Steadily, NATO and the US are digging themselves into a hole in Libya. Six months into the war, victory is far from sight and the anti-Gaddafi fighters recently recognized by Washington as Libya’s legitimate regime are fracturing by the week.
The only quick end would be an Osama bin Laden-style assassination of Gaddafi but that it unlikely any time soon. Of course, the US could do the deed quite easily but Russia and China would immediately break off all cooperation. That would be betrayal but is quite attractive to Moscow and Beijing because they quietly welcome continued discomfiture for the US, Britain, France and NATO in Libya’s labyrinth.
Russian leaders are far less scheming than the Chinese and unlike Beijing do abhor the killings and human rights violations by Gaddafi. But seeing the US and its key Western allies sinking into a quicksand that will weaken their ability to pontificate to Russia about its shortcomings does bring covert gladness to hearts in Moscow. More usefully, it ties down American ability to rebuild its leadership in global affairs weakened during the Bush era.
Since he took office, President Barack Obama’s policy, or the Obama doctrine, has been to expand US involvement outside traditional European zones of influence. He is reasserting US influence in the Far East and Central Asia, in addition to the Middle East. Among other things, he wants to prevent any miscalculation by Russia, Iran and China in particular as they try to expand their own influence in rivalry with Washington.
The rivals should not think the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya are distracting Washington so greatly that there are regional power vacuums In Asia and Africa they can slip into at low cost. Above all, they should not try to damage US interests as they promote their own.
Obama’s focus beyond Europe has caused some consternation in Paris, Berlin and London, which feel neglected. France’s leadership in getting Britain, the US and NATO involved in Libya was partly motivated by a need to show Washington that Europeans are still warriors and do count. But Nicholas Sarkozy was also making a point. He was making clear that the clarion Europeans follow is the one of protecting human rights rather than installing democracy or protecting oil sources as in Iraq or exacting justice for 9/11, as in Afghanistan.
This difference could become the hole into which everybody slides. It turns out that protecting human rights through war is not that easy. Simply denying airspace to the tyrant or imposing limited diplomatic or economic sanctions does not protect his victims. His military must also be broken or he must be deposed. Worse, the protectors of human rights end up killing innocent civilians inadvertently or as collateral damage. Bombs, however smart, do not know the difference between those who torture and those who are tortured. They kill whoever is in the target zone, including people they are supposed to protect.
The French and British knew Libya well, from the start. They knew it is a tribal society where just causes mean almost nothing compared with tribal allegiance and blood vengeance. Yet they went in guns blaring. Now, as the tribes split along traditional lines to protect territorial slices that have been theirs for centuries, the US is supplying offensive weapons to the ones that hate Gaddafi and his ilk.
But most of those weapons are in the hands of people with little or no training. They are overwhelmed by modern warfare, where valor counts for much less than cold-hearted groundwork and ruse. Their leaders’ agenda is to reassert their tribal power rather than creating a modern nation. Those leaders send brave hotheads to do the shooting. However, when enemies are out of range, the protégés swagger in their own cities and villages like tin pot warlords. There is just a short step to chaotic bluster and human rights violations by them.
France, Britain and the US have sent advisors to train commanders for the amateur soldiers battling Gaddafi’s loyal and proficient killers. But not much has worked as they wished, as yet. The war is dragging into one of attrition in a de-facto partitioned land. The only quick end would be to kill Gaddafi himself because in all tribal conflicts, the fighting stops when the focus of fealty is no longer.
Russia and China know this. But they will not wink at the necessary exaggeration of the UN Security Council resolution that authorized the Libyan intervention to prevent only massacres of civilians by Gaddafi. Why should they, when the blood and treasure of the Western powers they perceive as impediments to their own rise are being squandered at no cost to them in a land of little geopolitical consequence?