Almost eight years to the day after the War in Iraq commenced, our new conflict in Libya began. Allied planes now fly over Libya; both enforcing a no-fly zone and targeting forces loyal to its dictator Muammar Gaddafi. And while I don’t mean to conflate Iraq and Libya, which are unquestionably different, something about growing up with the failure of Iraq makes me leery of our third military engagement in a predominately Muslim country. In the post-Vietnam era, applications of U.S. force have consistently led to consequences we had no way of predicting ahead of time, a danger that often seems lost to policymakers and pundits. When the use of force is not used as a last resort, we frequently risk the danger of creating more problems than we solve.
At the same time, I desperately want to support the intervention in Libya. For one, Gaddafi is utterly insane, and the world would be better off without him in power. And for those, like myself, who believe in an international order governed by rules, the process was carried out the way it should have been. The mission has been executed with some Arab military assets, and coalition forces gained the support of the Arab League—at least initially, before Arab leaders grew concerned about the offensive bombing campaign that was carried out. The process was also given the blessing of the UN Security Council. France and the U.K. were even more hawkish than the United States and have largely taken the lead in Libya. All of these are welcome developments. Even the process by which the United States decided to commit troops appears to have been carried out in a refreshingly skeptical, deliberative manner.
Nonetheless, I think there are some concerns about this conflict that have not been given the treatment they deserve. The media’s drumbeat in favor of war—uniting both left-leaning humanitarian hawks and conservatives who favor a muscular U.S. response to seemingly every global problem—began to grow increasingly louder as the civil war continued without external action. Yet, for every counterfactual about Rwanda or Bosnia that can be mustered, you could point to an example like Somalia or Iraq. Although I’ve read many eloquent cases for the conflict in Libya that I’d like to believe, too many scholars and journalists seem to operate under the assumption that action by the United States and its allies will quickly and decisively bring the war to an end.
The current military strategy appears to be premised on the idea that Libyans could overthrow Gaddafi if only they didn’t have to face additional mercenaries and his warplanes. However, our commitment is almost certainly limited to the air and the outcome of this strategy depends on events almost wholly outside the control of Western leaders or their warplanes. Gaddafi still controls the state apparatus in Libya, has a multibillion-dollar slush fund, and reports strongly suggest he has hired many thousands of foreign troops. With little hope of the military setting aside their arms and implicitly supporting the rebellion, as in Egypt, Gaddafi must be driven from power through armed struggle. Events on the ground suggest a stalemate since bombing began, strongly putting into doubt the idea that Gaddafi will lose power soon.
It is also necessary to evaluate the hypocrisy of the United States’ actions in the Middle East over the past few weeks. It’s a difficult task to manage strategic interests and follow through with a genuine desire to promote democracy, as the Obama administration must try to do. U.S. troops are stationed across the Arab world, and regime change can be a risky and chaotic process. However, the U.S. has hardly even pressured governments in Yemen, Bahrain, or Saudi Arabia that have brutally cracked down on peaceful protesters. It seems that Western military pressure and media attention are reserved for those countries that are not tied to our strategic interests. As a result, it’s more difficult for our actions to be seen as truly supporting the genuine desire of citizens to overthrow their autocratic governments.
All of this leads me to a robust skepticism about the decision to intervene with military force. I genuinely hope that my pessimistic view turns out to be wrong, and that Gaddafi is driven from power in the coming days or weeks. Yet, I think Allied forces may have set themselves up for another protracted struggle without an exit strategy or a clearly defined end goal—a recipe that has rarely turned out favorably in the past.
