The Arab Spring: Libya and Syria

Libya and Syria have become the poster children for the varied impacts that the so-called Arab Spring have had on the Islamic Middle East. They are not the most important countries to have undergone changes (Egypt, the outcome of whose upheaval remains a work in progress, can claim that distinction), but they do represent the most polar outcomes that the popular uprisings have produced to date. In Libya, the rebels–with the generous and probably critical assistance of Western militaries–have succeeded in dislodging long-time ruler Muammar Gaddafi, whose whereabouts remain a mystery of the Carmen San Diego variety at this point. In Syria, the regime of Bashar al-Assad remains in power in the face of worldwide condemnation but little effective action, and seems likely to remain so for the foreseaable future.

The countries and their situations are a study in similarities and contrasts. Both are, of course, majority Sunni countries (as are most Muslim states), both have a diverse population that is tied together by common religion, both have long-standing traditions since achieving statehood of authoritarian rule in which the military has played a prominent role, and both have ties (admittedly of different varieties) to international terrorism. On the face of it, Syria is in many ways the more important country by virtue of size (71,500 square miles of territory to Libya’s 43,000 square miles), population (22 million to 6.5 million) and strategic location: Syria has long borders with Iraq and Turkey and less lengthy borders with Lebanon, Jordan and Israel, whereas Libya borders six North African countries, the only one of which that has strategic significance being Egypt.

There is, of course, one very significant difference between the two which explains the highly differential way the international community has reacted to demands for political change in the two countries. That difference, of course, is that Libya has a large amount of very desirable petroleum, and Syria does not. The contrast is enormous. Using CIA World Factbook figures, Libya exports approximately 1.5 million barrels a day (15th largest in the world), while Syria exports 155,000 barrels a day, about one-tenth of the Libyan figure and 56th in the world. Known Libyan reserves stand at 47 billion barrels, comparecto 2.5 billion for the Syrians. Moreover, Libyan oil is relatively cheap to extract and is particularly “sweet” (low-sulfur content), a particularly important factor for Europeans who have geared their refineries to processing sweet crude and can only deal with other oil with considerably more difficulty and expense.

Oil production has driven the economies of the two countries in opposite directions. Libyan GDP per capita, for instance, is about $14,800 (84th in the world), and while it is distributed in an unequitable manner of which the Tea Party would be proud and Ayn Rand disciples envious, it is considerably higher than in Syria, with a per capita GDP of $4,800, 151st the in the world. Prior to the revolution, Libya was a classic “petrolist” state (to borrow Thomas L. Friedman’s term), where huge oil revenues (95 percent of export earnings, 80 percent of government revenues) were used to buy off the population and blunt its democratic urges. Petrolist success took a hit with the success of the revolution in Libya.

Libya has succeeded in throwing off its shackles for the moment, and Syria has not. The outcome in Libya is far from ordained, and could vary from a total democracy to the rise of a new dictator: prudence suggests somewhere in between, whatever that may mean. The al-Assads cling to power, and despite universal pleas for them to cease their repression and to step down, Bashar al-Assad shows no indication he will do either. Nobody wants to talk about his success in holding power, but it is not unlikely, at least in the short run.

The key element in Libyan success and Syrian failure is outside pressure. Put simply, it is highly unlikely that the Libyan rebels would have succeeded without the covering air power of NATO to suppress government forces (attacking them directly, preventing their forays against rebel units in the field intent on their destruction). These rebels, it must be remembered, were a pretty woebegone, rag-tag coalition when they began, and the early prognosis for them was not good until NATO airpower shifted the balance of power. There has, to put it mildly, been nothing like that in support of Syrian dissidents who are, as best one can piece together from media reports, been treated much more harshly than the Libyan government treated its citizenry. Why the difference?

The answers, of course, are pretty obvious. The first and overwhelmingly most important is that Libya has something the outside world wants (oil), and Syria does not. This makes Syria, despite its geography and demographics, much less important to the world–and specifically to the countries that can militarily interfere–than Libya. The fact that Libya is a short and undefended flight across the Mediterranean Sea from Libya and that effective assistance did not include putting boots on the ground (sand?) and thus creating the possibility of many casualties, added to the ease of making the decision to help Libya but not Syria. Any actions against Syria are likely to have to come from neighbors, who show neither the interest nor capability to tangle with the regime in Damascus. Human rights violations alone are simply not enough.

The other element has been that the coercive capacity of the Syrian government has proven more capable and resilient than that of Libya. On the face of it, the Libyans has the wherewithal to expunge the rebels but could not. Part of the reason was geographic (target cities were fairly far away), and traversing the terrain meant crossing open territory and being left vulnerable to NATO air power. Partly, however, the Libyans seemed less capable (ruthless, blood thirsty)than Syrian forces). For the time being, Syrian brutality has succeeded; it may not in the longer run, but for the moment, the Syrians have held the line.

None of this suggests how the revolutions in either country or the region will come out. There are simply too many variables, someforeseeable and others not, that could influence the ultimate outcomes. Roughly nine months after the Arab Spring erupted in Tunisia and spread through the region, however, the experiences in Libya and Syria do suggest the range of possible outcomes.

The “Three Amigos” Doctrine on Libya

Just when you thought the 2008 election was over, the “three amigos” from the losing side of the campaign–Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsay Graham (R-SC), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) have reappeared, this time astride the issue of assistance to the Libyan resistance. McCain, who got most of the publicity in 2008 as the GOP standard bearer, was out front this time as well, trooping through the streets of Banghazi, the informal capital of the rebellion,to the cheers and waving U.S. flags by the grateful population.

The message that the three friends and allies articulated was straightforward: the United States should do more to help the anti-Gadhafi forces overthrow the government and establish a new, anti-Gadhafi regime. All three stopped short of, and even renounced, the insertion of American ground forces into the fray, but they also clearly indicated that they believed the United States should assert itself decisively in the cause to overthrow the Gadhafi regime after 42 years in power.

Is this good advice? Do the three senators really have a valid point, and is it the kind of expression of US foreign policy that could guide future actions? Neither question is easy to answer, but one when tries, the wisdom of the suggestion becomes less and less obvious.

At one level, the MGL (McCain-Graham-Lieberman) advocacy is nothing more than the update of the Nixon Doctrine, which was basically an explanation of how and why the United States would treat communist attempts to break out of the containment line in the wake of the American withdrawal from Vietnam. In essence, it said the United States supported countries resisting communism and would come to their aid with things like material support and training, but that the insertion of American forces was off the table unless overwhelming American interests were involved (e.g. an action in Western Europe). We would, in other words, send money and equipment and even train indigenous personnel how to use it, but no American blood. The MGL formulation is similar, if one substitutes anti-dictatorial for anti-communist in the equation and adds the US Air Force (at least remotely controlled drones) to the list of tools the US might send to help the rebels. But is this such a good idea?

There is, of course, no shortage of anti-democratic thug regimes in the world, some of whom the United States has traditionally nurtured and supported and, in some instances, continues to help prop up (which may be part of the problem the MGL “solution” seeks to address). How does the United States choose among those it will help and those it will not? The existence of vital American interests that are damaged by the anti-democrats winning/retaining power would be such a criterion, but unequivocally vital US interests are hardly ever involved in these situations. Are they in Libya, whose major contribution to the world is sweet il necessary for Europe but not the US? Is it the openly friendly, pro-democratic (and hence praiseworthy) nature of the insurgents? Who exactly are the Libyan rebels? What do they want? Do they really like us? Nobody, including the MGL team, seems to hasve ready answers to these questions.

What seems more likely, and is certainly hinted at in interviews by the MGL team, is that these actions are necessary to relieve and reverse the inhumane actions of the Libyan government toward its people, a fate that has been made abundantly clear by official and samizdat reportage on the government’s use of force to crush the rebellion. The evidence is pretty clear that the Libyan government is using brutal force to crush its opponents, and seems ready to exact retribution against those who rose against it. Is this a good reason for the United States to involve itself in a decisive way that will obviate that result? Maybe, but….

The rejoinder is almost too simple and obvious to state. Civil uprisings, and especially those that seek to overthrow an existing government and throw out its leaders, are never looked upon or treated benignly by those attacked. Counter-insurgencies seek to crush insurgencies, just as insurgents seek to crush governments. These affairs always have and always will be very emotional, furtive, and thus violent. When one side is overwhelmingly more powerful than the other (e.g. the Syrian government and the protesters), the violence may be swift and one-sided. When the government is internally rotten and about ready to fall anyway (e.g. Egypt), neither side may need to resort to violence, making things neater.

But Libya is not like either of those examples. While the lethal balance clearly resides with the firepower-superior government (a balance MGL’s suggested actions are intended to alter in favor of the insrugents), there is considerable support for the rebels, and neither side has been able to overwhelm the other (although it is not clear how well the rebels would have fared had NATO not intervened from the air). In this case, the rebels have attacked government strongholds and the government has retaliated. Some otherwise innocent civilians have been caught in the crossfire and the government has retaliated against civilians it believes has supported its enemies.

The point is that there is nothing terribly unusual here. Regrettable perhaps, but not unusual. Civil wars, unless they are resolved very quickly one way or the other, are typically very bloody affairs with very high stakes for all involved. The Gadhafi government has without doubt violated the human rights of his population and engaged in crimes against humanity for which he should be held accountable. The problem is that such violations are by no means unusual in civil wars–they are, if anything, the norm and not the exception. If there is evidence that the Libyan government has acted in ways that are particularly and outrageously hideous (making Libya and exception), that evidence is not clear. To repeat, violent, atrocious action by one or both sides is not unusual in civil war.

If this is true, the MGL advocacy of tipping the balance in Libya away from the government amounts to a new policy criterion for the use of American military force–let’s call it the “Three Amigos Doctrine” (TAD). The core of that doctrine is that the United States disapproves of any civil war that breaks out anywhere in the world and should be prepared to come to the decisive aid of whoever is losing. How many TAD-ites are there among us?

Using American Force in the Middle East

As the uprisings of 2011 continue to roll across the Middle East, one inevitable question seems to center on whether, or in what cases, the United States should contemplate the use of American forces to intervene in the situation(s). Eqaully inevitably, there is widespread disagreement about answers along fairly predictable ideological lines.

Because so many of the country’s land forces either are tied down in or have been exhausted by a decade of fighting two wars in the region in Iraq and Afghanistan, nobody of note has openly advocated putting American “muddy boots” on the ground in any of these conflicts. This admirable show of restraint is not because the civil uprisings are much less important to the United States or the world (it is not difficult to argue that most of the countries experiencing violence are as important to the United States as Iraq in particular), but because either the force is not available or the calculation is that even the American public would support such action. Still, on one side exemplified by John McCain (who could, one is reminded with a shudder, could be president of the United States) hectoring General Carter Ham, the Pentagon’s front man in this situation, about whether imposing (with American air forces) a no-fly zone in Libya might have brought about a different result (a Qadhafi overthrow) than the current impasse. General Ham, who is a bright guy, to his credit refused to rise to the bait on this one, sardonically telling the Senator such determinations were not military and thus not part of his portfolio. (Personal note: General Ham was a student of mine at the US Air War College in  1996-97, and was then a very perceptive student of the utilities and limits of military power.) The political left equally predictably decries any use of force in the current situation, arguing either that these are civil wars (they are) where our interests are not clear (which they are not) and that it is not clear whether our intervention might help under any circumstances (equally true).

Even the suggestion that the United States might use force to affect the outcomes of these various uprisings is curious. For one thing, they are all internal, civil affairs, with autocratic governments under varying degrees of siege from suppressed populations who want the old leader out, replaced by some alternative they we (and they) cannot define. These are, in international legal terms, strictly speaking none of our business, and although we may oppose dictatorial rule in principle, it is not clear we support an as-yet undefiined alternative. Who, for instance, is the alternative in Egypt? Moreover, our past catches up with us: if dictatorial leaders either professed anti-communism, ant-terrorism or both, we have probably supported them, making changing horses embarassing. We did pull the plug on Mubarak,but can we do so with Saleh in Yemen, where we clearly have no clue about the dynamics or other consequences of various outcomes (other than fearing Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula–AQAP–might benefit). Thus, the question “force for what?” has to be asked.

Stephen Walt, in a posting in Foreign Policy (online) dates April 4, 2011, offers some insight into why these questions even arise. In the article, he lays out five reasons the United States employs force so much, and he comes up with five answers that help frame the application of force to the Middle East. First, Walt argues, we use force “because we can.” The U.S. has lots of sophisticated military capability (most of which no one else has), and it is pretty easily available. Second, “the U.S. has no serious enemies,” which has two implications. One is that we don’t need our forces to deter non-existent enemies, and the other is that there is nobody who can–or wants to–oppose us when we do. The third reason is the existence of the All-Volunteer Force (AVF). Its existence largely removes the restraint of public displeasure, since nobody is involuntarily forced to implement force decisions. The fourth, “It’s the Establishment, Stupid!” argues that our political establishment has become in essence “force-happy,” seeing military solutions as the answer to all our problems (the neo-conservatives are singled out as the leading evangels of this phenomenon). Fifth and finally, “Congress has checked out,” meaning the Congress no longer asserts its constitutional perogatives to approve or disapprove applications of force. Taken in combination, Walt argues, the result is a green light for the U.S. government to view almost everything as a military problem with military solutions. Why should the current situation in the Middle East be any different?

Well, there are three differences. One is that there is some evidence the American public is becoming war weary enough that appeals to force do not resonate so well today. I have not, for instance, seen any groundswell behind the McCain position on no-fly zones (admittedly, I never listen to or watch Fox “News”). Second, it is indeed not at all clear what American interests are in this situation or how U.S. military action would positively achieve achieving whatever goals we might have in the area. 

The third reason may be the most defining: the budget crisis. Any U.S. application of force in the current uprisings is going to be expensive at a time when there is great pressure to bring down government spending. The Tea Partiers exclude (hpyocritically, in my view) defense spending in budget cuts to bring down deficits, but any serious advocacy of added defense spending to support military adventurism in the Middle East at a time when other budget oxen are being gored is probably politically unsupportable. Moreover, as Papa and Baby Paul would quickly point out in their libertarian way, overseas military activities are not exactly how one shrinks government. It thus may be that an unlikely coalition of the right and left, starting from opposite motivations, may come together to torpedo any dreams/nightmares that are entertained about inserting American force into the uprisings of 2011.

Hyper-Partisanship, Non-Consensus, and Libya

President Obama has received a great deal of criticism over the past several weeks about how his administration has handled the American reaction to the revolution in Libya. This criticism has covered the gamut of possible actions and solutions. George Bush-like, some have lambasted him for timidity, suggesting that the United States come much more forcefully to the aid of Libyan rebels in the form of a no-fly zone or more; John McCain and Joe Lieberman respresent this strand of opinion; at the other end of the GOP spectrum, Richard Lugar of Indiana has broken with Obama for getting at all involved. Within his own party, most of the criticism has come from the left, which wants no US involvement militarily in Libya (or Afghanistan or Iraq, one might add). At the same time, a few remind Obama about a potential Rwanda-style humanitarian disaster (an analogy almost certainly overblown) unless the United States does something about Colonel Qadhafi.

The merits of the situation are at best murky, thereby allowing advocacy of a broad range of options without any danger of bumping too closely into the facts. Two things, however, seem clear to me at this point. One is that the loose coalition of anti-Qadhafi factions cannot possibly win (i.e. overthrow Qadhafi) without outside assistance; indeed, it is not at all certain that this “revolution” can persist without outsiders suppressing the government’s attempts to destroy them, as events showed last week. The balance of power is not on the rebels’ side. Qadhafi has the guns, and the absence of meaningful uprisings in the western part of the country (notably Tripoli) indicates either that the rebellion lacks comprehensive support or that pro-government supporters are capable of suppressing the rebels. In either case, it looks like the only way the rebellion can succeed is with a great deal of outside help–something like a massive intervention against the Libyan government. Such an action is problematical in principle (these things often do not work at all, and even when they do, the outcomes are rarely what one hoped they might be). No one seems to be advocating such an intervention, but the logic dictates that eventually it will have to be contemplated when stalemate proves not to be enough.

That leads to the second clear point: we still do not have a good handle on who exactly the rebels are. Certainly the foot soldiers are non-radical citizens who are simply sick of Qadhafi and want to see him gone. Most outsiders share that sentiment,which is why there is more support for active moves than there might otherwise be. But is that all the leadership wants? What do we know about these people–who are they? where do they come from? what is their politics? It is becoming clear that there is no single leadership cadre; that instead there are alternative aspirants to post-Qadhafi leadership. Before one becomes too involved in replacing one leadership with another, it is always nice to know what the replacement will be like. Do we know this? For that matter, do the Libyans themselves know this?

If my assessment is at all sanguine, the situation on the ground in Libya would seem to counsel a slow, measured approach to involvement on the ground, which is pretty much what the White House is pursuing. Yet, the hounds continue to bay. Why?

Let me suggest two reasons that are stated in the title of this post. The first is the hyper-partisanship that has infected all American politics and, increasingly American foreign policy. The basic dynamic is that all aspects of political life are now framed in increasingly strident ideological language, mostly along partisan party lines, and politics has become a zero-sum game in which one side succeeds at the other side’s expense. Democrats blame Republicans for everything that happens and everything the GOP does in response, and vice versa. As this phenomenon has become more pervasive, its effect has been to paralyze (or “gridlock”) the political system: the battle over keeping the government going is the most obvious example. In times past, foreign policy was exempt from much of this sniping (“politics ends at the water’s edge”). It no longer is, unfortunately. (This theme is developed more fully in a book Pat Haney and I are co-authoring, American Foreign Policy in a New Era, due out in January 2012).

The other problem is a lack of consensus on guiding first principles that inform foreign policy. If one side or another was communist (the Cold War), the response would be easy. Immediately after 9/11, the charge that one side was composed of terrorists would also serve as an activator. Col. Qadhafi has tried that one, accusing the opposition of being Al Qaeda dupes, but it has not worked. Anti-terrorism is still a theme of American policy, but it is not longer a supreme first principle. In the current situation, we have no real guiding grand strategy, and so part of our bickering reflects a disagreement on what should activate the United States in a place like Libya that is based on first premises on which there is no depth of agreement.

This leaves the president tip-toeing through a minefield, where any step he takes will set off another explosion. His response, it seems to me, has been to activate what used to be revered as a highly desirable leadership trait: pragmatism (the approach of dealing with problems on their individual merits rather than in conformance with some pre-existing ideological framework). That approach is not much in vogue today, attacked from both sides as being unprincipled–wishy-washy in Charlier Brown language. Yet, pragmatism in this situation probably argues for caution before we know the answers to the kinds of questions raised above, and it is hard for me to understand how anyone could disagree about that. But then, someone will probably disagree about when we can disagree as well.

The Search for Middle Eastern Analogies

The pace of events starting a short two months ago and now lapping at the gates of Damascus has left us all breathless and even sppechless as we try to comprehend what had happened, what it means, and what it may bode for the future. One of the endeavors that inevitably follows from our intellectual disarray is the search for analogies: is what is going on in the Middle East enough like something that has happened in the past that we can draw comparisons with that past that will help us predict and possibly affect wherever these events are leading?

If such an analogy exists in any helpful way (i.e. is close enough to contemporary happenings truly to be instructive), no one has yet found it. The unfolding scene bears some resemblance to what happened two decades ago in Eastern Europe, but it is also different–different people from different cultures, the nature of who and how their oppressions had been imposed, etc. Unless one can draw an analogy with some obscure bit of Middle Eastern history (which I am certainly incapable of doing), we seem stuck. The uncomfortable result is that we do not know exactly what to do, and possibly more importantly, what the impact of whatever it is we do is on the outcome, for good or for bad. It is this uncertainty that has made our responses seem so hesitant and tentative; critics who cry for more decisive responses are either clairvoyant about the future (insights they fail to share with us) or demagogical (here’s another way to attack Obama,so let’s go for it!).

Let me suggest that our difficulty in deciding what to do is the result of at least five questions, the answers to which we either do not know or which we fear. Stating and looking at them will not solve the dilemma of policy understanding; but it may clarify the parameters of the discussion.

1. Who are these people? What has been common to all the uprisings is that they have apparently populist roots: people gather in the streets, the demonstrations grow when not suppressed, the government finally reacts with violence that fans the flames rather than dousing them, and at some point, either the government caves in or the guns come out. In either case, the question of leadership of the insurgents has been a mystery. Clearly, there are organizers, at a minimum people who view on the social media what has happened in neighboring countries and say, “Why not us?” The problem is that we (the U.S. and the West generally) apparently do not possess very much helpful information about who the leaders that could answer subsequent questions.

2. Where do they come from? Large parts of the Middle East are, of course, artificial states with competing ethnic and/or religious groups, but is it disenfranchised of oppressed minorities that are behind the uprisings? As best one can tell in places like Egypt or even Libya (an artificial state but one without notable ethnic rivarlies), the situation appear not to have these characteristics. Syria, on the other hand, does have these cleavages, and it would actually be  to understand what is going in if such motivations are at play.

3. What are they there for? The universal chorus coming from the various uprisings is a call for “freedom,” but what does that mean? At the most obvious level, it means freedom from whatever authoritarian ruler at whom they have directed their ire, but that does not tell one enough about what they are FOR, only what they are against. All the movements say they want democracy, but given the scant background the region has with democratic principles, is that window dressing, or something more profound? One answer may be that they are sincere in their desires but have given very little thought to their operational meaning. In other words, they have and continue to spend a lot more energy on how to overthrow the old regime than about what to do after they succeed. If they don’t know, how are we to know, or even guess intelligently?

4. What are we doing? The outside reaction has moved slowly. It began with cheerleading from the sidelines, which worked fine (at least so far) in Egypt and Tunisia, but that has clearly not been enough in places where the government has resisted, especially violently. The most extreme reaction, of course, surrounds the UN-sanctioned military effort that, at least according to reports today (Sunday) seem to be having some impact on the fighting on the ground in favor of the insurgents. The UN mandate, of course, does not extend to influencing internal politics, only to guarnateeing humanitarian rights. Once one goes beyond that, as the UN did to its chagrin aover a half-century ago in the then Belgian Congo, and the results paralyzed UN responses to these kinds of crises as a result. Do we (the West, the UN, the U.S.) really want to get back into George Bush’s “regime changing” policy mode, albeit under the cover of international action?

5. Will the outcome of these processes be an improvement, either for the countries involved or the rest of us? This is really the $64 question, and its answer would clearly help resolve our response dilemma. Unfortunately, the answer also lies in the answers to the first four questions, and we don’t know these. Also, we lack an appropriate analogy to wrap around and help guide us. So we are left with simply listing the possibilities and hoping a good one is correct.

I will not attempt to suggest all the possibilities or which may apply to individual countries (and one of the probably safe assumptions is that the outcomes will differ by country). The most optimistic outcome is for pro-Western, pro-American democratic regimes to emerge or evolve. The insurgents, by and large, express democratic desires but are a little more circumspect about us. The most unfavorable outcomes involve the emergence of new, replacement autocracies that are even more objectionable than those they replace. Imagine, for instance, a Qadhafi who is also an extreme, fundamentalist Islamist. Nobody talks that way in the region, but anything is possible. In between are a whole range of options that are more or less deomcratic and more or less anti-western. The permutations afre seemingly endless.

Since we do not know what the answers to these questions, and especially the last one, will be, we watch what is infolding with fascination but a sense of unease. If it is true that one should generally look before one leaps and that leaping in this case means knowing what one is leaping into and what the effect will be, caution would seem to be the better part of valor. Unless, of course, one has a really good analogy we can work with.