Lessons from the Obama-Biden Administration's blundering Libyan intervention

One of the more significant foreign policy decisions of the Obama-Biden Administration was the military intervention in Libya in 2011, playing a decisive role but formally doing so in support of NATO allies France and Britain. This BBC News report has a helpful timeline of the US intervention from February 2011 to January 2015: President Obama: Libya aftermath 'worst mistake' of presidency 04/11/2016.

Today, nearly 10 years after the Obama-Biden "humanitarian" military strikes began in March 2011, Libya is widely regarded as a failed state or something close to it. We're coming off a year in which conflicting involvements in Libya's internal military and political power struggles by Egypt, Russia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Turkey, Qatar and Abu Dhabi have caused diplomatic complications well beyond Libya's borders.

Earlier this month, "At least 20,000 foreign fighters and mercenaries are in Libya causing a “serious crisis” as weapons continue pouring into the war-ravaged North African nation, a United Nations official warned on Wednesday." (‘Serious crisis’: 20,000 foreign fighters in Libya, UN says Aljazeera 12/02/2020) That is from a report on the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum, "part of UN efforts to end the chaos in Libya, a major oil producer, which has been gripped by violence since a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 overthrew and killed veteran leader Muammar Gaddafi."

Akram Kharief reported in Libya’s proxy war (Le Monde Diplomatique English Sept 2020):

Libya has been torn by conflict ever since 2011, when a rebel coalition with NATO air support began a civil war against the Gaddafi regime. Since 2014, the country has been split between forces loyal to the Government of National Accord (GNA) based in Tripoli and the self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) led by Benghazi-based Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar. This has grown into a proxy conflict between Haftar’s allies — Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Russia — and Turkey and Qatar, who support the GNA. It has also become a battleground for international mercenaries. [my emphasis]

Turkey's involvement has been a topic of significant problems within NATO, as Ali Bakeer and Dylan Yachyshen discuss in France and Turkey: When NATO allies collide Responsible Statecraft 10/15/2020. France has been a partisan of Haftar's LNA faction.

Sociologist Amitai Etzioni, an advocate of what is known as "communitarian" political theory, wrote a analysis of that intervention in the Jan-Feb 2012 issue of the US Army's Military Review, The Lessons of Libya.

The 2012 piece is fascinating in that Etzioni argues that the action showed the military effectiveness of a limited external intervention into an outgoing internal clash between contending parties in a country, which can be achieved with minimal immediate risks to the intervening external powers. But he also identifies how strong the pressure can be for mission creep, including obvious problems that were already apparent in the Libyan situation. But he seems to imply that the US/NATO intervention should have been more intensive. We also from his account that the US/French/British intervention rapidly expanded its goal from Obama's original public justification of preventing an immediate humanitarian crisis from an alleged impending massacre of rebel forces in the Benghazi area by government troops.

Four and a half years later, Etzioni wrote about the Libyan intervention, arguing against deeper involvement then being advocated by neocons and by "humanitarian" interventionists, The Illusion That America Can Fix Libya The National Interest 08/29/2016.

Today, this from the 2012 article has special relevance:

The Libya campaign showed that a strategy previously advocated for other countries, particularly Afghanistan, could work effectively. The strategy, advocated by Vice President Joe Biden and John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, entails using airpower, drones, Special Forces, the CIA, and, crucially, working with native forces rather than committing American and allied conventional ground forces. It is sometimes referred to as “offshoring,” although calling it “boots off the ground” may better capture its essence. [my emphasis]

In the later piece, he is specifically arguing against increased US involvement in Libya in 2016, drawing on the lessons of the failed "nation-building" attempts in Afghanistan and Iraq:

The notion that the United States can engage in nation building in the Middle East is a sociological illusion. The United States sank half a trillion dollars into nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq over fifteen years. In Afghanistan, it “succeeded” in transforming the country from one of the most corrupt nationsin the world to the most corrupt. It has become the leading producer of opiates, which are flooding Europe. And it has a regime that cannot protect itself or pay for itself. In Iraq, since it was liberated by the United States, at least three hundred thousand civilians have been killed, many more maimed, and still more forced out of their homes. The military and the police trained and advised by the United States for over fifteen years are often used by the Shia government to kill and harass Sunnis. [my emphasis in bold]

One important conclusion we can take from the 2012 analysis is that a US/NATO intervention that involves tipping a military situation toward one side in a conflict can seemingly impressive results in the short term. But war is always about political results on the other end. Obama himself recognized that the outcome of the Biden-recommended approach in Libya was not a desirable one for the US. Dominic Tierney reported in The Legacy of Obama’s ‘Worst Mistake’ The Atlantic 04/15/2016:

In a Fox News interview last Sunday, Obama was asked about his “worst mistake.” It’s a classic gotcha question, but he had an answer ready. “Probably failing to plan for the day after, what I think was the right thing to do, in intervening in Libya.” This was yet another act of presidential contrition for the NATO operation in 2011 that helped to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi but left the country deeply unstable. In 2014, Obama said: “[W]e [and] our European partners underestimated the need to come in full force if you’re going to do this. Then it’s the day after Qaddafi is gone, when everybody is feeling good and everybody is holding up posters saying, ‘Thank you, America.’ At that moment, there has to be a much more aggressive effort to rebuild societies that didn’t have any civic traditions.” In recent interviews with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on the “Obama Doctrine,” the president bluntly said the mission in Libya “didn’t work.” Behind closed doors, according to Goldberg, he calls the situation there a “shit show.” [my emphasis]

Part of this strikes me as a classic Mugwump position by Obama, when he admits that the assumptions behind his Libya decision turned out to be disastrously wrong but still doesn't want to state that his intervention was a mistake. To his credit, he did resist the pressure that Etzioni describes in his 2016 piece that was brought to bear on him to compound the mistake by getting more and more deeply involved.

In the absence of a major peace movement, the press gives pitifully little attention to predictable difficulties. Etzioni's observation in the quotation above, for instance, that US intervention had transformed Afghanistan "from one of the most corrupt nations in the world to the most corrupt" was not surprising to people familiar with the Vietnam War or with the war in Iraq. But the mainstream press and TV pundits didn't put much emphasis on pointing out those lessons.

Yes, when the US pours in military personnel and massive resources into a much poorer country in pursuit of an urgent military mission, massive corruption in the local institutions is one of the extremely likely results. Practically inevitable, when there is an immediate military mission to be achieved whose practical considerations require working with whatever institutions are available, "corrupt" or not, or even deliberately corrupting them if it helps the immediate military objective.

The problem for any citizens who want to take a critical and responsible view of proposed military interventions is that the Pentagon and the State Department and various other government agencies will always have a superficially plausible claim that US security is at stake, they will always offer humanitarian reasons for the intervention, they will always claim that US power will make the war quick and easy, they will always claim that some brad spanking new technology makes it easier than ever before, and will always try to make critics sound like they are sympathizing with evil people.

The validity of the claims will vary from case to case. But without informed critics to address them and with a press that is more eager for the drama of the conflict and the glamour of the heroic Pentagon presentations of its goals than for parsing the facts for citizens to make well-informed decisions, it will be way too easy to blunder into more misguided military interventions.

EU long-term challenges on immigration and refugees (Part 2 of 3)

There are wars, rumors of wars, and major instability in the Greater Middle East. This has produced millions of refugees headed toward Europe.

Austria’s then Foreign Minister and current Chancellor Sebastian “Basti” Kurz claimed to have solved the 2015-16 acute phase of the refugee flow that xenophobic politicians (including him) successfully exploited by “closing the Balkan route”. At best, Basti’s “Balkan route” negotiations played a small supplementary role next to Angela Merkel’s negotiations with Turkey: Deutsche Welle provides description and analysis of that deal, which is still in effect: The EU-Turkey refugee agreement: A review 18.03.2018; Barbara Wesel, The EU's grubby and dangerous deal with Turkey 18.03.2016.

As Barbara Wesel rightly describes it, Merkel’s Turkey deal “It effectively outsources the protection and care of the majority of refugees from the Middle East to Turkey.”

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) notes currently on its website (accessed 01/24/2020):

Turkey continues to host the largest number of refugees worldwide, with close to 4.1 million refugees, including 3.7 million Syrians and nearly 400,000 asylum-seekers and refugees of other nationalities. Turkish legislation provides people in need of international protection with a broad range of rights upon registration with the authorities. Some protection gaps are nonetheless observed in the implementation of the legal framework, largely due to the scale of the refugee response.

The main challenges remain the pressure on national resources and the availability of services for refugees and host communities. While state institutions are addressing these challenges, the protracted nature of the refugee situation has drawn public attention to the social impact of the refugees’ presence.

Of course, Middle Eastern countries are already absorbing refugees from conflicts in the region. And Libya in North Africa plays a particular role. Also from UNHCR (accessed 01/24/2020):

In Libya, an estimated 823,000 people need humanitarian assistance, according to the 2018 Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO). Internally displaced people (IDPs), refugees and asylum-seekers are amongst the most vulnerable, with limited or no access to basic commodities and essential services. Political instability and violent clashes have generated ongoing displacement and created a very challenging operational environment for UNHCR. It is expected that the protection environment in Libya will remain restricted and will likely deteriorate even further.

UNHCR estimates that 4,500 people are detained in Libya, out of whom 2,500 are of concern to UNHCR. The condition of refugees and migrants in detention remains of grave concern and identifying solutions for the most vulnerable is a key priority in 2020. In addition, there are over 300,000 IDPs, of whom 128,000 have been newly displaced since clashes restarted in Tripoli in April 2019, and there are more than 447,000 IDP returnees. While high-level negotiations are underway to end conflict and encourage a resumption of the peace process, UNHCR is prepared to respond to humanitarian needs in 2020.

During Muammar Gaddafi’s rule, Libya was certainly no model of enlightened governance or a country where human rights were scrupulously protected. But it had absorbed and employed large numbers of African refugees fleeing military conflicts or disastrous economic conditions in their own countries.

But when civil war broke out and the US, Britain, and France intervened militarily to overthrow Gaddafi’s government, that function was radically reduced. And so more of the refugees that Libya could previously absorb head toward Europe, often in dangerous sea journeys in rickety vessels. There are refugee camps in Libya, set up partially in collaboration with EU countries, and they have been poorly managed, i.e., serious neglect and crimes including rape and some people being literally sold into slavery.

The Libya and Turkey aspects of the issue have converged even more lately with Turkey’s military intervention in the ongoing civil war and the international negotiations seeking a ceasefire in which Turkey is now necessarily a key participant. (Daniel Brössler, Erdoğan ist eine zentrale Figur im Libyen-Drama geworden Süddeutsche Zeitung 24.01.2020)

Turkey justified its recent invasion of northern Syria as necessary to repatriate some of the Syrian refugees they were hosting. But Turkey used that as an excuse for “ethnic cleansing” of Kurds out of that region. But the 2016 Merkel-Erdoğan refugee agreement limits the EU’s ability to challenge military misadventures by Turkey in Syria or Libya because Turkey can credibly threaten to release large refugee flows into the EU. (Turkey lashes out at EU over refugee deal ahead of Merkel visit Deutsche Welle 23.01.2020)

Also: Erdogan fordert von EU mehr Unterstützung für Flüchtlinge Oberösterreichische Nachrichten 24.01.2020:

In 2016, Merkel negotiated a refugee deal with Turkey to prevent migrants from continuing their journey to the EU. Erdogan had repeatedly threatened in the past to cancel the agreement.

Im Zentrum des Flüchtlingsdeals der EU mit der Türkei steht ein Tauschhandel: Die EU darf alle Migranten, die illegal auf die griechischen Inseln übergesetzt haben und kein Asyl erhalten, in die Türkei zurückschicken. Im Gegenzug kann für jeden zurückgeschickten Syrer ein anderer Syrer aus der Türkei legal in die EU einreisen. Es wurde zudem vereinbart, dass die EU sechs Milliarden Euro für die Verbesserung der Lebensbedingungen syrischer Flüchtlinge in der Türkei zahlt.

At the heart of the EU's refugee deal with Turkey is a barter deal: the EU is allowed to send back to Turkey all migrants who have illegally transferred to the Greek islands and are not granted asylum. In return, for every Syrian returned, another Syrian from Turkey can legally enter the EU. It was also agreed that the EU would pay €6 billion to improve the living conditions of Syrian refugees in Turkey. [my translation from the German]

And those wars and rumors of wars – and US sanctions paving the way for one with Iran – are generating new refugees headed toward Europe. (Erin Cunningham and Mohammad Mahdi Sultani, Trump’s sanctions on Iran are helping fuel a new refugee crisis - in Turkey Washington Post 01/24/2020).

In other words, a massive increase in refugees coming into the EU comparable to that of 2015-16 can still happen. And likely will. And it’s very difficult to predict that. Erdoğan’s international ambitions, an escalation of the US-Iran conflict, serious economic problems are all things that could make that happen.

It does not appear to me that the EU is any better prepared today to deal effectively with such a recurrence than it was in 2015. They should be. But if anything, the nasty political battles related to immigration and refugees has made an effective collective EU response more difficult. The dominant EU narrative that each member country should promote its own national “competitiveness” also creates an every-country-for-themselves response to disruptions which works against EU cooperation and solidarity.

As mentioned at the start of Part 1, the EU needs an immigration policy based on (1) a positive rather than defensive immigration policy based on the understanding that EU countries all need significant numbers of immigrants for the foreseeable future, larger than the current supply; and, (2) a refugee policy that is based on an allocation of refugees among all EU countries, i.e., giving up the “Dublin system”.

The Dublin system works as follows (EU Commission Factsheet on the The Dublin System n/d; accessed 01/24/2020):

When applying the Dublin rules, the country of arrival is, in most cases, identified as the one responsible for the asylum application.

The vast majority of arrivals are currently registered in just a few Member States (e.g. Greece and Italy), putting the asylum systems of these countries of first entry under immense pressure. This is not a fair distribution of responsibility.

The current system, in other words, puts by far the greatest burden for dealing with the refugee flow out of the Greater Middle East and Libya falls on Greece, Italy, and non-EU member Turkey.

Part 1: https://brucemillerca.blogspot.com/2020/01/eu-long-term-challenges-on-immigration.html
Part 2: https://brucemillerca.blogspot.com/2020/02/eu-long-term-challenges-on-immigration.htmlbr />
Part 3: https://brucemillerca.blogspot.com/2020/02/eu-long-term-challenges-on-immigration_5.html

Turkey and the Libyan civil war

Giorgio Cafiero provides an update on the regional power considerations involved in Turkey's threat to militarily intervene in Libya: Why Turkey is Sending Troops to Libya Responsible Statecraft 01/02/2019.

Libya, of course, was the target of a successful regime change operation in which President Barack Obama and Foreign Minister Hillary Clinton intervened militarily along with NATO members France and Britain. A civil war has been raging there since 2014.

... with Russia aligning itself more closely with the UAE, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia in supporting Haftar’s side, Turkey’s bold moves will add further complications to Turkish-Russian relations. Against the backdrop of the dire crisis in Idlib, which is testing the Astana Process’s sustainability, the extent to which Ankara and Moscow will be able to find common ground vis-à-vis Libya will heavily impact bilateral affairs between Turkey and Russia at a sensitive time. Of course the U.S. and Russia are the main countries that could likely contain Turkish actions in Libya, and if either attempts to do so in any meaningful or decisive way, Turkey will almost inevitably continue trying to capitalize on Washington and Moscow’s geopolitical competition in the Middle East and Africa to suit Ankara’s own interests and agendas. [my emphasis]

As Cafiero explains, the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) is a military offensive by the opposition Libyan National Army (LNA) headed by Gen. Khalifa Haftar, with Turkey being "the one power that is truly helping the GNA survive."

The Libyan intervention of 2011 and the ongoing results

Andreas Baumer in Business Insider Deutschland provides a good recap of the US-British-French NATO intervention in Libya in 2011, which failed to win a UN Security Council endorsement due to vetos by Russia and China, Wankelmütiger Riese: Die Libyen-Krise offenbart das ganze Dilemma Deutschlands 08.04.2019:

Was danach passierte, ist schnell erzählt. Die Nato griff tatsächlich in den libyschen Bürgerkrieg ein und zwar weitaus entschiedener, als Russland und China das wollten. Statt nur eine Flugverbotszone einzurichten, bombardierten Nato-Flieger Gaddafis Truppen. Auch mit Nato-Hilfe stürzten die Rebellen den Diktator und töteten ihn grausam.

Der Wiederaufbau des Landes ging danach gründlich schief, auch weil USA und Europa zunehmend das Interesse am Land verloren. Eine stabile nationale Regierung hat Libyen seitdem nie wieder bekommen. Im Osten des Landes ist General [Chalifa] Haftar der starke Mann. Im Westen hatte bislang die international anerkannte Regierung um Sarradsch das Sagen. Zwischendrin kämpfen lokale Milizen um Macht und Pfründe. Libyen ist das Sorgenkind in Nordafrika.

My translation:

What happened after that [the Security Council vote] is quickly told. NATO actually intervened in the Libyan civil war, and far more decisively than Russia and China wanted. Instead of just establishing a oo-fly  zone, NATO planes bombed Gaddafi's forces. And with NATO help, the rebels overthrew the dictator and cruelly killed him.

The reconstruction of the country went fundamentally wrong afterwards, partly because the United States and Europe increasingly lost interest in the country. Since then, Libya has never regained since then. In the east of the country, General [Chalifa] Haftar is the strongman. In the West, the internationally recognized government around Sarradsch has been in charge up until now. In between, local Militias are fighting for power and sinecures. Libya is the problem child in North Africa.

It's worth recalling how Obama's Secretary of State celebrating the seeming victory in Libya at the time, Clinton on Qaddafi: We came, we saw, he died CBS News 10/20/2011:

Not the most distinguished moment of the Obama Administration.

Nuclear 2019

Ploughshares President Joe Cirincione writes about how The Biggest Nuclear Threats of 2018 Will Follow Us into the New Year DefenseOne 12/29/2018. And are on track to get worse.

He opens with this:

The New Nuclear Arms Race is the clear winner as the greatest global nuclear threat of 2018. Each of the nine nuclear-armed states is building new weapons and the United States, instead of strengthening the global nuclear safety net, is actively shredding it.

In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced five new nuclear weapons he said Russia was building in response to the U.S. decision to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. All are designed to circumvent defenses. Russia has also deployed a small number of ground-based cruise missiles whose range exceed that permitted by the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that President Ronald Reagan negotiated. In October, President Donald Trump said he would pull out of this arms elimination pact, despite the objections of NATO allies.

Destruction of the INF Treaty is likely a prelude to allowing the New START treaty to die. This pact, negotiated by President Barack Obama, limits long-range strategic forces. If both go, it will be the first time since 1972 that U.S. and Russian nuclear forces have been completely unconstrained.

“The untimely death of these two agreements would add fuel to a new arms race and further undermine stability and predictability between Washington and Moscow,” warned former National Security Council senior director Jon Wolfsthal. [my emphasis]

In the narrow sense, any one country could view it in their national interest to modernize and expand their own nuclear arsenal. But that only works if all the other nuclear powers do not do so. In practice, it leads to further nuclear arms competition and increases the risks of nuclear war for all parties involved.

The prospect for a country newly acquiring nuclear weapons is somewhat different. Nuclear nonproliferation has been based on the idea that non-nuclear powers would not acquire such weapons. And, in return, the existing nuclear powers would not only show restraint but move forward with overall disarmament. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was first signed 50 years ago, in 2018.

But here, the two main nuclear powers, the US and Russia, have behaved irresponsibly. Iraq gave up their programs to develop nuclear weawpons and other "weapons of mass destruction," i.e., biological and chemical. Afterward, the US with its "coaliton of the willing" invaded Iraq in 2003 and overthrew the Saddam Hussein government that made those decisions and Saddam himself was captured and executed. And Iraq was thrown into a civil war and longterm instability.

Muammar Gaddafi's government in Libya also agreed to give up their "WMD" programs in 2003. The Cheney-Bush Administration kept the agreement confidential until after the invasion of Iraq so they could use the announcement for propaganda purposes to claim their toughness toward Iraq intimidated other countries into backing off WMD programs. The Obama Administration in 2011 along with France and Britain intervened militarily in Libya to overthrow Gaddafi's government. Gaddafi himself was anally raped with a bayonet and murdered by a mob.

The Soviet Union had nuclear weapons stationed not only in Russia but in Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. All three of the latter agreed to give up the nukes stationed there, which had become their own sovereign territory once they became institution. Mariana Budjeryn reports in Ukraine and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Wilson Center 10/15/2018:

A successor of the former Soviet Union, Ukraine acceded to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state in December 1994. This meant not only relinquishing the right to develop nuclear weapons in the future, but also physically dismantling and removing the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal that Ukraine had inherited from the Soviet Union: 1,240 nuclear warheads arming 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) including their extensive launch control infrastructure, 700 nuclear cruise missiles arming 44 strategic bombers, and nearly 3,000 tactical nuclear weapons, including artillery shells, gravity bombs, and mines.

While Ukraine lacked key elements of a fully-fledged nuclear weapons program, and Moscow retained operational control over the ICBMs in Ukrainian territory, recent research reveals that, due to the inherited defense industry and technological expertise, Ukraine had a much greater capacity to establish independent control over these weapons systems than has been previously assumed.

Ukraine’s ultimate decision to forgo nuclear weapons and join the NPT was a great boost for the nonproliferation regime ... [my emphasis]

And, of course, in 2014 Russia sent troops into Ukraine to establish two separate enclaves on Ukraineian territory, Donetsk and Luhansk, and annexed the Ukrainian territory of the Crimea in blatant violation of international law.

The lesson for all countries in the world is pretty straightforward. If you have nuclear weapons, it gives you a powerful deterrent from being invaded by powers like the US or the Soviet Union. If you give them up, neither the US nor Russia will refrain from invading your country.

This is bad, bad policy for both the US and Russia. And for the rest of the world, too.

Nuclear arms control is in the interest of the whole world. And the United States and Russia have a majority of the world's nuclear weapons. Those two countries have to work together to reduce this menace to themselves and the world. And that is the case even when they are adversaries in many other ways. It's a serious responsibility for both countries and for all political parties in both countries.