on the side of accuracy, sat down firmly between two stools on both issues.  Operationally, the US and others would abide by the restrictive provisions of the resolution while rhetorically overkilling Gaddafi.  We would run the show--and do the overwhelming majority of the work--for a few days and hand off to NATO while doing a few specialized missions.

The firm sitting between two stools in each matter has set up NATO for a perceived failure.  By limiting the operations to the narrow focus allowed by the Security Council resolution while continuing to exercise the most belligerent oratory, the US has acted to strengthen the political will of Gaddafi and his sons while simultaneously leading the rebels to believe that we and NATO would assure their victory.  Our hand off to NATO knowing that the alliance lacked not only the basics such as adequate stockpiles of precision munitions and aircraft as well as the most important consideration of all--unity of political will--was not only ill-advised it set up the alliance for a perceived failure.

While there are cheerleaders for NATO who argue eloquently for the alliance, proclaiming that after a rough start matters are improving rapidly, it is hard to accept these arguments at face value.  In point of fact there can and will be no certain security for the non-combatants of Libya as long as Colonel Gaddafi is in charge.  The Security Council resolution was predicated upon the R2P doctrine.  This means that the removal of Gaddafi must be subsumed in the overall orientation to protecting non-combatants.  This does not mean handing the rebels a victory as so many of their amorphous leadership seems to believe but simply the ending of Brother Leader's rule.

The Obama administration should have made US support for the Sarkozy/Cameron program contingent upon the removal of Gaddafi being placed front and center as the public goal of the air effort.  Anything less constitutes an exercise in futility.

The removal of Gaddafi requires more than the establishment of a no-fly zone.  It requires more than the partial neutralization of armor, artillery, or other heavy weapons.  The protection of non-combatants as well as the removal of Gaddafi demands the defeat of Gaddafi's armed forces.

The defeat of the Gaddafi loyalists requires the application of overwhelming force in as time limited a manner as possible.  High combat tempo requires large forces.  NATO lacks these as was well understood by the US.  By handing over responsibility to NATO, the US condemned Libya and the Libyans to a prolonged war in which more people would die and more destruction occur than otherwise would have been the case.

The paucity of forces available to NATO, which has been compounded by the very limited inventories of precision guided munitions as well as the absence of interoperability between some NATO air forces and readily available American PGMs, has assured the air campaign has been characterized by missed opportunities and incomplete successes.  Yes, some tanks and tube artillery have been destroyed, but more tanks, more tubes, and more Grad launching trucks remain often unmolested despite clear skies and good, actionable intelligence.

As the days have gone by in their bloody progress with stalemate seemingly more certain with every sunset, the military competence and political will of NATO collectively are increasingly open to question.  The use of cluster munitions against civilian population centers most notably Misrata as well as the resolute rhetoric employed by Saif Gaddafai recently all bespeak of enhanced will on the part of the current regime to keep itself in power.

The US did not exercise the leadership expected of it.  President Obama did not act as President Clinton did with respect to Bosnia.  This did not sit well with the countries of NATO oriented toward ending Gaddafi's reign.  Nor did the US leaving the frontline for a support position sit well either.  Regardless of national pride and irrespective of the burdens put on the US forces by other commitments, only the Americans have the force necessary to carry out a high tempo operation across the full breadth of Libya.  There was, no doubt, an expectation that the US would do what it has always done in the past--lead and fight.

When the US did not behave as expected--and as Mr Obama himself warned a year or so back in Trinidad--there was consternation in NATO.  There has also been a degree, a high degree of despair, among the rebels who hoped and expected more from NATO--and the US.

The situation has reached a point that the credibility of NATO as a deterrent is at stake.  The generally perceived failure of the alliance to suppress the fourth rate military of Gaddafi to a point that it doesn't threaten non-combatants on an hourly basis has undercut its value.  This implies the US now has a national interest in play in Libya--the perceived credibility of our longest standing military alliance.  Perhaps the time has come for the Americans to get off the bench and back into the war.  We have a good enough reason to.

Form Up The Battalions!

The French are not only punching above their weight in the tough arena of coercive diplomacy, the go-out-and-get-them approach of President Nicholas Sarkozy has taken France from the doldrums of diplomatic irrelevance where it languished as recently as February to the position of calling the West's diplomatic tune.  Not a bad record even for an inveterate gambler, addicted to high-risk, high-payoff ways of playing politics with enough personal energy to (if focused) replace the lost Japanese nuclear reactors.

Sarko currently has French forces deployed in six actual or nearly actual shooting wars--Ivory Coast, Libya, Afghanistan, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Somalia.  As one French observer noted recently, in comparison George W. Bush was a blooming pacifist.  While the French public has exhibited a fair degree of disenchantment with the Afghan operation, the other "overseas contingency operations" have not met with significant disapprobation.

More than a little ink--both physical and virtual--has been expended on the possible motives for the new French assertiveness.  To many onlookers, the prime reason has been assigned to Sarkozy's political ambitions coupled with his low standing in the polls, strong opposition, and poor showing in recent municipal elections.  While there is some measure of truth in this interpretation, it is doubtful it is the whole story.

Another input to the Sarko decision making process in recent weeks has been the embarrassment caused by France having botched policy during the "Jasmine" and "Lotus" revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.  Make no mistake about it, the French policy debacle was an embarrassment to Sarkozy, his party, and, most importantly, the French public.  Simply sending an inept--or merely unfortunate--foreign minister to the scaffold was not enough to repair the damage to both reputation and influence.

Another input may well have been a strong desire on the part of Sarkozy to step out from the shadow cast by Germany and its chancellor in the Eurozone.  Germany and France have not been good yokemates, to say the least, with respect to the economic challenges which have beset the EU the past several months.  But, foreign policy gave France--and Sarkozy personally--the chance to shine, shine much brighter than the timid Germans with their fear of all things military and love of all things financial.

Not to be dismissed without consideration is the gentlemanly pushing and shoving between Sarkozy and David Cameron regarding leadership in the newly emerging military relationship.  A robust policy backed by military force gave the French a leg up by demonstrating just which country had the real muscle now.

Nor is it possible to overlook the role played by the US.  Or, somewhat more accurately, the failure of the US to act in its traditional Great Power role.  Whether this deficiency was attributed to the cover story of American overextension and budgetary limitations or the weak kneed nature of the American president, the vacuum existed at the top.  And, Sarkozy well understands that international politics like nature abhors a vacuum.

Then, of course, one might take Sarkozy at his word.  France does have a set of norms, values, and customs by which right is parsed from wrong.  Acting quickly and robustly to protect unarmed civilians from mortal harm at the hands of a regime which had announced its intentions to inflict bloody repression was in complete tandem with French norms and values.  Bombing tanks in Libya or mortar positions in Ivory Coast were exercises meeting the highest tests of French morality regarding governmental conduct.

M. Sarkozy's motives were, as psychiatrists would put it, "overdetermined."  They were the expectable mix of the cynical and the principled, the transient and the eternal, the personal and the disinterested.  The issues which matter most are not those of motivation or intent but rather those of outcome and precedent.

Both Libya and the Ivory Coast constitute situations in which the outcome is not clear.  Should, as seems quite likely at the present, the war in Libya bog down into a protracted stalemate with a de facto partition of the place, the cheers which met Sarko's actions initially are highly likely to turn into jeers of disillusionment.  In the Ivory Coast should it prove out that the supporters of the internationally recognized incoming president, Ouattara, have been responsible for atrocities on a large scale (again as currently appears to have been the case) the applause within France will be replaced by shrugs of disengagement and sneers of disapproval.

In either case the presumption of failed overreach will go a long way to assuring that M. Sarkozy is a one term president.  High-risk, high-payoff gambles are like that.  And, as Clausewitz pointedly noted, "no plan survives first contact with the enemy".

Win, lose, or draw, the precipitous action of the French government has gone a far piece toward reinforcing the notion of R2P as an overarching responsibility of civilized states.  Arguably, R2P, as the Russians and Chinese have maintained, constitutes an unwarranted increase of UN authority.  It is ironic, but France's exercise in sovereign decision making particularly as regards two former colonial possessions and particularly the Ivory Coast intervention, transforms R2P into just what its opponents claim it to be--colonialism under a different and nicer term.

The reality is that most of the world's governments and publics accept the nation-state as the basic unit of global political organization.  This runs against the world view of the Western elites which hold the nation-state to be a relic of the past--and a very dangerous one at that.  The Western elites have embraced the supra-national organization with a lust which boggles the imagination.  The underlying proposition in the mind of the collective Western elite is that the planet is too small and common problems too large to allow nation-states the unfettered sovereignty which they have enjoyed for the past five hundred years.  The size and scope of problems coupled with the lethality of contemporary technologies of war fighting and the power of ideological conviction demand that power reside with international organizations alone.

The historical record of the past half century is littered with examples of governments run amok, of mounds of bodies piled up at the command of governments or non-state actors both fueled by racial, religious, or ideological hatreds.  The ability with which governments can and have killed their own people, generated refugees in the millions, inflicted fear along with physical casualties and destruction has been demonstrated with nausea producing regularity.

It is small wonder that the R2P doctrine was formulated and formally approved by an overwhelming majority of the UN membership.  It is equally of no surprise that the precursors of R2P all the way back to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were similarly passed by universal acclamation.  In the waves of disgust and enthusiasm for having created a "better way" on paper, the assembled diplomats lost sight of what might occur when some country and some future time took the strictures seriously and demanded effective enforcement.

The inevitable result of such a demand would be the bringing into sharp conflict of the basic principle of sovereignty and the ideal of international duty.  The always realistic men in the Kremlin and Forbidden City have always held a firm line against the international community intervening in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.  Both have always relied upon their Security Council veto to protect against excesses of Western enthusiasm for intervention of this sort.

For reasons of short-term diplomatic interest both abstained on the Libyan no-fly/civilian protection resolution.  Both are probably regretting having done so as by not going the "No!" route, they have allowed for a crack of precedent to be formed.  How quickly the crack could be widened was seen by the UN peace keeping force in the Ivory Coast ordering four Ukrainian gunships into action against forces loyal to outgoing president Gbagbo.  This attack constituted a significant change in UN peacekeeping operational practice.

The French have pushed a precedent which seems good at the present moment but is fraught with problems for the future.  Chief among these are where will the line be drawn  At what level of international nausea will the civilized states or one of them seek R2P authorization?  What will happen if and when the Security Council does not give its blessings?  Or can the UN be bypassed, with reliance upon one regional organization or another acting in its place?  What happens if the UN says, "yes," but the regional entity decrees "no?"

There are other problems as well.  Some have been outlined in Libya.  Who is responsible for executing any specific R2P operation?  What about the internal mechanisms of any state for approving such expeditions?  This is particularly relevant with regard to the US while totally lacking relevance for the French whose president has royal level prerogative to employ armed force for reasons of state.

Nicholas Sarkozy has well and truly kicked the fire ant hill when it comes to looking ahead.  Without any intention to do so, he has created a precedent with more problems than solutions, more difficulties for tomorrow than certainties.  It may even prove that more civilians in the future will die at the hands of their governments than otherwise would have been the case as an unintended consequence of M. Sarkozy's  motives and consequent action.

Who ever said that irony is not a major feature of history?

The Irony Of R2P And The Ivory Coast

You all remember Rwanda, don't you?  It did make the news back about the time Whitewater was the lead story.  The butchery in Rwanda, the killing of Hutus by Tutsis and Tutsis by Hutus put enough bodies in local streams to cause impromptu dams and flooding.  The imagery was shockingly brutal enough--even in the pre-YouTube days of network censorship--to cause waves of revulsion throughout the US, Europe, and elsewhere.

There were mouthfuls of "deplore" and "unacceptable."  There were repeated calls for "restraint" and "moderation."  World leader after world leader denounced the ongoing slaughter.  But, no state did anything to impose a moratorium on mass murder.  The "international community" assembled on the banks of the Hudson was long on words and very, very short on deeds.

It was only a decade or so later that the "international community" and its great organization, the UN, did something other than talk.  Boosted by "concern" and even "alarm" over religiously motivated industrial strength killing in Bosnia, the member states of the UN finally did something in response to Rwanda.  The 192 members unanimously approved an "outcome document" which enshrined the Responsibility to Protect (R2P.)

The diplomats assembled in the General Assembly executed the will of their respective governments and declared that when a government failed to protect its citizens from genocide or war crimes or crimes against humanity or ethnic cleansing, then the "international community" had the responsibility to extend protection to those in danger and need.  It was a feel-good move.  Some of the governments, particularly the legatees of the long Western movement by fits and starts to lessen the damage of war and enhance the rights of citizens against arbitrary government, might actually have intended that R2P would have real effect in the real world of real evil deeds.

Other states, no doubt, had no intent of ever honoring any obligation under the R2P formulation.  None would oppose it openly as such would be even more politically incorrect and liable to bring international disapproval than being against clean air and drinkable water.  International disapprobation brings with it a loss of influence and no state wishes that for itself.  So every country marched along with a light heart and a merry tune on its lips into a brave, bright future of greater safety for all.

Even the many governments which were authoritarian on a good day and brutally suppressive most of the time joined up.  Libya linked arms with Norway, Syria with Sweden, Iran with Denmark; Russia wrapped its arms around Canada while China did the same with the US.  It was such a sweet moment!  There was Zimbabwe; there was Sudan; there was the Ivory Coast.  All singing the R2P jive.

The R2P outcome document was long, almost infinitely long, on high minded and lofty sentiments.  It was short to the point of nonexistence on those pesky details such as what would trigger R2P or who would make the trigger decision or who would actually do the dirty work of protecting some group somewhere against some dire threat.  There were no mechanisms, no procedures, no substance which would serve to speedily and uniformly transform the fine sounding words of R2P to the dirty realities of imposing its requirements on a recalcitrant (or nonexistent) government.

All except the most starry-eyed and vapid minded of folks knew that the realities of international politics assured that R2P would have the impact of an ant's fart on a hurricane.  True, but with an important, indeed critical caveat, unless one or more major powers determined that national or strategic interest demanded the application of R2P in a particular venue--and worked with determination and purpose to gain sufficient support from states having coinciding national or strategic interests.

This is why the bombs have been falling in Libya and not Yemen or Bahrain.  Consistency is nice but not either necessary nor sufficient in the formulation and execution of foreign policy.

For reasons endemic to the domestic political cultures of both France and the UK, Libya loomed large.  Facilitating the task of gaining sufficient consensus internationally was Colonel Gaddafi's record of global mischief making and domestic suppression.

The US could have sat out this particular dance.  The Americans had no direct dog in the fight even if there existed a longer term threat of a resurgent Gaddafi reverting to his pre-2003 type should he prevail domestically.  But, the Obama administration had taken lumps almost beyond count for its lack of a firm stance during the "Jasmine" and "Lotus" revolutions.  And, it should never be forgotten there were three potent members of the senior level personnel who had either been badly traumatized by Rwanda (Powers and Rice) or were abundantly proud of the American led intervention in Bosnia (Clinton).

Now comes the irony.

Of all the countries around the world currently undergoing internal political convulsions, there is one in which the impact of governmental sins of both omission and, more importantly, commission merit the immediate invocation of R2P.  That country is not Bahrain, despite the contentions of those who abhor inconsistency.  Nor is it Yemen even though that country has seen a respectable body count.  It is not even Syria, authoritarian as that country might be.  It is not even Libya even though the fighting is in full swing under the kindly eyes of US and other country's pilots.

The country is the Ivory Coast.

By all the metrics and standards customarily employed to measure such things, the Ivory Coast is in the throes of internal war in which one of the contestants is the internationally condemned incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, and the other is the internationally recognized winner of the presidential election, Alassane Outtara.  Each claimant to the throne is backed by armed supporters, but Gbagbo has the army as well as less formal militias in his corner.

The weeks and months since the election have seen an escalation in violence which has taken a very obvious ramp up in the past few days.  There are, according to the UN, which has the typically ineffectual "peace keeping" force in country, currently as many as one million internally displaced persons, most of whom are fleeing the murder squads in Abidjan.

Fears of an increased body count have grown since Gbagbo now has one--that's right, one--attack helicopter at his disposal as well as some brand new multiple rocket launchers.  These fears have not resulted in any significant action by the UN or the "international community" or even the African Union.  There have been no economic sanctions imposed on Gbagbo or his intimates.  Nor have there been any travel bans.  None of the instant moves employed against Gaddafi in the earliest days of the popular uprising.

The UN Human Rights Counsel has taken time out from condemning Israel so that it might send a commission of inquiry to the Ivory Coast.  Apparently this bastion of concern over the wellbeing of all people everywhere cannot rely on media reports and must ascertain for itself as to whether or not there have been human rights abuses committed by Gbagbo and his forces.  In the same resolution, the Watchdog of Humanity called upon the state radio in Ivory Coast to "refrain" from inciting violence.

Wow!  That must have them shaking in their boots all around the presidential palace.  The boys had best be careful with their knee knocking, they might drop one of those dread rockets and hurt themselves.

The US has taken a firm, even hard, line on the Ivory Coast Question.  In a video message to the folks down there Ivory Coast way, President Obama has termed the election "fair and free" and has said that he recognizes Outtara as the real deal president.  He called for Gbagbo to hand over the keys to the presidential latrine.

Well, if that doesn't get Gbagbo's attention what good would sanctions or travel bans or no-fly zones do?  Right now it is impossible to say how many people have died since the 28 November 10 election.  But, given the impressive number who were killed in the crossfire during the last round of internal war as well as the more conservative reports out of Africa, the number must equal at the least the eight thousand or so killed in Libya prior to the establishment of the no-fly and no-go zones.

Considering that Susan Rice was reportedly shaken to her very core when she went to Rwanda shortly after the machetes stopped swinging and Samantha Powers has made her bones as an academic by studying genocide, it is of some interest that the US is seemingly indifferent to the looming massacres in the Ivory Coast.  Even if Ms Rice and Ms Powers are loath to see white American wings over a Black African country, they should be plumping for the symbolic sanctions and travel bans.  Admittedly, the Ivory Coast is a prime source of high quality chocolate and Americans are fond of eating this particular comestible, but even our collective sweet tooth should not be allowed to prevent action intended to halt killings.

By the appearance of indifference to African deaths at the hands of Africans, the US and Europe run the real risk of being accused once more of racism.  This happened, you might recall, during the Nineties with the contrast between Rwanda and Bosnia.  The French alone have taken some sort of lead at least in the UNHRC.  Perhaps Sarkozy is sensitive to sentiments arising in Africa.

The Geek has written this post not because he favors an intervention in the Ivory Coast.  He does not.  Rather the purpose of this exercise has been to demonstrate not simply the intellectual bankruptcy of the Obama administrations approach to foreign affairs but, more importantly, the failure, an inevitable and built in failure of the R2P and similar lofty minded moves by the "international community."

When night falls, like it or not, foreign policy is directed, even dictated, by a combination of domestic political imperatives and national interest, not abstract principle.  The only form of hypocrisy which matters is that of pretending otherwise.

Idiocy Epitomized: Libya And R2P--And Why It Is A Western Artifact

The ultimate justification for the current inchoate effort by France, the UK, and others including the less than eager US is The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) which doctrine derives from a 2005 outcome document concerning the massacres in Rwanda and Bosnia which was adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly.  This action can be seen best as a collective catharsis of collective guilt by an "international community" awestruck by what it had "allowed" to occur.

The heart of R2P is the notion that should a state fail to protect its citizens from "genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, or crimes against humanity," the international community has the obligation to undertake the protective task.  The doctrine as adopted by the UN is an outgrowth of the earlier concept holding that the UN could call upon member states to intervene should internal political disruption produce a potentially destabilizing refugee stream.  Both artifacts of the General Assembly fall far outside the mandate of the UN as conceived.

(It is worth noting in this context, the framework of R2P, that the three people in the senior ranks of the Obama administration who pushed hardest for the Libyan intervention are connected in one way or another with both the doctrine and the two slaughter ridden venues from which it emerged.  Former Harvard professor and current National Security Council heavyweight Samantha Power is a specialist in genocide, our Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice has long been an advocate of robust intervention to prevent any repetition of Rwanda, and SecState Hilary Clinton has been proud of her presidential husband's brave move in mounting out the air and later ground intervention in Bosnia.)

The foundation of both R2P and its precursor can be found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and companion international agreements or conventions including those falling under the general term "Geneva Convention."  Despite the grandiose title of the Human Rights document and regardless of the expansive goals of the others, the Geneva Convention and all the rest, are not consensus documents representing any global set of norms and values.  They are creations of the West, of Europe and the US along with other, Western leaning societies and cultures such as those of South and Central America.

The adoption of the several conventions and declarations by all members of the UN in no way obviates the basic reality that the ideas, the norms and values to which official assent has been given, are Made in the West and are the unique outcome of Western history.  This ground truth can be inferred from the assorted reservations which have garlanded the official acceptances on file.  Many of these reservations, such as those entered by various Muslim majority states, demonstrate a rejection of Western norms, values, and ideas regarding both "universal" rights and limitations on acceptable means of waging war.

Don't get your knickers in a knot over the use of the word "Muslim" in the preceding paragraph.  The uniquely Western nature of the norms and values embodied in the referenced documents owes little to religion per se.  Back down, Christians or Jews, this is not a slam on the ideals contained in your sacred writings.  The core of all religions is universally in favor of peace, love, flower power, and urge the eschewing of war other than those of the "just" kind.  Of course there have been wars fought over the meaning of the word "just."

The Western origin of the norms, values, and ideals embodied in the referenced conventions emerge not from religion and sacred sentiments but rather from a more base emotion: disgust.  Over the centuries Europeans fought wars of a uniquely bloody nature.  They also fought wars with nauseating regularity.  And, Europeans, particularly the English and, later, the Americans, fought wars with a single minded absolutism which came to the highest fruition with the hectatomb of World War II.

From the Thirty Years War to the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon to World Wars I and II, the Western Way of War provided object lesson after object lesson in the need to somehow regulate and modulate war so as to ensure the lowest cost of lives, particularly the lives of non-combatants, and the least possible damage to non-military targets.  As a result there was a development of norms which were far more often honored in the breech than in the observance.

The attempts to regulate both war and governmental treatment of civilian populations which proved most likely to fail were those predicated upon religious strictures.  The Catholic Church made numerous moves to limit and control war.  All failed.  Far more efficacious were limitations on war were those based on national self-interest.  The long centuries of very limited (and quite inconclusive) war which spanned the period between the Thirty Years War and the conflicts of Napoleon were the result of self-interest pricked by the recognition that unlimited, absolute war was as destructive of the victor as the vanquished.

In a companion way the limits that governments increasingly imposed upon themselves in the suppression of internal unrest or mere interpersonal violence were the consequence of a growing recognition that social and political good order and stability required polite and restrained behavior.  The code of the gentleman which emerged in England and was copied faithfully in the US was the result of this recognition.  The growth in fits and starts of representative and increasingly democratic government was likewise the consequence of a blossoming realization that inclusion was far more beneficial than suppression.

After the suppression of the Paris Commune and the ending of the American War Between the States, the internal good order was more and more facilitated by a concern on the part of the government for the rights, dignities, and status of the civilian population.  During the same period the first stumbling efforts to codify the off and on practices of limiting inter-state conflict were made as well.

But it took the massive, unprecedented industrialized mass murder of the two World Wars to prod the West, or at least those states in the West left standing when the Second World War ended, to make a concerted effort to impose their collective internal and international values, norms, and ideals in a set of international conventions.  It is from this soil of blood and guts that the plant of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as the expanded Geneva Convention grew.  The UDHR was adopted quickly with the formal inauguration of the UN.  The conventions, like the UN itself, were the product of Western experiences over centuries and the expression of norms, values, and ideals were forged in the fires of war.

This, then, is the background of the current idiocy in Libya.

The question which must be addressed is simply this: How relevant is this Made in the West artifact to the situation in Libya (and Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, or others yet to be born?)

In plain point of fact R2P is a doctrine to be applied on an ad hoc basis only.  This means that there is no end to the implied hypocrisy of any specific application.  Is it not hypocritical to bomb one's way to peace, stability, and civilian safety in Libya but not the Ivory Coast?  Or, Yemen?  Or, should the body count cross some mythical line yet to be determined.  Bahrain?  Syria?

Then there is the necessary corollary of hypocrisy--base opportunism.  The existence of R2P allows cover for opportunism, for the disguised pursuit of national interest.  It is this rather than any legitimate apprehension of feeling the military wrath of the "international community" which propels the solid opposition of Russia and China to any UN interference in the internal affairs of a state.  Other countries, such as India, which have had experience with internal unrest and a concomitant bloodstained suppression, may view R2P and its precursor with a jaundiced eye.

The experiences of intervention under one name or guise or another also predisposes African and Latin American states against R2P and its companions.  The pervasive fear of intervention which can be seen throughout Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Mideast is totally legitimate, every bit as legitimate and history based as the Western expression of "universal" norms and values.  The two are fundamentally antipodal and will remain that way into the future as far as one can see.

The uncertainties regarding the relevance of R2P as well as the potential narratives of "hypocrisy" and "opportunism" are in play with respect to the divisions which have become so evident in Europe.  The sharp distinctions between the Western created conventions and the culturally and historically determined "reservations" put in place by Arab and Muslim states have become every bit as high profile.  It is, for example, not naivete but a difference in perceptions of norms and values which provoked the expressions of shock and dismay from the Arab League over the reality that imposition of a no-fly zone required that bombs be dropped and missiles fired.

In short, the Libyan Affair has again demonstrated a long standing historical truism.  The best guide to foreign relations is self-determined national and strategic interest.  While principles can and have played a constructive role in determining both national interest and foreign policy, basing a war (for that is what it is, regardless of euphemism) on the "universal" principles embodied in R2P and its foundation conventions is not wise.  Nor is it likely to be productive in the longer term regardless of the specifics occurring in the shorter run.

In sum, President Obama was misguided in the extreme when he succumbed to the importuning and arguments of three special pleaders, Powers, Rice, and Clinton.  Grabbing the coattails of Sarkozy and his personal view of R2P was not a mistake: it was, as Talleyrand famously put it, "a blunder."

R2P Or Not R2P

At one time the United Nations had a simple, straightforward major mission. Protect the international peace. That was the one issue focused upon by the architects of the UN during the bloody years of World War II as it had been on the part of Woodrow Wilson and other visionaries during an earlier hectatomb.

The prevention or, at worst, the punishment of aggressive war waged in the face of international disapproval was the centerpiece at the launching of the UN in San Francisco more than a half century ago. While there were other items on the UN's plate--including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights--these were seen as clearly secondary. They were conceived of as means of limiting the excuses used by nations to go to war.

That simple, unitary focus became increasingly fuzzy in the waning days of the Cold War particularly after President Jimmy Carter elevated the concept of "human rights" to the top priority of American foreign policy. While there is no doubt that President Carter was both sincere and somewhat pragmatically minded in his dedication to human rights, the Law of Unintended Consequences stood by ready to invoke itself.

The UN pushed its camel's nose into an entirely new area a few years ago when the congeries of diplomats meeting on the banks of the Hudson determined that a potential threat to international peace and stability was posed automatically when a government's policies or weakness resulted in refugee streams crossing international borders. The existence of a flow of refugees became de facto proof that some sort of international intervention was required not only to meet "humanitarian" needs but also to stave off any potential breach of the international peace.

This diplomatic artifice constructed a very steep slope paved with glare ice. It allowed, no, encouraged, the Security Council to determine when and if an internal matter had reached such a pitch of refugee generation (and high visibility flowing of blood and gore) that international intervention was required. If the five Permanent Members could agree on the necessity or desirability of invoking the presumed UN mandate to protect the citizens of the target county, the Boys in Blue Helmets could be deployed.

If and when (as was far from atypical) the Security Council could not agree on intervention, the fall back position was the invocation of a similar "responsibility to protect" (called in diplomatic and journalistic shorthand, "R2P") on the part of the UN or regional organisations. The European Union, the Organisation of American States, the African Union, even NATO, could determine that they had a "responsibility to protect" within their geographic bailiwicks.

Stripped to its essentials the "responsibility to protect" means that some external entity, a state, a regional organisation, the UN, determines on some basis or another that a country has reached such a sorry state of internal depravity and wretchedness that intervention is the necessary course of action. Since the intervention is not sought nor welcomed by the target country or its government, this means the incoming forces are armed and ready to use force to impose their will on the target.

In short, the "responsibility to protect" means making war.

Ironically, the UN, an entity created to keep the international peace, can invoke the "responsibility to protect" in order to wage war. Normally the use of the "R2P" is either by or at the behest of a Great Power against some country which is not a client of another Great Power.

Back in 2005 the "international community" visited the subject of "R2P" at some length. At the end of the visit some 150 world leaders endorsed the concept. Now, four years later, the UN General Assembly is back in the trenches of "R2P."

The NYT suggests that getting the member nations to agree on how and when to intervene so as to stop genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing should not "be much of a stretch." The mere fact that the weight of historical experience underscores the difficulty with agreeing on anything beyond muttering platitudes, the gaining of widespread agreement on the necessity of invading a country due to its internal difficulties is nearly impossible.

Not surprisingly the panjandrums of the UN bureaucracy are overwhelmingly in favor of an "R2P" protocol with real bite. The High Commissioner For Human Rights, Navi Pillay, has called for a "credible capacity for rapid responses." Madam Pillay, like UN SecGen Ban Ki-moon, referenced the massacres in Rwanda during which the world stood by and watched horrified as at least 800,000 were slaughtered.

There is an old cliche in jurisprudence, "Hard cases make bad law." In international politics there is (or should be) a similar saying, "Extreme examples make bad precedent."

To put it simply, there is no firebreak in mere numbers. Nor is there a bright and shining line contained in the swiftness of the slaughter. Once the precedent is enshrined there can be no meaningful distinctions between the fast mass murder of a Rwanda and the slow killing fields of a Zimbabwe or a Somalia. There can be no proper, policy related distinctions drawn between massive and bloody efforts at ethnic cleansing as in former Yugoslavia and the slow-motion ejection of Christians from Iraq.

Regardless of speed, efficiency, or numbers each is an example of abuse of human rights on a large scale. Each occurred because of either government action or government inaction. Each generated refugees. Each outraged (or should have) global sensibilities. Each was (or is) a candidate for "R2P."

The same may be said (and has been) regarding Chinese actions in Tibet or, more recently, in Xianjiang. The same may be said (and has been) regarding Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

The same was said in (partial) justification of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. Saddam Hussein's regime did engage in internal actions which resulted in massive death, dislocation, and refugee generation. Silent at the time Saddam's men used toxic gas against civilian Kurds, the US waved the bloody shirt of human rights violations nearly two decades later. ("Well," the administration might have said, "better late than never.")

The question of when--if ever--external actors have a "right" or a "responsibility" to intervene at bayonet point to "protect" civilian populations from harm at the hands of their own government or from non-governmental bodies not inhibited by the government is neither easy to parse nor simple to judge. This is the point behind the recent objections to "R2P" raised by General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto and others including the renowned left-leaning American linguistic and general purpose critic, Noam Chomsky.

D'Escoto circulated a "Concept Note" in which he characterised the "R2P" idea as just one more form of neocolonialism. He has been joined in this position by Dr Chomsky who (correctly) pointed out that "R2P" has been used by Western advanced nations to impose their vision on countries in the non-Western world.

There is an uncomfortable degree of truth in these arguments, much as the Geek personally dislikes finding himself in agreement with d'Escoto, let alone Chomsky. The Great Powers have the influence, resources, and agendas necessary to support interventions under an appropriate color. The most appropriate cover in today's Era of Sensitivity is the protection of one or another of the numerous "lesser breeds without the law" (in Kipling's phrase.) "R2P" is in keeping with a long standing American tradition of couching armed interventions in lofty, humanitarian terms such as Wilson's famed idea of "teaching Mexicans to elect good men."

Another, less publicised danger of using "R2P" as a justification for military operations is the potential for frankly cynical abuse. Russia draped "R2P" over its tanks and jets during the incursion and occupation of disputed territory then under Georgian sovereignty. The Kremlin claimed with a straight face and in the most solemn terms that their army was simply protecting the human rights of the locals faced with genocide at the hands of the aggressive Georgian government.

The Chinese have made similar statements regarding their suppression of demonstrations in Tibet and Xianjiang. The army and police were simply protecting the human rights of the Han Chinese from abuse at the hands of ethnic minorities.

And, so it has gone. As it will continue to go. "Human rights" and the closely linked "R2P" will be exploited by governments to cover naked land grabs and regime maintenance actions.

At the same time governments will continue to be very, very cautious, reluctant really, to involve their forces in the vast majority of situations which might fall legitimately under the rubric, "R2P." That overarching reality is in high evidence today.

Somalia is and has been for years the very definition of human depravity and consequent misery. Ban Ki-moon has once more called upon the "international community" for "armed support" for the tottering artifact created by the same international community, the Transitional Federal Government. The African Union peace keeping force is so undermanned, so poorly equipped, and so lacking in motivation that its troops can barely protect their own base, let alone the TFG.

The members of the African Union show little stomach for further involvement in the Somali cesspit. There are very real reasons given for this. Lack of money. Deficient logistics. No transport. There are also other, equally valid and more compelling unstated reasons.

Chief among these silent justifications is this: What is in it for us? What national interest is served by seeing our troops killed in Somalia?

Abstracts are very poor reasons for getting killed. And, let's be honest about it. Human rights is an abstract. Each and every point referenced in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is itself an abstract. They are the creations of a particular historical and philosophical tradition--Western Christianity and its precursors in Greece and Ancient Israel.

They are not real, organic, and emotive concepts in other traditions. They are not good reasons for a government, particularly one faced by its own problems at home to send off men to kill and die. Not even when the blood filled cesspit is right next door and the refugees are flooding your country.

Kenya is a major non-participant in Somalia. Similarly South Africa set back and watched Mugabe's thugs create a swamp of violence, death, poverty, and disease in Zimbabwe. The governments of these nations were not blind to what was happening. Nor were they morally indifferent.

There was simply no compelling national interest at stake. Lacking that, there was no justification for bearing the expenses in lives, treasure, and potential internal complications exercising some sort of abstract "R2P."

The weight of both history and practical realities is against "R2P." This may bother the high minded such as our UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, and the assorted capos of the UN. It may bother the editors of the NYT as the tone of their coverage makes clear.

But, it is a fact. A brute ground truth.

We the People may like to forget or overlook this truth. Just as we like to overlook the reality that when faced by a man with a gun we, each and every one of us, has the "human right" of life only if we can shoot faster and straighter than the other guy.