The Lesson the U.S. Is Teaching the World in Libya

[phantom power]

Apparently I'm not the only one who has been thinking this.

In all the discussion about the current U.S. bombing of Libya, something important has gone almost unnoticed—the lesson the United States is teaching the government of every country on earth. That lesson is: no matter what, no matter the inducements or pressure, never ever give up chemical weapons or a nuclear weapons program. Doing so will not ensure that the U.S. does not attack you—on the contrary, it will make it much more likely.

The U.S. already delivered this lesson very powerfully in 2003 by attacking Iraq, a country which had no biological or chemical weapons or nuclear weapons program after 1991, twelve years earlier. Moreover, according to the CIA's 2004 WMD report, Saddam Hussein had begged the Clinton administration for better relations, promising that it would be Washington’s “best friend in the region bar none.” In fact, Iraq said that if it had a security relationship with the U.S., it would be inclined to permanently discard even the ambition for WMD.

In Libya's case, Moammar Gaddafi announced in December, 2003 that it was renouncing all WMD—Libya possessed chemical weapons, ballistic missiles and a nuclear weapons program—and inviting international inspectors to certify its compliance. The U.S. declared that this "demonstrates that, in a world of strong nonproliferation norms, it is never too late to make the decision to become a fully compliant NPT state," and that Libya would be "amply rewarded." From the perspective of many governments, Libya is now receiving its reward, in the form of hundreds of Tomahawk missiles and the likely downfall of the regime that agreed to disarm.

Every government on earth has different factions with different views of the best strategy to deal with the world, factions that constantly battle each other for supremacy. Whether or not Iran has an active nuclear weapons program (it's still the official position of the U.S. intelligence community that it does not) we can be sure the Iranian faction that wants nuclear weapons has been tremendously strengthened by the attack on Libya. And the faction that believes Iran would be safer without nuclear weapons is much weaker, and in fact is probably being ridiculed for its embarrassing naiveté.

Something similar is going on inside the North Korean government. Anyone within the regime who's been pressing for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons is now in a much worse position.

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003470.html

[David__77]

1. That lesson was taught in 2003, and earlier.

If you want to defend your country's sovereignty, you better have the military means to make infringements against it too costly to fathom. That just makes sense.

[Iterate]

2. Teachers teach; nations enforce laws and exercise power.

That power can be of all sorts. It can be cynically self-interested, or the moral argument that is inherently entangled in any action can be that one that furthers peace and prosperity. And while I'm at it, aircraft don't sent messages, they fly; diplomats send messages.

Arab aspirations for independence and freedom and even democracy have been held in abeyance for at least 100 years, no need to go back much further. At every step they've been thwarted by some other nation's needs or fears, first for colonialism and colonial power struggles, then by WWII (which was effectively ten years, not four), then the cold war (when Gaddafi came to power as a Soviet ally), then by the war on terror (which he also signed up for), for oil consumption and the expansion of consumerism (burn your car), for the neocon inspired struggle with Iran, and...have I left out a dozen others?

Now, what I think you're saying, or at least the OP is saying, is that Arab aspirations (and lives and safety) should be parked for another generation because it might make the situation in North Korea worse.

There's another interpretation that goes like this: big parts of the world have realized through painful experience that it's not ok to commit genocide, or mass murder, or to shell your cities, or maybe even to use tanks to blow unarmed protesters in half. A radical idea, that one. Very radical. Unlike twitter, radical ideas like that take a long, long time to circle the globe, generations even. During that time, they don't spread evenly, or even fairly. Not everyone gets the same message at once. Not everyone learns at the same pace.

And sometimes people are just plain afraid of the radical new idea, and especially those who have benefited by all the old ones, like the ones cited in the article.

[phantom power]

3. That isn't exactly what the OP is saying...

What the OP is saying (and me too, I suppose) is that currently (through our actions: which countries we have shown ourselves willing to attack/invade), we are demonstrating that we are not willing to invade nations who have joined the nuclear-power club. The OP is also including other kinds of wmd in that, although I think that is less clear.

[Iterate]

8. It's an old, old neocon argument with some mass appeal.

Old enough anyway for the writer to quote Rumsfeld in 2001, and it's been used to justify repression or repressive regimes across the globe. They are using it now, and have been for some time, to justify a war with Iran, and in turn, to help justify support for repressive regimes in nations like Bahrain and Yemen.

On the face of it there's a beguiling logic, but in truth there are dozens of reasons the UN or no single nation intervenes in any given situation, even under the most urgent or moral circumstances; sometimes those reasons are profound, sometimes shockingly mundane. What they've done is to pick the one issue, WMD, as a fear-based tripwire with everyman appeal, because, well, that's what I would do, load up on guns and bombs and dare someone to come in the front door.

Truth is though, as you know, it's easy to assemble a WMD, but hardly trivial to enrich uranium or produce plutonium. It's expensive and makes you a target. Same with other kinds of WMD. On and on. Why do that when you can see, or use, any of the other many reasons for non-intervention already in place?

There's one strange thing that everyone in this huge drama, from the MIC, to Arab despots and monarchs, to AQ, Israel, Iran, Blackwater/Halliburton, neocons, Gaddafi, down to the local radical clerics, you name it, one thing they all share in common is the conflict itself. If the game ends, they all loose power, all of them, and most will have no further reason for being. It's become its own industry.

You and I and the Arab in Tripoli, on the other hand, loose more every day that it's played. They need the fear to keep the game going, and they need to keep Arab people repressed and divided and angry.

[pampango]

9. It is true that the military power of a country is a factor that the UN must consider

in evaluating whether it can realistically intervene pursuant to its responsibility to protect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_to_protect

"Threshold for military interventions

According to the International Commission for Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) Report in 2001, any form of a military intervention initiated under the premise of responsibility to protect must fulfill the following six criteria in order to be justified as an extraordinary measure of intervention:

Just Cause
Right Intention
Final Resort
Legitimate Authority
Proportional Means
Reasonable Prospect

The stronger the military power of the offending country (a place like North Korea has tremendous military power), the less likely there is a "reasonable prospect" of success for a UN intervention to protect civilians. One could argue that these six criteria make an otherwise "idealistic" principle (of valuing people over national sovereignty) a more "realistic" one by acknowledging that it cannot be done in all situations. One could also argue that, if R2P cannot be invoked in every situation in which civilians need protecting from their governments, then it is not fair and is a bad policy.

[seabeyond]

4. i thought it was the lesson world teaching u.s. regardless of it being un and other countries

voting and participating, it is ALL about the u.s.

[OwnedByFerrets]

5. Very astute observations

[DCKit]

6. In short: "Be the Poison Pill the U.S. Doesn't Want to Swallow" nt

[Distant Observer]

7. Unfortunately, many bad lessons being taught both to countries and to rebel factions