Hillary Right To Want Out

After weeks of dithering, waffling and cloaking oneself in silence, the Obama White House has finally decided to speak out forcefully against the brutalities inflicted on Libya by its ruler, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi. But why to do so at this late stage is a pertinent question. After media attention shifted to the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, Col. Gadaffi has used the global blind spot he found himself in to effectively snuff out the already flickering candle of rebellion in the North African state. The rebels have been pushed back to their last stronghold of Benghazi and if the boasts are true, tomorrow will see their defeat in that city.

With the collapse of the rebellion imminent, the imposition of a no-fly to support it is like the umpire climbing into the ring after one of the boxers is already knock-out on the floor. David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy have been calling for international intervention for weeks now, but Barack Obama refused to support them. He even went so far as to send out his Secretary of Defence Robert Gates to rebuff publicly those clamouring for a no-fly zone, while fully aware of the fact that without the US intervention would be impossible. Yet inexplicably the US now wants a no-fly zone.

Until now, the members of the US Cabinet had kept the ranks closed, standing behind their President as is their duty. But in any organisation divisions will exist and this is true for the White House. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, perhaps the most high-profile politician in the US besides President Obama, now appears to have had enough with the constant policy changes:

Fed up with a president “who can’t make his mind up” as Libyan rebels are on the brink of defeat, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is looking to the exits. ...
Clinton is said to be especially peeved with the president’s waffling over how to encourage the kinds of Arab uprisings that have recently toppled regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, and in particular his refusal to back a no-fly zone over Libya.

I have not made a secret of my oppostion to intervention, but I should have mentioned that it is not the worst option. The worst option is not to make a decision, exactly what Mr. Obama has been doing - or not doing. Crises thrive on indecision, especially if that is the course of the mighty. The minnows cannot act and the wicked walk away with the prize. Foreign diplomats think in this manner:

The tension has even spilled over into her dealings with European diplomats, with whom she met early this week. When French president Nicolas Sarkozy urged her to press the White House to take more aggressive action in Libya, Clinton repeatedly replied only, “There are difficulties,” according to Foreign Policy magazine.“Frankly we are just completely puzzled,” one of the diplomats told Foreign Policy magazine. “We are wondering if this is a priority for the United States.”Or as the insider described Obama’s foreign policy shop: “It’s amateur night.”

So Ms. Clinton, a proud and - still - ambitious politician, can no longer abide the lack of courage amongst the inhabitants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And she's right to think about leaving them to their own mess. In the back of her mind, is she still pondering taking over the top job at some point? We can only wonder.

No-fly Zone is Intervening

Over the last few weeks, as the crisis in Libya is fast taking on the visages of civil war, the international community - or to be more precise, the Western World - has been considering how to respond. Sanctions have already been imposed, refugees aided and the forces of stern rethoric deployed. Yet, as Colonel Gaddafi has no intention of leaving his bedouin tent any time soon, the debates are centering on whether to intervene militarily. In an earlier post, I dismissed the possibility and beneficial results of foreign military action, but Western leaders - whether from the UK, US or EU - do not share my negative outlook on the principle. What we do share are doubts about the problems of actually intervening in practice, if only because the UN Security Council is unlikely to sanction such a move.

What seems most likely, at the moment, and if any military operation is to take place at all, is for the UN to give the green light to the imposition of a no-fly zone in Libya to prevent Col. Gaddafi ordering his air force to bombard civilians. This option was muted by David Cameron some weeks ago and then quietly withdrawn as the US would not support the suggestion, saying that for it to be successful, a no-fly zone would have to be supported by ground forces. But now Dr. Liam Fox, the British defence secretary has again voiced British proposals, saying

rather than "taking out" air defences in a pre-emptive strike, Nato leaders could say that, if an enemy locked its air defence radar on Nato planes, they could "regard that as a hostile action and take subsequent action".
He added: "That's one military option but there are other military options that we have used."

Dr. Fox seems to suggest that a no-fly zone would be an action short of military intervention. If this is indeed what he is saying than he appears to be living in a fantasy world - harsh terms, I know, but appropriate - where a man as clearly deranged as Muammar Gaddafi will not provoke the forces enforcing the zone by ordering his own planes into the air, or will desist from placing his anti-air batteries in civilian-populated areas. In the event of the former, enforcing planes would have to engage Libyan aircraft, as clear a military action as any in my book. In the event of the latter scenario, taking out those batteries would without the slightest doubt result in civilian casualties, giving Col. Gaddafi a much needed excuse to excoriate the West. To prevent atrocious numbers of casualties would require ground forces to coordinate airstrikes.

So a no-fly zone is an intervention by its very nature and we should not go down that path, as even Dr. Fox agrees. A civil war is a matter of internal sovereignty and until it spills over into other countries or affects British citizens, Britain has no right to intervene. Col. Gaddafi recognises this and it is indicative that when a BBC team was detained in Libya, the only one of the three reporters who was not physically assaulted was the one British citizen, as this would have given Britain an excuse to press for intervention.

One other way to gain the right to intervene is to take the step France took today to recognise the rebels as the legitimate government of Libya. This would give the rebels the sovereign power to ask for foreign military assistance.