By Michael Faulkner – May 01, 2011
What is the objective of the British, French and US NATO
military intervention in Libya? The UN security council resolution under which
it operates, sanctions the defence of civilians against attacks by Gaddafi’s
armed forces. It does not sanction regime change. At the time of writing (15
April) it is apparent that the divisions within the NATO camp have not been
resolved. Neither is there any
unity about objectives amongst the countries of the Arab League or the African
Union. Until a few days ago it looked as though the Obama administration was
determined to scale back US involvement, but this has now changed. Obama,
Sarkozy and Cameron have declared that they will pursue military action until
Gaddafi is toppled. It is almost certain that their declaration will further
fracture this fissiparous alliance. When security council resolution 1973 was
passed on 17 March, those promoting it seem to have imagined that a short,
sharp shock aimed at Gaddafi’s forces then poised to capture the rebel
stronghold of Benghazi, would suffice to turn the fortunes of war quickly in
favour of the insurrectionists who would then resume their triumphant march on
Tripoli. It was assumed that the ”no fly zone” would be enough to tip the
balance and enable the rebels to deliver the coup de grace against the regime.
It has not turned out that way.
It is not possible to predict how things will turn out in
Libya. The various pressures on the regime may still hasten its downfall in the
shorter rather than the longer term – within weeks perhaps. But this is
far from certain. Particularly in light of the Iraq debacle it is going to be
difficult for the Anglo-French-US protagonists to convince the more skeptical amongst
their associates that the terms of resolution 1973 can be stretched to support
regime change. Should they fail to do so, they will require another resolution
from the security council and it is unlikely that the Russians and the Chinese
will be prepared to support this. Then there is the question of the
organization, unity and capacity of the rebels. Even if they receive the arms
they need, are they capable of using them to the necessary effect? There is
some indication that that underground oppositionist forces in Tripoli are
stepping up attacks on the regime there, but the reports are unreliable. It is
difficult to assess how much real support Gaddafi still enjoys in the capital.
It is certainly a lot less than the regime’s propagandists would have us
believe, but it is hardly negligible. Unless there are further large-scale
defections, including from the armed forces, Gaddafi appears to be capable of
sitting it out for quite some time. And that poses a real problem for the
rebels and their NATO supporters. In openly committing themselves to regime
change they are delivering a hostage to fortune. Should they fail to gain the
degree of support they need in NATO and if the UN fails to deliver a second
resolution, are the British, French and the US prepared to proceed regardless? If
so, how will they proceed? Air power alone cannot achieve the desired
objective. It is already apparent that the NATO strikes have resulted in
growing numbers of civilian deaths, including amongst the rebel fighters they
are supposed to be defending. Will combat forces be sent in to support the
rebels? If so, it will be in breach of resolution 1973. Following Iraq and
Afghanistan, how will this be received in the Arab and Muslim world?
The perception that the Western intervention is motivated by
the need to ensure continued control of Libya’s oil resources is already
widespread. When Gaddafi asserts that this is indeed the case, he speaks to a
sympathetic audience beyond his frontiers. Libya’s experience of Western
colonialism stretching back over one hundred years, may not be of much concern
to Europeans or Americans, but it resonates with many in the former colonies of
France, Italy and Britain. The claims of “liberal interventionists” to be
motivated solely by the need to protect the innocent from the brutalities of
rampaging dictators, or from the stifling repression of autocratic despots, seem
completely hypocritical given the selective nature of their interventions. It
is reasonable to ask, why Libya? Or, if Libya, why not Yemen, or Syria –
or, indeed, Saudi Arabia? And, of course, if the answer should be that it is
all a matter of degree and the urgent need to prevent a bloodbath, or genocide,
then the obvious response is, why (as in the case of Saudi Arabia and
elsewhere) continue to supply arms to the despots, enabling them to snuff out
any hint of dissent from their long-suffering people. It is crystal clear that
the choice of candidates for “liberal intervention” is primarily a matter of
“realpolitik”: we intervene when and where it is considered to be in our
national interest to do so. This goes back a long way. In the 1870’s Disraeli’s
realpolitik trumped Gladstone’s moral-liberal appeal to intervene against the
Ottomans’ massacre of Greek Christians in the Balkans. Turkey was a bulwark
against Russian expansion, which threatened the British Empire, so it was
necessary to turn a blind eye to the atrocities.
However, the case of Libya poses some difficult questions.
It is almost certainly true that prior to March 17. Gaddafi was poised to crush
the rebels in their Benghazi stronghold. The balance of military forces was
decisively in his favour. Everyone who had been inspired by the rolling Arab
revolution, which had already resulted in the ousting of Ben Ali in Tunisia and
Mubarak in Egypt, was filled with apprehension at the very real prospect of the
Libyan uprising being crushed. Gaddafi’s eccentricities and self-proclaimed
revolutionary credentials could not disguise the fact that his was a brutally
repressive regime that tolerated no dissent. His close relations with radical
forces and governments in Latin America and his association with left-wing
anti-imperialist forces in the Third World, in no way excuses the deeply
repressive nature of his regime. Does it follow from this that supporters of
the revolutionary movement in the Arab world should have supported the Western
intervention?
In attempting to address this question it may be instructive
to consider it within a broader context: in what circumstances, if at all, may
it be justifiable to intervene militarily in another country’s affairs? One
possible answer is that it is justifiable only if such intervention is
authorized by the United Nations – that is, by a vote in the security council.
An obvious problem with this is that the use of the veto by any of the
permanent members can (and frequently has) prevented action. Those who consider
the UN to be the only legitimate voice of “the international community” will
accept this as the best of a bad job. Opponents of the Iraq war argued
persuasively that, in the absence of a UN resolution specifically sanctioning
the invasion, the war was illegal. That was the view of the great majority of
international lawyers. The mass demonstrations against the war stressed its
illegality. It would have not have been so easy to mobilize such a broad-based
opposition had there been a clear-cut UN vote for military intervention. It is
significant that the Stop the War coalition has been unable to muster any
substantial support against the NATO intervention in Libya. An obvious reason
for this is that the Left is fully behind the revolutionary movements in the
Arab world and supports the opposition to the Gaddafi regime. But this has
resulted in a dilemma. It was clear that the internal opposition in Libya was
not capable of achieving there what had been achieved in Tunisia and Egypt. By
early March there was no doubt that without some form of outside assistance the
rebels would be defeated and there could be little doubt about the nature of
the fate that awaited them in Benghazi.
In a rare appearance on BBC Television’s Newsnight, Noam
Chomsky, interviewed by Jeremy Paxman, was asked whether he would support
intervention by the Western powers in support of the rebels. He said that he
would not. When asked why not, he replied that the rebels had not requested
outside support. The implication of his answer was that had they requested it,
his answer might have been different. Shortly afterwards, they made clear that
they would welcome support from NATO. Almost certainly Chomsky’s view, shared
by most on the Left, is that military intervention by US imperialism and NATO
should always be opposed because it is always motivated by self interest
– that is, the interests of corporate capitalism. This is a very persuasive
argument strongly supported by much historical evidence. However, it does not
adequately address the situation in Libya at the beginning of March. It can be
stated in stark terms: if the alternatives are (a) the complete defeat of the
insurrection and a likely counter-revolutionary bloodbath, or (b) a NATO
military intervention which prevents this and restores the initiative to the
rebels, what should be the response of those who support the Arab revolution?
This is the dilemma that faces the Left.
Is anything to be learned from the history of the twentieth
century? There have been many situations where the Left has called for and
supported military intervention to further progressive causes. In 1932 Leon
Trotsky, then in exile after his expulsion from Soviet Russia, argued that, in
the event of a Nazi seizure of power in Germany, the Red Army should intervene
to overthrow a fascist regime that would be a mortal enemy of the working class
and the Soviet Union. During the Spanish Civil War the Left condemned the
non-intervention policy of the British and French governments and demanded that
they respond to the appeal of the Spanish republic for military aid. In 1978
the Left supported Tanzanian intervention to topple Idi Amin in Uganda and
likewise in 1979 supported the military intervention by Vietnam to overthrow
the genocidal Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. The Vietnamese intervention was
condemned by the United States. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Cuba sent
thousands of troops to fight alongside the MPLA in Angola against US backed
mercenaries and South African interventionists. So, non-intervention has never
been a universal principle of the Left.
The principle has been that military intervention is
justified in specific circumstances where it is in support of a progressive
struggle for freedom and democracy against a repressive regime. Military
intervention in Third World countries by imperialist and post-imperialist
powers is almost always motivated by the interests of the corporate power
elites that rule those countries and dominate the military blocs to which they
belong. In the case of Libya, the NATO intervention, while it may have provided
an opportunity for the Libyan rebels to regain their initiative, will, if it is
prolonged, serve only to lock an alternative government into the embrace of the
Western powers. Therefore a post-Gaddafi regime must demand the complete
withdrawal of NATO forces from the country and insist on complete economic and
political independence.