See Ya, Saleh

Yemen's embattled president struggles on the brink of collapse.

By Gregory Johnsen
This commentary was published in Foreign Policy on 23/03/2011

The writing has been on the wall in Yemen for weeks. In Taiz, a highlands city of half a million, people painted it on huge banners; in Sanaa they baked it into bread; and everywhere they chanted it: Irhal. Go. That single Arabic word has united Yemen's fractured political opposition, turning old enemies into temporary allies and pushing President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime to the brink of collapse.

The protest movement against Saleh's 32 years of rule has been growing since Feb. 11, when Hosni Mubarak stepped down in Egypt. That day, for the first time, student activists and pro-democracy demonstrators took to the streets outside the umbrella of Yemen's largest opposition grouping, the Joint Meeting Parties. In much the same way Egypt's 1952 revolution shaped and inspired Yemen's own uprising a decade later, so too has Egypt's January 25 Revolution found an echo in Yemen. In addition to demanding Saleh's resignation, protesters are also calling for key members of his family to surrender their positions in the military.

In fits and starts, for the past six weeks, the protests have gradually incorporated most of Saleh's domestic opponents into their ranks. Across the south, in Aden, Lahj, and al-Mukalla, pro-secessionists have slowly dropped their calls for a separate state, at least for the moment, and gone on the record stating that their only wish is for Saleh to go. In the far north, where the president has been waging a brutal seven-year civil war against a group known popularly as the Houthis, the rebels added their voice to the mix, marching for the fall of the regime. Many of Saleh's parliamentary allies have deserted him as well. Some resigned with open letters to the press, while others, like influential tribal leader Sheikh Hussein al-Ahmar, arranged their announcements for maximum publicity.

On Feb. 26, Ahmar joined several other sheikhs from the powerful Hashid confederation at a conference in the northern governorate of Amran. In a fiery speech, the young tribesman denounced Saleh as a corrupt ruler no better than the imams that ruled north Yemen for much of the past millennium. Behind him other men threw their membership cards from Saleh's ruling GPC party in the dust as proof of their resignation.

The president, who has remained in power for more than three decades largely by deftly playing opposition groups off one another, attempted to stem the tide of tribal defections by doling out bags of cash and distributing complimentary cars. Hussein al-Ahmar, Hamid al-Ahmar, and the rest of their eight brothers countered Saleh by opening their own bank accounts to tribesmen. As the auction for tribal support continued in the north, the protests continued to grow across the rest of the country.

In Taiz, the intellectual and activist capital of the country, protesters gathered in the thousands, camping out downtown and entertaining each other with poetry and chants as they waited for Saleh to get the message. The president tried to stay ahead of the protesters by anticipating potential moves. Like Cairo, Sanaa has a Midan al-Tahrir -- Liberation Square. Worried about the precedent from Egypt and the optics of thousands of people demonstrating in the square, Saleh dispatched paid supporters to occupy the area. Undeterred, the protesters set up a tent city outside Sanaa University, dubbing it Sahat al-Tagheer -- the Square of Change.

Increasingly desperate to disperse the protesters after weeks of watching their numbers grow, Saleh fatally miscalculated on March 18. Shortly after noon prayers on that Friday, snipers surrounding Sahat al-Tagheer opened fire, killing 52 protesters in several minutes of concentrated shooting. There had been several instances of brutal violence previously in the protests, most notably in Aden, where handfuls of demonstrators have been killed -- but nothing like this. Even with French warplanes in the sky over Libya, Al Jazeera devoted hours of its coverage on Friday to the horrific images of bloody corpses being carted into mosques and hospitals near the university. Most of the young men and boys had bullet holes above their eyes or in the back of their heads.

Saleh tried to limit the damage, holding a news conference that evening. He expressed regret at the killings, even calling the dead "the martyrs of democracy," but brazenly insisted that the opposition be blamed for the bloodshed. Few in Yemen seemed convinced. Saleh also stated he was implementing a state of emergency in Yemen, a move that suspends all law in the country and allows the president to take whatever steps he deems necessary. It quickly became clear that even that wasn't going to be enough. Led by Faisal Amin Abu Ras, Yemen's ambassador to Lebanon, more resignations started to trickle in. Late Sunday night, Saleh fired his entire cabinet in an effort to prevent its members from resigning en masse.

But the big blow came the next morning on Monday, March 21, Saleh's 69th birthday, when Ali Muhsin al-Ahmar (no relation to Hussein al-Ahmar), the commander of the 1st Armored Division and the most powerful figure in the Army, read out a statement on Al Jazeera, saying that he supported the protesters and that his troops would protect them. His understated performance opened the floodgates. Ahmar, who also commands one of Yemen's four military zones, is from the president's own Sanhan tribe. For most of the past three decades, he has protected the president and his interests in the military. His defection was a crushing blow. Shortly after Ahmar's statement, the commander of the eastern military zone, Muhammad Ali Muhsin, announced his support for the protesters. Within minutes two commanders responsible for half the country had abandoned Saleh.

Many of their colleagues followed their lead, and by the end of the day more than a dozen top commanders made similar announcements, scrambling to avoid being the last one off a sinking ship. Ahmar's decision also reverberated through Yemen's civilian leadership, as diplomats abroad and local politicians spent much of Saleh's birthday calling into Al Jazeera to announce their resignations live on the air.

Backed into a corner, Saleh dug in. He surrounded the presidential palace with tanks from the Republican Guard under the command of his eldest son Ahmad and sent his fired, but still serving, foreign minister, Abu Bakr al-Qirbi, to Riyadh.

Ahmar's move was a carefully calculated political decision designed to separate most of the Sanhan tribe from Saleh, Ahmad, and four of the president's nephews, all of whom hold high positions in the military. By coming out in support of the protesters now, Ahmar believes he can save his lucrative job as well as those of key allies, while letting Saleh and his five heirs take the fall for three decades of misrule. Many of the protesters who have been demonstrating for weeks are wary of Ahmar and his intentions, but appear willing to accept his support in order to get rid of Saleh.

The president, who still commands the loyalty of the Air Force, most of the Republican Guard, and the Central Security Forces, is also counting on Saudi Arabia. He is hoping that King Abdullah is more worried about what the fall of another regime in the region will mean for Bahrain and political dissent in Saudi Arabia than he is about the potential for chaos or armed conflict in Yemen. If March 22's animated speech, in which Saleh warned of civil war, is any indication, the president believes he has the Saudi monarch's support. And that makes the current standoff in Yemen very dangerous.

The Strategy In Libya

By Stephen Stromberg
This commentary was published in The Washington Post on 23/03/2011

Regime change is what the coalition flying sorties over Libya wants. If that wasn't obvious enough already, a senior European diplomat Wednesday made it explicit to me: "It's been crystal-clear from the beginning: Gaddafi must go."

But what's the strategy? The U.N. resolution under which the coalition operates only authorizes the protection of civilians, and no one wants to deploy ground forces. To oust Gaddafi, won't the coalition need to violate the terms of the U.N. resolution or its own determination not to use ground troops?

Actually, the coalition is making a bet, the diplomat explained, that it will be able to accomplish regime change without doing either.

The U.N. has commanded Gaddafi to vacate his forces from cities across Libya. The dictator hasn’t complied, giving the coalition reason to step up its mission, to "destroy his tanks" and "weaken his regime more and more." After all, the diplomat said, the U.N. resolution gives the coalition permission to use all necessary means to enforce it. 

The U.N.'s are "demands that Gaddafi cannot comply with," the diplomat explained. The dictator is "in the spirit of a war," he continued. "It seems difficult for him to withdraw his troops, to retreat to a small neighborhood in Tripoli."

"We think that, for Gaddafi, it is black-and-white."

As long as the dictator sees it that way, coalition strikes can continue with the U.N.'s blessing.

This strategy relies not only on a reading of Gaddafi's psychology, but also on "an opposition who want to fight for a united country," the diplomat explained, since someone on the ground will have to press Gaddafi's steadily weakening forces directly. He expressed confidence that the Benghazi-based opposition — "articulate people in favor of a democratic transition" — was committed to the Libya's unity, not settling for a long-term Kurdistanization of the east under the protection of coalition air power.

The strategy could work. But there are risks.

What if Gaddafi, battered by air strikes, complies with U.N. demands? The coalition could easily fracture over how much more it should do, or whether it would even be worth keeping military assets devoted to Libya in case Gaddafi changed his mind. Policymakers should think now about what they would do.

Barring that, will the opposition have the wherewithal to topple Gaddafi, even with coalition command of the skies? The coalition could make that more likely if it began arming and training the rebels, too.

Then there is the question of what happens if the coalition’s strategy succeeds. If the opposition wins, how much will the coalition need to intercede in the political transition it enabled? The diplomat seemed optimistic about the emerging rebel government. But it's impossible to know how long it will really take to win the peace.

Right Across The Arab world, Freedom Is Now A Prospect

From the mildewed, corrupted dictatorships is emerging a people reborn. Not without bloodshed and violence. But now at last, the Arabs can hope to march into the bright sunlit uplands

By Robert Fisk
This commentary was published in The Independent on 22/03/2011

In the dying days of the Ottoman empire, American diplomats – US consuls in Beirut, Jerusalem, Cairo and other cities – NGOs across the region and thousands of American missionaries, pleaded with the State Department and with President Wilson to create one modern Arab state stretching from the shores of Morocco to the borders of Mesopotamia and Persia. This, they believed, would bring a large part of the Muslim world into the democratic orbit of Europe and the West.

Of course, the Sykes-Picot agreement which had already secretly carved up the Middle East, a dying Woodrow Wilson and America's lurch into isolationism put paid to any such fanciful ideas. Besides, who knows if some Arabs might have preferred the "civilisation" of Rome and, just over a decade later, of Madrid and Berlin, to the supposedly decadent democracies elsewhere in Europe? In the end, the Second World War scarred Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Lebanon and left the rest comparatively unscathed. But this is the moment to recall the might-have-beens of history. For it is now just possible to recognise a future world in which we may be able to travel from Morocco to the Iraq-Iran border without a visa in our passports. Whether Arabs will be able to do this as speedily, of course, is another matter.

What is not in doubt is the extraordinary tempest passing through the region, the spectacular break-up of the Arab world which most of us have known for most of our lives and which most Arabs have known for most of their lives. From the mildewed, corrupted dictatorships – the cancer of the Middle East – is emerging a people reborn. Not without bloodshed, and not without much violence in front of them as well as behind them. But now at last the Arabs can hope to march into the bright sunlit uplands. Every Arab friend of mine has said exactly the same thing to me over the past weeks: "Never did I believe I would ever live to see this."

We have watched these earthquake tremors turn to cracks and the cracks into crevasses. From Tunisia to Egypt to Libya, to Yemen – perhaps only 48 hours from freedom – to Morocco and to Bahrain and, yes, even now to Syria, the young and the brave have told the world that they want freedom. And freedom, over the coming weeks and months, they will undoubtedly obtain. These are happy words to write, but they must be said with the greatest caution.

Despite all the confidence of D Cameron, Esq, I am not at all sure that Libya is going to end happily. Indeed, I'm not sure I know how it is going to end at all, although the vain and preposterous US attack on Gaddafi's compound – almost identical to the one that was staged in 1986 and took the life of Gaddafi's adopted daughter – demonstrated beyond any doubt that the intention of Obama is regime liquidation. I'm not certain, either, that Bahrain is going to be an easily created democracy, especially when Saudi Arabia – the untouchable chalice almost as sacred from criticism as Israel – is sending its military riff-raff across the border bridge.

I have noticed, of course, the whinging of the likes of Robert Skidelsky who believes that the Bush-Blair fantasy "liberation" of Iraq – which has ended up with the country effectively controlled from Tehran – led to the street uprisings today "But Western democracies' combination of freedom and order... is the product of a long history that cannot be replicated in short order," he has been saying. "Most non-Western peoples rely upon the ruler's personal virtues, not institutional limits on his power, to make their lives tolerable." I get the point. Arabs cannot be trusted with democracy – indeed they aren't ready for it like we smug Westerners are and, er, the Israelis of course. This is a bit like Israel saying – as it does say – that it is the only democracy in the Middle East, and then trying to ensure it stays that way by pleading for the Americans to keep Mubarak in power. Which is exactly what happened in January.

But Israel is a case worth examining. Usually capable of considerable forethought, its government and diplomats and overseas supporters have been hopelessly lazy and cackhanded in their response to the events thundering across the Arab world. Instead of embracing a new and democratic Egypt, they are sullenly warning of its volatility. For Israel's government, it now appears, the fall of dictators whom they have many times compared to Hitler is even worse than the dictators' preservation. We can see where the problem lies. A Mubarak would always obey orders – via Washington – from Israel. A new president will be under no such pressure. Voters in Egypt do not like the siege of Gaza. They are outraged by the theft of Arab land for Israeli colonies in the West Bank. No matter how big the bribes from Washington, no elected Egyptian president is going to be able to tolerate this state of affairs for long.

Talking of bribes, of course, the biggest of all was handed out last week – in promissory notes, to be sure – by the Saudi monarch, who is disbursing almost $150bn around his merry kingdom in the hope of being spared the wrath of his people. Who knows, it may work for a time. But as I always say, watch Saudi Arabia. And don't take your eyes off it.

The epic we can afford to forget, however, is the "war on terror". Scarcely a squeak from Osama's outfit for months. Now isn't that strange? The only thing I heard from "al Qa'ida" about Egypt was a call for the removal of Mubarak – a week after he had been deposed by people power. The latest missive from the man in the cave has urged the heroic peoples of the Arab world to remember that their revolutions have Islamic roots; which must come as a surprise to the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain et al. For they all demanded freedom and liberation and democracy. And there, in a sense, is the answer to Skidelsky. Does he believe they are all lying? And if so, why?

As I said, there is much blood still to flow. And many a meddling hand to turn new democracies into time-serving dictatorships. But for once – just once – the Arabs can see the broad sunlit uplands.

In Libya, No Ordinary Intervention

By Nader Mousavizadeh
This commentary was published in The New York Times on 22/03/2011

Within 48 hours of the launch of NATO military action against the Qaddafi regime, the intervention is beset by fundamental questions about the reality of regional support and its strategic objective. The Arab League has walked back from its initial calls for a no-flight zone, and is now distancing itself from the widespread targeting of Libyan installations. On Sunday, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, refused to identify a specific endgame for military action.

At stake is far more than a successful armed action against a militarily feeble opponent. Having made the fateful and perilous choice to go to war with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the West now owes a debt to the wider — and strategically far more consequential — Arab reform movement that only an end to his regime can honor.

There is much to admire in the decision by NATO countries to intervene in the Libyan regime’s attempt to crush a popular uprising with brute force: a willingness to assist a long-repressed civilian population in its hour of existential need; a commitment, however belated, to back United Nations rhetoric of “Never Again” and the “Responsibility to Protect” with armed action; a recognition that allowing Colonel Qaddafi to reassert authority through brute force would embolden other autocrats to choose repression over reform.

Even as the precedents of Bosnia, Rwanda, and Kosovo are now being revisited for lessons both of action and inaction, it is essential that we recognize that this is no ordinary intervention.

First, if there is one thing students of intervention can agree on it is that resolutions are never enough and that action that is not decisive can be worse than no action at all. Rarely has a military campaign been undertaken with as much uncertainty about its aims, and as many declared caveats about what it would not be about (regime change) and what it would not involve (foreign occupation). Whatever the shock and awe imposed by the power of NATO’s modern armaments, surely Colonel Qaddafi can detect strategic irresolution as well as anyone.

Second, the broader context of the most important Arab reform movement in 50 years requires a far starker assessment of the price of failure. An essential — if still underestimated — aspect of the Arab uprisings from Tunisia to Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and even Saudi Arabia was the nationalist yearning for dignity and self-respect brutally denied the men and women of those societies by decades of politically infantilizing autocratic rule. Egyptians as Egyptians — not as Arabs or Muslims or Copts — rose in defense of their nation’s past and future.

The task of remaking their countries into modern, productive, representative societies with equal rights for men and women will be hard enough for the next Arab generation of leaders. Another prolonged and bloody conflict with the West will provide the perfect excuse for Arab autocrats to change the subject — away from their own illegitimacy and corrupt rule and toward a universally felt nationalist sentiment as powerful as that of freedom.

None of this need necessarily undermine the moral and strategic validity of the intervention. But just as it demonstrates the high stakes of the war on the Qaddafi regime, it reveals — however inconveniently — the only outcome that secures both objectives of Libyan freedom and continued Arab reform without doubt: a swift end to Colonel Qaddafi’s regime.

There were plentiful reasons to think that, faced with the prospect of starting another war in the Arab world, discretion would have been the better part of valor. But having opted for intervention at a time of unprecedented ferment and change among the Arabs, London and Washington have assumed responsibility for a cause far greater than Benghazi or Misrata.

And in an irony that George W. Bush and Tony Blair would appreciate, unseating Colonel Qaddafi without the introduction of Western ground troops is likely to require a great deal more luck than wars otherwise offer. The ghost of Iraq is not that easily dispensed with.

Nader Mousavizadeh is chief executive of Oxford Analytica, a global analysis and advisory firm, and served as special assistant to the former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan from 1997-2003.

De Gaulle, He Ain't

Nicolas Sarkozy's misguided quest for glory in Libya.

By Arthur Goldhammer
This commentary was published in Foreign Policy on 22/03/2011

The Libyan uprising has given French President Nicolas Sarkozy an opportunity he has long coveted: to lead a risky international mission that holds out promise of ultimate glory. For Gen. Charles de Gaulle, the founder of the Fifth Republic, the pursuit of what the French call la grandeur was the primary raison d'être of a head of state. His successors have by and large shared the general's view, tenaciously defending French national interests and independence.

Sarkozy's idea of grandeur differs from de Gaulle's or Mitterrand's, however. The two former presidents saw themselves as students of history, men with long views of the national interest. Sarkozy is a creature of the moment who has always lived by the daily news cycle. Risk quickens his pulse and whets his appetite. He first came to prominence as mayor of the Paris suburb of Neuilly, when a madman with a bomb held a preschool classroom hostage. Sarkozy entered the room, talked the bomber into surrendering, and emerged to waiting cameras with a child in his arms. Crisis is his element.

In the crisis that followed Russia's invasion of South Ossetia in 2008, for example, Sarkozy, who then occupied the rotating presidency of the European Union, inserted himself into the center of the conflict and, in a whirlwind of shuttle diplomacy, persuaded the Russians not to make good on their threat to overthrow the Georgian government. His penchant for taking risks has not always paid off, however. Before he became Muammar al-Qaddafi's nemesis, he tried to reintegrate the colonel into the international community by inviting him to Paris in December 2007. This gesture drew criticism from Sarkozy's own secretary of state for human rights and proved to be an embarrassment because of Qaddafi's erratic behavior. Worse, it was probably quid pro quo for Qaddafi's agreement earlier that year to release Bulgarian nurses he had been holding prisoner. Qaddafi also extracted other tribute from France in return for this favor, including a promise to sell Libya €100 million of weapons and build a nuclear power plant in the country. Despite these overtures, the Libyan leader  later refused to join the Union for the Mediterranean, a pet project of Sarkozy's, on the grounds that it would wreck "the unity of the Arab League." If Qaddafi disappointed Sarkozy, the Arab League must surely have disappointed Qaddafi by joining the current action against him.

Of course the French president had motives other than disappointment for urging decisive action against the Libyan dictator. Sarkozy likes to stress the humanitarian motive, which is perfectly legitimate, and "shared democratic values," which the rebels may or may not in fact hold. But he also hoped to draw a veil over earlier disarray in his government's response to the "Arab spring." When demonstrators in Tunis faced the armed forces of another dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, then Foreign Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie proposed sending French riot police to Tunisia to help train their Tunisian counterparts in crowd-control techniques. She also vacationed in Tunisia in the rebellion's early days and accepted transportation on the private jet of a Ben Ali crony with whom her elderly parents had entered into a business deal.

These revelations eventually forced Alliot-Marie's resignation and led to the appointment of Alain Juppé, a man of vast experience as well as an old rival of Sarkozy, as foreign minister. But the president then stunned Juppé by deciding to recognize the rebels and bomb Libyan airfields while his foreign minister was in Brussels, negotiating with European partners. Juppé had not been told of this decision in advance and was visibly dumbfounded when informed by reporters. To add insult to injury, the announcement of France's policy was made on the steps of the Élysée Palace by the playboy philosopher and gadabout humanitarian Bernard-Henri Lévy, an acquaintance of Sarkozy who had developed his own private contacts in the rebel camp. Juppé reportedly threatened to resign over this affront to his authority, but to date he remains in his post.

Sarkozy also faces a tough fight for reelection in 2012. His approval rating is at its nadir, around 25 percent. Several recent polls have shown him running third, behind Marine Le Pen, the new leader of the extreme right-wing National Front, and any of several possible Socialist candidates. And in cantonal elections held this past weekend, as the military action in Libya was unfolding, the president's party took a shellacking. In such circumstances, a leader who takes his country to war will always be suspected of seeking advantage at the polls. Yet there has been no discernible surge of support for the president since French jets first took off for Libya a few days ago.

If there are suspicions about Sarkozy's motives, the president himself must share the blame. Various officials have indicated that one of the government's concerns about turmoil in Libya is the possibility that any state failure there will increase the influx of refugees attempting to enter Europe by boat. Le Pen went to the Italian island of Lampedusa, tantalizingly close to the Libyan coast, to dramatize this concern, but the president's own party played on similar fears. One deputy, Chantal Brunel, threatened a week ago to "put them back into boats" if North African refugees landed on European shores. Earlier, Laurent Wauquiez, minister for European affairs, warned against tolerating illegal immigration in the wake of the Tunisian rebellion. Such statements undermine the president's high humanitarian rhetoric and foster suspicion of base ulterior motives.

Furthermore, Gaullist grandeur may prove elusive if the fighting in the desert fails to go as planned. To be sure, French planes were the first to bomb targets around Benghazi, even before the U.S. cruise missile strikes on air defense sites. But the reality is that the French and British, who are supposed to bear the brunt of the action, do not have the "force projection" capabilities of the United States. The engagement has already gone well beyond enforcement of a no-fly zone to include action against Libyan armor and artillery. The poorly trained rebels may need a good deal more close support, unless the intervention persuades Qaddafi's mercenaries that the risks of fighting on now outweigh the benefits. But even if the mercenaries quit, loyalist Libyan troops would remain in the field, and the rebels' ability to defeat them even with air support remains to be demonstrated. Finally, even if Qaddafi is toppled, Libya's future will be determined by what unfolds in the aftermath, and France will have to contend with other interested parties for influence over that process. In short, France's intervention may serve to underscore the limits of the French global reach, even in a region where it was once a dominant player.

And that brings us to another key aspect of Sarkozy's gamble. France has a large immigrant population, much of it drawn from North Africa. French Muslims, especially the younger ones, identified with the youthful and largely secular protesters in Tunis and Cairo. The effort to prevent a massacre in Benghazi has had popular appeal, but escalation may lead to protest. Bitter memories of French imperialism can easily flare into open opposition if the military adventure takes a wrong turn.

Finally, there is the matter of the European Union, where Sarkozy's initiative has already proved problematic. His hasty recognition of the rebels, just as talks with European partners were getting under way in Brussels, and in the absence of any clear indications of who the rebel leaders are and what political forces they might represent, made a mockery of the idea of a common EU foreign policy -- an idea that Sarkozy championed back in the days when he was crusading for the Lisbon Treaty. He has been careless of European sensibilities in most of his foreign ventures to date and has frequently ruffled the feathers of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has not been enthusiastic about military action in Libya. Sarkozy's penchant for impetuous action may well have put paid to European cooperation in the short to medium term.

Conversely, the rapprochement of France and Britain, which was already apparent in the agreement to share an aircraft carrier, has been advanced by the Libyan affair, in which Prime Minister David Cameron and Sarkozy have generally seen eye to eye, despite a temporary disagreement about the role of NATO in the operation. One difference is worth noting, however: Cameron sought a vote of confidence from the House of Commons before going to war. Sarkozy didn't need to bother with such niceties -- he controls his National Assembly. He simply acted, like the Bourbon kings of old, de son bon plaisir -- at his own pleasure. But so did Barack Obama, whose presidency is not supposed to bear the regal trappings that go with executive office in France. Sovereignty, it has been said, is the power to declare an emergency. If so, then the Libyan intervention has been a striking demonstration of Sarkozy's sovereignty over la Grande Nation. He has stuck his neck out quite far in pushing for Western intervention in Libya, and he is now committed to see the mission through, though it may well strain French military capabilities to the breaking point.

Gates Underlines The Dangers In The Middle East

By David Ignatius from St Petersburg in Russia
This commentary was published in The Washington Post on 22/03/2011

Defense Secretary Bob Gates is running through the standard list of factors that have caused political upheaval across the Middle East: the youth bulge, unemployment, corruption. I start to ask another question but Gates cuts me off, as if he wants to underline the dangers and uncertainties of this moment of history.

Gates says the unrest has highlighted “ethnic, sectarian and tribal differences that have been suppressed for years” in the region, and that as America encourages leaders to accept democratic change, there’s a question “whether more democratic governance can hold . . . countries together in light of these pressures.” The implication: There’s a risk that the political map of the modern Middle East may begin to unravel too, with, say, the breakup of Libya.

Then Gates says something policymakers rarely admit in crisis, which is that he doesn’t know how things will turn out: “I think we should be alert to the fact that outcomes are not predetermined, and that it’s not necessarily the case that everything has a happy ending. . . . We are in dark territory and nobody knows what the outcome will be.”

Gates’s tone in the interview was sobering. He spoke during what’s likely to be one of his last foreign trips before his expected retirement this summer, but his comments were anything but triumphal. Instead, they reinforced his role as the Obama administration’s voice of caution and candor. It was as if he were studying spy-satellite images and couldn’t discern what they showed.

On the eve of retirement, Gates is a man who takes pleasure in saying things that are true but impolitic. When legislators were talking about a “no-fly zone” over Libya as if it were a painless remedy, Gates pointedly warned this would be a military attack. In a recent speech at West Point, he said that any successor who enthused about sending another American army to the Middle East “should have his head examined.”

Gates began his government career 45 years ago at the CIA, and he retains some of the acerbic skepticism of a good intelligence analyst. He likes stripping away the sugarcoating that surrounds policy decisions so that his colleagues can see the real risks and realities.

We spoke on a turbulent day when Gates had been receiving reports of a possible coup against President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, increasingly violent protests in Syria, and the controversial military action in Libya. In every direction, Gates said, you could see shifts in “these tectonic plates in the Middle East [that] have essentially been frozen for close to 60 years.”

The challenge for the United States, Gates said, is to somehow manage this process of change — which “is coming regardless of what you do” — in a way that encourages stability. He offered two lessons for leaders facing unrest: first, “get out ahead of change” by making reforms early; and second, avoid violence, which “usually backfires.” He said that if Hosni Mubarak had made concessions earlier “he’d probably still be the president of Egypt.”

One stabilizing factor has been U.S. relationships with local militaries. In Egypt, where such contacts were extensive, “we could not have been more fortunate in the way things have turned out and, frankly, in the leadership of the military council,” Gates said. And in Yemen, generals and tribal leaders “tell us they’re very positively inclined toward the United States.”

As for Libya, Gates said his initial concerns about the no-fly zone were overcome because of Arab support for it: “Had the Arab League not voted that, there might have been a different outcome, both at the U.N. and our own decision.”

Gates grew up in the Cold War years when the world, however dangerous, had a stability and predictability. “We’ve never encountered anything like this,” he said of the current Middle East turmoil. He offered a basic rubric for the use of American power: When facing direct threats to its security, the United States must act “decisively and, if necessary, unilaterally.” In other cases, such as Libya, where the United States has interests but doesn’t face a direct threat, it should go to war only with an international coalition.

It’s telling that when Gates was asked by Russian naval students here to name his most significant achievement, he didn’t mention the wars he is fighting in Afghanistan and Libya but the one he ended, in Iraq. He would doubtless like to leave his successor a calmer Middle East, where change and stability are interwoven, but as he said, “that’s a tough act.”

Libya: Too Much, Too Late

By	Richard N. Haass, President, Council on Foreign Relations

This Op-Ed was published in Politico

The United States has now embarked on its third war of choice in less than a decade. And like the 2003 Iraq war and the Afghan war after 2009, this war of choice is ill-advised.

Libya is a war of choice for two reasons. First, U.S. interests are decidedly less than vital. Libya accounts for only 2 percent of world oil production. The scale of the humanitarian crisis is not unique; indeed, this is not strictly speaking a humanitarian intervention. It is a decision to participate in Libya's civil war.

It is a war of choice for a second reason: The United States and the world have other options besides military intervention. Civil wars tend to burn out and come to an end sooner barring significant foreign intervention. A range of tools, from economic sanctions to covert action, could weaken the regime, bolster the opposition or both.

In this last regard, President Barack Obama has done himself no favor by demanding that Libya's leader of four decades, Muammar Qadhafi, give up all political power. By doing so the Obama administration has essentially denied itself the diplomatic tool.

Why should Qadhafi stop pursuing his domestic opponents if he must leave office – and, worse yet from his perspective, face possible trial for war crimes?

The U.S. demand for Gaddafi's ouster causes two other problems as well. First, it goes beyond the U.N. resolution that it is the basis for current military action. The world is demanding that Qadhafi hold off attacking rebel positions and that he pull back from several cities. Implicit here is that he can remain in power if he complies. Will Washington accept this?

Second, the U.S. demand is also inconsistent with stated limits on what it is prepared to do to oust Qadhafi. Obama promised his fellow citizens there would be no U.S. boots on the ground in Libya.
But limited means cannot always be relied on to deliver essentially unlimited aims. To the contrary, big goals often require a big price to be paid.

This intervention is ill-advised for a number of reasons. Under almost any scenario, whether Qadhafi's removal from power, his falling back and holding off as the U.N. resolution requires or his fighting on successfully, something more than the current international military effort —which now involves considerably more than just imposing a no-fly zone — will be required.

But who will maintain order? And who can prevent a continuation of the civil war? The likely answer to these and related questions is military forces from the outside. But forces from where and for how long and with what mission and at what cost? There is little evidence that any of this has been thought through.

This intervention is also a strategic distraction. U.S. policymakers would be wiser to focus on what could be done to buttress Egypt's economy or to help deal with the far more important and dangerous situation unfolding in Bahrain.

What happens in Libya will not have much if any impact on these and other regional developments. Indeed, it is Qadhafi's political isolation in the Middle East that, as much as anything, explains Arab League support for the world's armed effort against him.

It is true that this military intervention in Libya is multilateral — in the sense that there is U.N. backing and some military contribution from others. But such multilateralism only means that there is some international support and some sharing of burdens. It does not mean the effort makes sense in its design or execution. Multilateral support in and of itself is not a reason to do something.

Those advocating the intervention emphasize what they see as its moral underpinning — if not necessity. But this requires bringing about something morally preferable in Libya at a cost commensurate with interests.

Alas, there is little reason to be confident the opposition will be able to constitute a benign, national alternative. It could just as easily be tribal-based, radical, localized — or some combination of all of these. A Libya that is at war with itself for years, or that either welcomes or becomes too weak to resist groups like Al Qaida, is not something worth fighting for.

There are also strong competing claims on morality. What about asking young American men and women in uniform to put their lives at risk for interests that are less than vital? For outcomes that are less than sure to be an improvement over what now exists?

Or what about committing the United States to another costly foreign intervention at a moment we owe it to ourselves — not to mention future generations — to get our economic and military houses in order so we can meet our obligations at home and be prepared to meet true wars of necessity (North Korea for one) if and when they arise?

At the end of the day, though, the Libyan intervention is more than anything about the role of the United States in the world. The United States cannot and should not intervene in every internal dispute where bad or even evil is on display.

It is not simply that we lack the resources, which we do. It is that we lack the ability to right every wrong, and that not every situation has within it a solution.

It was John Quincy Adams who, some two centuries ago, warned that the United States should not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. He was right then. He is no less right today.

Richard N. Haass is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and author of “War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars.”