Amidst the many uncertainties about Libya's future
post-Qaddafi, at least two things can be said. First, the Middle East and the
world will be better off with the Qaddafi regime out of power. And second,
virtually everyone was wrong in some way and at some point about the Libya
operation. This includes the early naysayers who warned that Qaddafi would not
be defeated, or that the war would result in a stalemate and divided Libya, or
would be a folly of prohibitive costs. Yet also wrong were President Barack Obama's
promises that the war would take "weeks, not months," or that it was merely a
limited humanitarian intervention to protect civilians and not a regime change
operation, or that it was not even a "war" at all.
Part of the problem besetting the early Libya debates, as I
wrote earlier in this article
for the German Marshall Fund, came from a
facile use of history in which various analogies -- whether Rwanda and Bosnia,
or Iraq and Somalia -- were wielded as polemics in dire warnings that Libya
would be the "next [fill in the blank]." In fact, Libya was none of those, but
rather its own unique circumstance that soon enough will become an analogy of
its own for future foreign policy debates.
This in turn points to the problem with some of the early,
breathless pronouncements in the wake of Qaddafi's defeat that Libya amounts to
a "new way to wage war" or a vindication of "leading from behind." As my Foreign
Policy colleagues such as Dan
Drezner, Peter
Feaver, and Kori
Schake have pointed out from various angles, this amounts to sound-bite
triumphalism and overlooks the unique aspects of the Libya operation as well
the remaining hard tasks.
The Obama administration still deserves commendation for the
role it played in helping topple Qaddafi. Even if dilatory, President Obama
made the right call in deciding to intervene, and his team showed fortitude in
seeing the operation through to the Qaddafi regime's demise, while managing the
complexities of coalition warfare. The administration knows well the challenges
that lie ahead in finishing the war, winning the peace, and helping reconstruct
a stable and free Libya.
Three challenges in particular stand out:
1. NATO's
inadequacies. While the operation eventually succeeded, it does not speak
well of NATO's political and operational health. NATO's largest member state
not named "America" (Germany), didn't even participate, and the leading members
who did -- France and Britain -- found themselves exhausting their munitions
and stretching their militaries thin in trying to topple a two-bit North
African dictator whose own people were in open revolt. All while announcing
even further reductions in their defense budgets. As former U.S. Ambassador to
NATO Kurt Volker points out,
the operation should prompt hard introspection more than champagne toasts at
NATO headquarters.
2. Post-conflict
reconstruction. Countless gallons of pundit ink have already been spilled
recounting the "lessons" of recent and ongoing episodes such as Iraq and
Afghanistan for post-conflict reconstruction. No doubt the Obama administration
has taken these into account, and one silver lining to the prolonged Libya
conflict may have been the additional time to do post-conflict planning, which
I trust the administration has availed itself of. More interesting is the
larger strategic question, which is: Does the United States have a national
interest in helping build a stable, peaceful, and free Libya? As my Strauss Center colleague Jeremi Suri
describes in his excellent new
book on the history of American nation-building interventions, the United
States has long been committed to maintaining an international system comprised
of functioning nation-states. The competence and consequences of our various
interventions form a mixed record, but the fact remains that promoting a stable
international order of nation-states is a core American interest. Libya offers
an opportunity to put the lessons of past efforts into practice.
3. A new regional
strategy. Libya's significance lies not only in the removal of a vile
dictator and the prospects of a better future for the Libyan people, but also
for its regional ramifications, especially the uncertain trajectory of the Arab
Spring. A Qaddafi victory would almost certainly have forestalled the Arab Spring;
whether a post-Qaddafi Libya heralds enduring region-wide consequences is
hopeful but not foreordained. And as I have written previously,
the administration still faces challenging questions in its efforts to develop
a new American strategy for the region. Such as: What type of regional order
will best constrain Iran's hegemonic intentions? How can a free Syria be
created, and play a positive regional role? What place will the
strategic-yet-neglected Iraq have in the emerging Middle East? How can Saudi
Arabia be encouraged to reform while remaining a key American partner? How can
the regional tumult induce Turkey to re-align itself with American interests? Will
the emerging assertiveness by Gulf states such as Qatar and UAE be channeled in
positive directions?
The Arab Spring further hastened the erosion of the old
regional order; it will take shrewd, principled, and creative diplomacy to help
craft a new one.
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