It takes a village to support a military intervention

By M.S.

EVERYBODY'S uncertain over the military intervention in Libya, including myself, but as Jonathan Chait says, a lot of people are uncertain for the wrong reasons. As Mr Chait sums it up, the argument is basically that we shouldn't intervene in Libya because we're not intervening in lots of other places where worse things are happening. He points to Andrew Sullivan, who says "we have done nothing in Burma or the Congo and are actively supporting governments in Yemen and Bahrain that are doing almost exactly—if less noisily—what Qaddafi is doing," and to Ezra Klein, who says "Every year, one million people die from malaria. About three million children die, either directly or indirectly, due to hunger. There is much we could due to help the world if we were willing. The question that needs to be asked is: Why this?" (Jeffrey Goldberg has the weakest version of the argument: "I've been wondering just exactly why armed intervention in Libya is so urgently sought by the West, and why armed intervention in other places that are suffering from similar man-made disasters (Yemen, the Ivory Coast, and the big enchilada, Iran, to name three) is not." Perhaps because Iran is 10 times the size of Libya and the government seems to command the fervent support of about half the population?) Mr Chait's response is that "the Libya question is only about Libya":

Should we also spend more money to prevent malaria? Yes, we should. But I see zero reason to believe that not intervening in Libya would lead to an increase in in American assistance to prevent malaria. Why not intervene in Burma or Yemen or elsewhere? I would say the answer is prudential: for various political, geographic, and military reasons, the United States has the chance to prevent slaughter in Libya at reasonable cost, and does not have the chance to do so in Burma.

Mr Chait has a very strong argument here, and in fact it's stronger than he makes it sound. He should have gone into specifics on those political and geographic reasons, or rather, into one big specific: the Arab League's support for Euro-American intervention in Libya. As Hillary Clinton said last week, Arab League support for a no-fly zone changed the diplomatic landscape, soothing Western qualms about outside intervention in yet another Arab country and quieting Chinese and Russian objections to violations of sovereignty. But this really isn't just about a diplomatic shift making it easier to get a resolution through the UN Security Council. The regional context is the single most important factor differentiating successful from unsuccessful military interventions. The US-led coalition effort to reconquer Kuwait from Iraq in 1991 was successful, and led to the re-establishment of a stable Kuwaiti state, because it was supported by the Gulf states and the major Arab countries, and not opposed by Iran. The NATO and UN interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo were hardly shining triumphs, but they basically stabilised the Balkans and arguably triggered Serbia's transition to democracy, mainly because the former Yugoslavia is in Europe, and the overwhelming political dynamic for Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo and Macedonia is the relationship with the EU and NATO.

In contrast, interventions in Somalia, Afghanistan and (the second time around) Iraq have been crippled by unfriendly regional environments. Euro-American objectives in Afghanistan cannot be accomplished without Pakistan. Euro-American objectives in Iraq cannot be accomplished without Iran. Western countries cannot simply parachute into these parts of the world and reshape the political landscape. Things are different in Libya in great measure because Egypt, Tunisia and their Arab League fellows don't want to see Muammar Qaddafi win; they've never much liked the guy, even before the revolt, and they don't want to have an unstable, post-civil-war pariah state in North Africa. Their unwillingness to supply any meaningful military support to the intervention is a problem, and it's not clear how deep their commitment runs. But the fact that they're spontaneously committing to the intervention, that the regional attitude is friendly towards a popular revolt to overthrow Mr Qaddafi and towards UN-approved intervention to protect that revolt, makes a huge difference. That doesn't mean that the intervention in Libya will be a success, but it helps a lot.