WORLD APRIL 1, 2011
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Strategy is a strange beast. Up close—as it is unfolding—even a good strategy can appear muddled, confused, and indecisive. Its logic only becomes clear over time. President Obama’s Libya strategy demonstrates this. It has drawn howls of criticism from across the political spectrum, most of the “muddled, confused, and indecisive” variant. But, when dissected, it does have an internal logic.
Put simply, Obama’s Libya strategy is designed to avoid the most undesirable outcomes rather than optimize the chances of a desired outcome, to do something without “owning” the conflict, to maintain maximum flexibility as the situation evolves, and to do all of this in the face of powerful constraints. The question is whether this strategy can actually work.
President Obama appears determined to avoid two particularly bad things: an outright Qaddafi victory—which might chill reform underway in the Arab world and unleash a new spate of support for terrorism—and Al Qaeda influence within the rebel movement. NATO airpower has helped prevent a Qaddafi victory, but ensuring a rebel victory might require arming, training, and advising the anti-regime forces. President Obama has not committed to this, telling NBC’s Brian Williams that he was “not ruling it out but I’m also not ruling it in.” This ambivalence reflects the fact that the U.S. objective at this point is not a rebel victory but denying victory to Qaddafi. If this objective holds, the Obama administration might be willing to tolerate a protracted conflict or even some sort of partition.
The question of an Al Qaeda role among the rebels—particularly if the conflict drags on—is trickier. Libya was an important source of outside fighters in the battle against the United States in Iraq. Undoubtedly some of these fighters returned home with extremist inclinations and military expertise. In a March 29 hearing, NATO commander Admiral James Stavridis told the Senate that intelligence agencies had picked up “flickers” of an Al Qaeda presence among the Libyan opposition fighters.
To deal with this issue, the Obama administration is first attempting to get a better picture of the opposition both through talks with its external leadership and, if news reports are accurate, by sending intelligence agents into Libya. Beyond that, the administration appears to favor engaging the rebels without embracing them. Given conditions, this makes perfect sense. If the United States rejects them now when they are most vulnerable and they do hang on and become more effective, the rebels could remain suspicious and even hostile toward the United States, perhaps accepting help from Al Qaeda or Iran. Engaging now does not guarantee influence but failing to engage guarantees that the United States and NATO will have no influence.
Critics of U.S. involvement with the rebels base their case on how little is known about them and on their military weakness. There is no doubt that the rebel movement is a loose, almost chaotic mélange of local factions with limited military ability. But almost every insurgency and rebel movement in history started this way, even ones that eventually succeeded, such as the Vietnamese and Chinese. While the Libyan rebels cannot decisively defeat Qaddafi at this point, neither can he defeat them, at least so long as NATO airpower is in play. Preventing an enemy from attaining victory is always easier than defeating an enemy outright. The Taliban shows that even a rag tag force can sometimes stave off defeat. This applies to Libya as well.
While seeking to avoid the most adverse outcomes, the Obama strategy also rejects American ownership of the conflict. The administration is actively seeking to have someone else take it off of America’s hands, particularly the provision of direct support to the rebels. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, for instance, told Congress on March 30 that other nations, not the United States, should arm the rebels. Clearly the Obama strategy is designed to find the middle ground between disengagement and domination. The idea seems to be to maximize flexibility by keeping all options open as long as possible. This is a good idea in a highly fluid situation.
The Obama administration also must implement this strategy in the face of severe constraints. In Washington’s hyper-charged political environment, whatever President Obama does provokes loud opposition. Foreign crises become stalking horses for broader political opposition. The days when partisan debate stopped “at the water’s edge” are long gone (as President Bush found out in Iraq). The fragility of the American economic recovery and opposition to government spending also constrain Obama’s options in Libya. No U.S. military option for a century has drawn as much cost scrutiny. Daily tallies of the expenditures ricochet across the Internet. In a broader but still important sense, the Obama strategy in Libya seeks to avoid replicating the Bush administration’s involvement in costly wars. This is nothing new—being “not Clinton” was important to the Bush administration so being “not Bush” is equally important to the Obama administration.
Still, history shows that having an internal logic—even a sound one—does not assure a strategy’s success. President Obama faces a number of major problems in pulling it off. For starters, he has not sold his approach to the American public and Congress. In the American system, mobilizing support is just as important to a strategy as its effect in the world. While it may eventually come, President Obama has not yet found his voice on strategy as he has on domestic issues.
Americans often attempt to understand world crises and conflicts through the lens of recent experience. This does not help President Obama generate support for his Libya strategy. Critics claim that, since the United States supported rebels in Afghanistan in the 1980s and, today, is fighting the remnants and descendents of that movement, supporting rebels is always a bad idea. That this assertion misreads history—it was abandoning Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal that led to the dominance of extremists, not supporting anti-Soviet forces in the first place—and draws a general conclusion from a single example makes little difference. So far, though, the Obama administration has not quelled this criticism.
In a broader sense, President Obama is struggling to transcend American history. For two centuries, Americans have believed that any use of military power is war, and the objective in war is victory over the enemy. They have little tolerance for military operations that deviate from this pattern, such as the limited use of force in support of diplomacy or armed action leading to something other than decisive victory. After a foray into “limited war” from Korea to Vietnam, the United States walked away from the idea. What became known as the Weinberger-Powell principles argued that the U.S. military should never be committed unless vital interests are at stake—and then, only with the intention of clear victory. This became inculcated into the American strategic culture. And, since World War II, Americans have also come to expect that the United States will dominate any military operations in which it participates. The normal state of affairs, Americans believe, is for the United States to be is the senior partner in a coalition.
The Obama strategy represents a step away from the Weinberger-Powell principles and the notion that the United States must dominate any operation where its military is involved. Whether it works will be determined by the unpredictable whims of Muammar Qaddafi, the willingness of other states to take some or all of the burden off of America’s hands, and the president’s ability to sell the American public and its elected leaders on a strategy that runs counter to their tradition and inclinations. While Obama’s Libya strategy has a distinct logic, its success thus remains in the balance.
Steven Metz is the author of Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy.
63 comments
basman, I am assuming you will turn up here. You posed a hypothetical on some thread. I saw it without time to respond and now cannot find it again. Here is what I think: R2P is not identical to the "emerging" doctrine of humanitarian intervention. Rather, it is an embodiment of it that articulates both sovereign responsibility toward civilians and lays out what can therefore be a basis for UN action. I don't recall whether UNSC1973 cited it, but that resolution would be in implementation. As I have pointed out, the UN Charter provides that war is only legal in individual or collective self-defense or as authorized by the Security Council. Humanitarian intervention is an exception that has gained tentative acceptance after Rwanda and Yugoslavia as negative and positive examples. I think that the exception arises only where war crimes or crimes against humanity are being committed and the side committing them is either tolerating them or unable to prevent them. I think it also requires that it be possible, that there is a reasonable prospect of halting such crimes without undertaking what amounts to a war by the intervenor. Thus, what is distinguishing about the case of humanitarian intervention is that it is exigent, because of ongoing crimes, and that it is possible without the intervenor simply becoming a combatant. It implies a limit. For political reasons, it is much more desirable that a humanitarian intervention be multilateral. This affords some assurance that the crimes being committed are widely regarded as such and that the intervention is not a cover for political war-making. In effect, the world is adding to the very short list of justifications one more, defense of another. This can be understood by analogy to the justifications for killing in civil law that include both self-defense and defense of another, but the circumstances must be exigent. Threat is not enough. In other cases, I think that it ought to remain the responsibility of the UNSC. This includes the case where practically the end cannot be accomplished with limited violence by the intervenor. If it is going to require a war, or as you posit regime change is the only means of protection, then I think it is properly up to the Security Council. The case of Libya, where the intervention was primarily in response to a threat, albeit a very credible threat, belonged before the UNSC. The current actions of the intervenors, attacking Libyan armed forces not to protect civilians but to force those armed forces to abandon Qaddafi lest they be destroyed, are in my opinion beyond the scope of the resolution and should stop. It makes no sense at all to kill hundreds of soldiers to force Qaddafi out. It would make more sense to assassinate Qaddafi, which we appear unwilling to attempt for a number of reasons. Holding the lives of Libyan soldiers, who are also human beings, hostage to Qaddafi's tenure is, in the absence of ongoing crimes or imminent threat from Qaddafi gainst us, not in my view legal war-making. It is killing people for political change in the absence of imminent threat to ourselves or civilians, just what the UN Charter prohibits. After all, the charter does not assume that wars are fought for no reason, only that the reasons do not justify the violence. We also have to consider that this civil war without Qaddafi does not necessarily get better. It could well get worse, going viral, with opposing forces both killing civilians to get to each other and no means of stopping it other than invasion, and we know how well that works out. I do not think that removing Qaddafi, by assassination or by holding his armed forces hostage, is a responsibility the intervenors should take upon themselves out of respect for international law and because of the uncertain outcome and uncertain price. We should stick to the mandate of UNSC1973. It is up to the UNSC, or not, to authorize action to arrest, remove, or kill Qaddafi. If we have ended the threat to civilians, we should stick to maintaining that status quo. Indeed, we ought to consider that if we are not giving Qaddafi a way to stand down without signing his own death warrant, we ourselves may then be in the position of prolonging the violence. We should not. All of which is consistent with what is outlined in this blog above, but not consistent with the pursuit of regime change under cover of the UNSC resolution.
- roidubouloi
April 2, 2011 at 11:04am
"In a broader sense, President Obama is struggling to transcend American history. For two centuries, Americans have believed that any use of military power is war, and the objective in war is victory over the enemy. They have little tolerance for military operations that deviate from this pattern, such as the limited use of force in support of diplomacy or armed action leading to something other than decisive victory. After a foray into “limited war” from Korea to Vietnam, the United States walked away from the idea." I'm not sure what point Metz is trying to make with this post. That "limited war" is inherently flawed or that it can succeed but only if properly implemented and adequately sold to the American people. Whatever, his choice of Korea and Vietnam as examples of "limited war" is puzzling. How many American deaths are necessary for a war to go beyond a "limited war". One would think more than 50,000 deaths would suffice (more than 50,000 Americans died in each of those wars). Or would it be based on military tactics. One would think blanket bombing major cities would suffice. It appears to me that Metz is defining "limited war" by reference to the "enemies" the US is fighting, namely conflicts in the nature of civil wars. I suspect that Obama, like the Presidents before him who chose to engage in such "limited wars", will not have much success "struggling to transcend American history". History is awfully difficult to transcend.
- rayward
April 2, 2011 at 12:13pm
Learn something new ever day. I didn't know that the text of articles could be changed, without some acknowledgement; but, here, some helpful soul changed the last sentence of the second paragraph (where the original was better suited to April 1). It is now, "The question is whether this strategy can actually work." It used to be, "The question is whether this strategy can actually work --- and, looking at history, it's not clear that logical military strategies don't always lead to success."
- yerubal
April 2, 2011 at 1:28pm
Obama has 'found his voice...on domestic issues' ? News to me. Which issue, would you say he has effectively built support for his position on?
- Curran1
April 2, 2011 at 4:09pm
In a world in which the UN is the government, it has the authority to determine what is a "legal" war. In the real world, the deliberations of the Security Council are important, but not necessarily definitive. The ultimate authority for determining the legality of the use of force by the armed forces of the US in the Congress. I'm looking forward to the Resolution concerning Libya.
- Robert Powell
April 2, 2011 at 5:09pm
Mr. Powell has his own personal theories of law in which international law is subordinate to domestic law, notwithstanding the Constitution on treaties, the Congress is the arbiter of legality, notwithstanding Marbury v Madison or the separate existence of international law, and the existence of a law enacted by the omnipotent Congress, the War Powers Act, giving the president certain authority to act is of no consequence. Mr. Powell's Constitution is that of the Tea party in which the words mean whatever is congenial to its political ideology on a given day. Antonin Scalia has Comstitution like that too.
- roidubouloi
April 3, 2011 at 9:59am
You put me in pretty august company roi. Thanks. Hope you're had a chance to read Dani Rodrik's excellent and relevant musings on the role of the nation state--it's prominently displayed on the homepage and well worth a read....
- Robert Powell
April 3, 2011 at 11:20am
Haven't yet, but I will on your recommendation.
- roidubouloi
April 3, 2011 at 1:26pm
ttp://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/04/obamas-false-premises-for-war/73260/
- Robert Powell
April 3, 2011 at 1:56pm
What seems to be pointed up by the Libyan case is that there is kind of conceptual gap between American constitutional provisions and international law. Most of the time, nations have a clear distinction between domestic law and international obligations -- you organize your local or national educational system whatever way you want, but you obey international law (either by custom or treaty or both) on aviation, diplomacy, border regulation, public health, postal services, and so on. The question of war seems to be really problematic, as it's an international matter with powerful domestic implications. Nevertheless, it's simply untrue to say that the Bush administration found, in contrast to Obama, the right balance by going to Congress and ignoring the UN -- in fact, the Bush administration was very concerned about justifying Iraq on the basis of the accrued weight of prior UNSC resolutions on Iraq. The grounds for the invasion, despite the interpretation that Iraq was a U.S. go-it-alone presentation, often came trailing a kind of international legal explanation behind them. It seems to me that Obama is indeed opening himself to the accusation of simply by-passing Congress, but the question of whether a limited action in an emergency situation under the cover of a Security Council resoluation is really a "war" in the normal sense of the word remains unsatisfactorily answered.
- ironyroad
April 3, 2011 at 5:47pm
I don't think one can answer the question of legitimacy under international law by reference to international law. They are separate bodies of law, as for example state and federal law. Of course, there is no one who can enforce international law against the United States, but that does not mean there are no implications to violating international law. Our conduct influences the behavior other countries and the cooperation we get from other countries when we went it. Most social relations are not governed by legally enforceable rules. But there are still consequences that follow from the failure to observe norms. One of those onsequences is that demand that others observe those norms will be ignored coming from one who is observed ignoring them. Reciprocity is a very deeply rooted human expectation. As for domestic law, the question of legitimacy cannot be answered by appeal to the definition of war. The questions at present are whether Obama is observing the limitations of the War Powers Act and whether the act is constitutional. The meaning of "war" as used in the constitution might be relevant if Congress had not spoken and had not accorded the president limited authority to proceed without specific congressional action. This is not a case of inherent presidential power.
- roidubouloi
April 3, 2011 at 6:36pm
Yuck. "legitimacy under international law by reference to domestic law"
- roidubouloi
April 3, 2011 at 6:38pm
Roi: The current actions of the intervenors, attacking Libyan armed forces not to protect civilians but to force those armed forces to abandon Qaddafi lest they be destroyed, are in my opinion beyond the scope of the resolution and should stop. I am sorry, but HUH? Have you been paying the slightest bit of attention to what has been happening in Misurata or Az Zintan, or what happened in Zawiyah? And Gadhafi is ordering his troops to press on to Benghazi, right now they are in Al Brega. The airstrikes in Misurata of course are meant to protect the civilians of Misurata. The one problem with the UN resolution is that the civilians of Misurata are not being protected, but the only way to protect them would be invasion, which ain't going to happen. Other than that, it seems to me that the entire Obama strategy is stalemate. A fully supplied rebel army would likely themselves raze Sirte from the ground in taking it. For now a stalemate works great for the East, they control the bulk of the oil, have inked a deal with Qatar, are getting their act together slowly. Gadhafi, on the other hand, will lose the money war, will start to run out of provisions, will face continuing defections, etc. until, hopefully, those around him will be happy to sacrifice the Gadhafi family for a seat at the table of a new Libya. Had it been not for this twist of fate, had Misurata and Sirte been where each other was, this war would be very different. I wish Turkey would take Gadhafi up on his pledges of a ceasefire and say they would station peacekeepers in Misurata, I don't know if that would work (I highly doubt it) but the fate of Misurata does weigh heavily on my mind.
- blackton
April 3, 2011 at 8:24pm
I am responding to the reported comments of American officials, blackton, what they SAY they are now doing. To the extent that they are sticking to the mandate of the Security Council, I have no problem, but one ought to recognize that the rebels are not fighting strictly defensively. One cannot expect Qaddafi and those loyal to him simply to allow themselves to be attacked without defending. We have to decide whether our goal is to tamp down the violence, as it should be, or to enable the rebels to conduct offensive operations, which is without sanction and can very well have the effect of increasing the violence. Not our job.
- roidubouloi
April 3, 2011 at 9:41pm
I agree with roi. It's a fine line given the fluid nature of the conflict, but it's one we've got to walk in the interest of maintaining UN support not just for this situation, but in making sure the precedent for R2P is a positive one for the future. Just please G-d, let's make those decisions without subjecting every jot and tiddle of a highly kinetic and unpredictable operation to the deliberations of the UNSC. One of the many lessons of Iraq was the effect of taking a perfectly adequate mandate in 678, which called for "all necessary means" to evict Iraq from Kuwait "and return the region to peace and stability"; and "improving" it with a further fifty-two (52) Resolutions (all by the way titled "On the matter of Iraq and Kuwait"), that had the culmulative effect of killing about a million innocent people and strengthening Saddam Hussein's grip on power. Ironyroad is correct in pointing out that Bush, like Clinton before him, was at pains to bang on endlessly about every conceivable "justication", including but not limited to UNSC Resolutions and "intelligence" that was a grab-bag of facts, fictions, and hunches. The result was to detract from rather than enhance legitimacy. If Obama sticks to one Resolution, as Harry Truman did, we will be much better off, and it will be another way to demonstrate his positive difference from Bush.
- Robert Powell
April 4, 2011 at 7:36am
I, like RP, believe that roi misreads our Constitution with respect to the supposed primacy of the UN over domestic Congressional approval of these matters. That said, I agree with roi and RP that we must take care not to overreach in our bombing so as to go beyond the bounds of UNSC 1973. Because of the UNSC, the CinC has chosen an end (Q must go) to which he has not and cannot apply the means to achieve it. At least not in the short term.
- butchie b
April 4, 2011 at 1:56pm
I don't think the UN has any "primacy" over the Constitution. The Contitution is the corporate charter of the US and determines which corporate acts are legitimate within it's bounds. But the Constitution cannot make legitimate under international law something that is not. They are separate bodies of law. A corporation can observe all of the procedures necessary for action and still end up committing a crime. Its corporate charter cannot exonerate it. You guys simply cannot gat your heads around the idea that law can have consequences even without an enforcer. What about religious law? Do you think it means nothing in our country because there are no police or courts to enforce it? Most social relations, including those amongst states, involve shared consent to rules, even rules of etiquette. Enforcement with a gun is the exceptional case, not the general case. International law matters because it effects the behavior of states. And the United States has more of an interest in that state of affairs than any other state as the closest thing to a global hegemon. That is why WE wrote the UN charter. Unfortunately, the modern conservative movement is ignorant of history as of most everything else.
- roidubouloi
April 4, 2011 at 3:29pm
With respect roi, there's a big difference between the contract a corporate entity and its stockholders have with the relevant governmental authority, and the relationship between a voluntary international organization like the UN which features a high proportion of non-democratic members, and a traditional rule-of-law democracy. Laws and customs can have consequences even without an enforcer. But they are orders of magnitude less significant than those that have one. In most matters of international intercourse custom and etiquette work just fine. In matters of war and peace, not so much. Anyway, I agree that we need to pay attention to the limits of 1973.
- Robert Powell
April 4, 2011 at 4:20pm
US law is a discreet body of laws (state, federal, local) that can be enforced. International law, to the extent such a thing exists, is as you say - rules followed sometimes by nation-states when they deem it to be in their national interest. I think religious law in our country means not much, except to those believers who voluntarily subject themselves to its strictures. Int'l law affects the behavior of some states some of the time. The Soviets paid lip service to int'l law all the time, while rarely following any code of conduct not in their perceived interest. The UN charter is a great aspirational document, but the UN is rightfully seen as an instrument of US foreign policy. It very well may be that if we don't follow the "rules" others won't either. But my experience has been that most of the time nations don't follow them whether we do or not. And, roi, try to go 3 messages without insulting someone (usually but not always conservatives).
- butchie b
April 4, 2011 at 4:28pm
Hey butchie. Good to see you kicking in these days. Roid has a provisional and conditional approach to his philosophical integration of Law and its authoritative underpinnings. It been interesting to see him wrestle with his own political sympathies and hierarchical authority. Flexibility does have its limitations. He wants to plant a flag in the worst way but..... the DO is quite naturally an extension of the why. Various gradations of authoritative primacy according to Roid seem to be quite dependent upon the occupant in the White House. It is a relatively common phenomenon but he has the capacity to shave those distinctions to a razor width. That last statement is both a compliment and criticism. By the way, I back this action we are taking in Libya. These post cold war confrontations are fraught with trap doors and consequences as RP rightly points out. I guess that's why were are all kicking it about. A new paradigmatic is being shaped and every step we take is pregnant.?
- jacko
April 4, 2011 at 5:29pm
You are confusing two different points, RP, and I have no idea what the hell you are talking about jacko. My point in analogizing corporate law to the Constitution is because the Constitution IS a corporate charter. That's what a state is, a type of corporation. The Constitution governs what happens within the corporation which, in this case, is the state called the United States of America. International law is external to the state and effects its relationships with other states. The Constitution is essentially irrelevant to international law except to the extent that that body of law is positively incorporated in domestic law, as it is in a few cases. Thus, it is simply a misunderstanding to ask whether the Constitution is superior to international law or vice versa. No matter how clearly constitutional an action, it may not comply with international law, and vice versa. The two bodies of law have, as it were, a different jurisdiction. Each is superior within its sphere. The question whether international law exists and what are its effects is a second matter. It does exist. It does have effects. And it has been a reasonably successful US policy to minimize our hegemonic policing costs by establishing a system and body of international law. If we eviscerate that system, our costs will go up, both in blood and treasure, and the world we live in will be less secure. The right trivializes those goods because it is obsessed with US power and believes that we can have whatever we want at an acceptable cost through the aggressive use of military force. We cannot. See, e.g., Iraq, a nothing power that has bled the US Treasury and our military capabilities.
- roidubouloi
April 4, 2011 at 5:49pm
I would say that the Soviets were at least as observant of international law as we were, possibly more so.
- roidubouloi
April 4, 2011 at 5:50pm
And I was also supportive of intervention in Libya, provided that it was sanctioned by the UNSC. Protecting civilians has obtained that sanction. Regime change has not.
- roidubouloi
April 4, 2011 at 5:52pm
"and I have no idea what the hell you are talking about jacko" Sorry, man. I thought I was being straightforward. I think you are conditional with your Letter of the Law proclamations. I think you entertain ambiguities in that Letter when it is convenient for you..... politically. You happily fashion lost Sinai commandments according to US domestic political fortunes.
- jacko
April 4, 2011 at 6:14pm
That is at least clear, but I still don't know what you are talking about, jacko. I have been quite consistent in saying that Obama should stick to action within the UN mandate, and, if he abuses it to attempt regime change, he should consider himself a neocon. I have certainly not suggested that Obama's actions are any more exempt from international law than Bush's or anyone elses. I think he should stick to what is permitted by the UN Charter.
- roidubouloi
April 4, 2011 at 6:30pm
I'll give as much that you indeed did worry a bit about the whole neocon thing. It's important for you to protect the whole neocon pejorative. That said, I have few doubts about the criminal lawlessness indictment you would have thrown in a Bush administrations direction. The Dems silence on this issue is a interesting.
- jacko
April 4, 2011 at 7:43pm
"The Dems silence on this issue is a interesting", should be The Dems silence on this issue is interesting.
- jacko
April 4, 2011 at 7:45pm
To go a step further, Roid, what is the basis for law? Did you once say consensus is/are the sole grounds?
- jacko
April 4, 2011 at 7:48pm
The principal basis for law is social consensus, that can be achieved in different ways. It is not the sole basis.
- roidubouloi
April 4, 2011 at 8:01pm
The idea that the Soviet Union followed international, or any other kind of law "at least as much as we" is beyond absurd. Their system from Day 1 was based entirely on the whims of "the Vanguard of the Proletariat", and featured invasions, manipulated coups d'etat and the suborning of other countries, the exile of whole nations to frozen wildernesses, countless selective assassinations world-wide, institutionalized slave labor, and mass murder on a scale practically unmatched in history. If that's what it means to be "observant of international law", then it is a truly imaginary concept.
- Robert Powell
April 5, 2011 at 3:30am
Quite a contemptuous machine, no? Really though, Robert, faulty gears and bad grease are necessarily expendable. They fuck up efficiency. Nothing wrong with this beautiful contraption we have built. If it doesn't work, you're the problem. List of things to do today. 1. Kill God. Perhaps set religion to the task. We'll have none of this individual BS. 2. After no. 1 anything is possible.
- jacko
April 5, 2011 at 8:48am
Yup. Since we can't be wrong, if it doesn't work we have to find someone to blame and punish. Last time I looked Lenin is still dead. God, not so much.
- Robert Powell
April 5, 2011 at 9:48am
Well, if you are talking about the body of international law referred to as human rights law, I would agree with you, RP. That, however, is unique in that it affects how states behave within their own borders, and has still only a tentative hold. If you are talking about the body of law relating to sovereignty, of which you are such a vociferous advocate here (me not so much), then I think the history is clear that the US was considerably more aggressive than the Soviet Union in suborning other governments, invasion, political assassination, engineered coups, and the like. Our reach was a lot vaster than that of the Soviet Union. It tinkered elsewhere, but largely confined its tender ministrations to its own curtilage. The US, on the other hand, had world-wide "interests" with which it justified any breach of national sovereignty convenient to it. So, yes, the US was, as to that body of law, a bigger violator than the Soviet Union.
- roidubouloi
April 5, 2011 at 10:03am
Are you counting the suboprdination/murder, etc. by the Sovs in Eastern Europe in 1945-48, followed by 40 years of Soviet domination (Ford's comment notwithstanding)? How about the Soviet planned and manned invasion of Korea in 1950? The support for Mao? 50,000 US dead, thanks to Uncle Joe. I could go on, and yes, we had our failings. I'm with Bob. Absurd.
- butchie b
April 5, 2011 at 10:13am
And just where to the Vietnam dead figure in your calculus? From wikipedia: In the south, former Emperor Bảo Đại's State of Vietnam operated, with Ngô Đình Diệm (appointed in July 1954) as his prime minister. In June 1955, Diem announced that elections would not be held. South Vietnam had rejected the agreement from the beginning and was therefore not bound by it, he said. "How can we expect 'free elections' to be held in the Communist North?" Diem asked. President Dwight D. Eisenhower echoed senior U.S. experts when he wrote that, in 1954, "80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh" over Emperor Bảo Đại. In April–June 1955, Diem (against U.S. advice) cleared the decks of any political opposition in the south by launching military operations against the Cao Dai religious sect, the Hoa Hao sect of Ba Cut, and the Binh Xuyen organized crime group (which was allied with members of the secret police and some military elements). As broad-based opposition to his harsh tactics mounted, Diem increasingly sought to blame the communists. In a referendum on the future of the State of Vietnam on 23 October, Diem rigged the poll supervised by his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu and was credited with 98.2 percent of the vote, including 133% in Saigon. His American advisers had recommended a more modest winning margin of "60 to 70 percent." Diem, however, viewed the election as a test of authority. On 26 October 1955, Diem declared the new Republic of Vietnam (ROV), with himself as president. The ROV was created largely because of the Eisenhower administration's desire for an anti-communist state in the region. I don't know if I could count the number of South American governments suborned by the US and subjected to authoritarian right-wing rule, then there is Iran. Not absurd at all. You are just selective in your reading of history. These were merely "failings," not crimes.
- roidubouloi
April 5, 2011 at 10:51am
Please butchie. I said BEYOND absurd. Ranging into bizarre. roi, with all due respect, look at the historical facts. Comparing the record of the US in these matters with that of the Soviet Union is like comparing the crime of a kid shoplifting a candy bar with those of a serial killer. Our "reach" may have been vaster, maybe, but our grasp was in a different universe. If I may recommend any of Norman Davies' works on Central/East European history, or most concisely Tim Snyder's recent and formidable "Bloodlands", or basically any competent histories of the states that fell into the Soviet orbit...really, get a fact.
- Robert Powell
April 5, 2011 at 10:58am
We probably deserve the blame for half of the perhaps 4 million people killed in Southeast Asia during our involvement. A huge crime, arguably the worst we committed during the whole period in question. You won't find me making excuses for it. We made major changes in our practices as a result of lessons learned. But the Soviet body count, and social/political impact, was vastly larger. Exempting for no moral reason but to grant your distinction the truly appalling number of Russians wiped out by this regime, one must add other nations, like the Poles, Ukrainians, Balts, Kalmyks, Tartars, Chechens, Finns, Germans, Czechs, Bulgarians, Romanians, Belarusians, Afghans, Hungarians, and countless others over the Soviet Empire. Our crimes in Latin America and Africa were indeed crimes, but on a so much smaller scale as to make realistic comparisons risible.
- Robert Powell
April 5, 2011 at 11:14am
OK, RP. Beyond absurd it is. Yes, VN was a major crime/geopolitical error. As was Afghanistan for the Sovs. But the historical record is clear - there was no moral equivalence between the US and the USSR. To suggest otherwise is simply mistaken.
- butchie b
April 5, 2011 at 11:27am
I did not suggest that there is any moral equivalence between the US and the Soviet Union. I said that we were more aggressive violators than they of international law regarding sovereignty and self-determination. In the realm of human rights, they were gross violators and we certainly were not. If you want to miss the point, or rather re-state it as your own rather different point with which you can then disagree, be my guest. But your fulminations about moral equivalence do not alter the reality that during the Cold War the US was a more aggressive violator of national sovereignty than was the Soviet Union.
- roidubouloi
April 5, 2011 at 12:49pm
Not fulminating. Really. No, we were not a more aggressive violator of nat'l sovereignty, however defined, than was the USSR during the Cold War. This was one reason we won it.
- butchie b
April 5, 2011 at 12:53pm
Enjoy the comfort of your fictional history. Always interests me that you guys on the right cannot sustain your ideology without a healthy dose of fantasy. Reality is just too tough for you to deal with it seems. We won the Cold War because we had a much stronger economic system and manage to restrain or ignore the right wingnuts of that era who were all for hot war. Had it been the other way around, we would have lost it.
- roidubouloi
April 5, 2011 at 12:58pm
Agreed our economic system was much stronger. Don't know which wing-nuts you're referring to - Kennedy's advisors in October, 1962? MacArthur? Don't remember too many who openly called for war with the USSR.
- butchie b
April 5, 2011 at 2:10pm
"We won the Cold War because we had a much stronger economic system and manage to restrain or ignore the right wingnuts of that era who were all for hot war. Had it been the other way around, we would have lost it." I have to admit, Roid, that you have me piqued and although I may regret it is my hope that you might get me learned up on all of this. Give me the narrative s'il vous plait.
- jacko
April 5, 2011 at 2:37pm
In the Korean War, Truman (and the United Nations) officially endorsed a policy of rollback—the destruction of the Communist North Korean government, and sent UN forces across the 38th parallel to take over North Korea.[16] The rollback strategy, however, caused the Chinese to intervene, and they pushed the UN forces back to the 38th parallel. the failure of the rollback policy, despite its advocacy by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, moved to the US to a commitment to the containment policy, without rollback.[17] Following Chinese successes, Truman blamed MacArthur's focus on victory and adopted a "limited war" or containment policy. For his part, MacArthur denounced Truman's "No-win policy."[18] Many Republicans, including John Foster Dulles, concluded that Truman had been too timid. In 1952, Dulles called for rollback and the eventual "liberation" of eastern Europe.[19] Dulles was named secretary of state by incoming President Dwight Eisenhower, but Eisenhower's decision not to intervene during the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 made containment a bipartisan doctrine. President Eisenhower relied on clandestine CIA actions to undermine hostile governments and used economic and military foreign aid to strengthen governments supporting the American position in the Cold War.[20] [edit] Vietnam Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate for president in 1964, challenged containment and asked, "Why not victory?"[21] President Johnson, the Democratic nominee, answered that rollback risked nuclear war. Johnson explained containment doctrine by quoting the Bible: "Hitherto shalt thou come, but not further."[22] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containment#Dulles
- roidubouloi
April 5, 2011 at 2:39pm
I don't believe that roid's point is one of moral equivalence, but rather one of comparative interventionist records, connected to our scope for action. One can accept that argument, I think, while taking care to underline that it was often -- not always but often -- an attraction to the American menu of ideas and values and a distrust of Soviet communism that enabled us to intervene. Despite the general negative consensus of the Vietnam war, for example, there are many Vietnamese-Americans who actually look on our history there with some approval -- not applauding the death and destruction, of course, but for many of them we seemed after a certain point the only alternative to a communist-infused nationalism. The boat people were the most painful and stark manifestation of this aspect of our common experience.
- ironyroad
April 5, 2011 at 2:52pm
Thanks for the clarification. I thought you were making a more comprehensive generalization and was wondering what kind of justification was in the offing.
- jacko
April 5, 2011 at 3:19pm
"I don't believe that roid's point is one of moral equivalence, but rather one of comparative interventionist records, connected to our scope for action." Thank you for that clarification, irony. It was indeed the point I was making. I was not even attempting to make a claim about the morality of our many extra-legal interventions, only that we were rather more active in this regard than the Soviet Union.
- roidubouloi
April 5, 2011 at 5:25pm
or the point I was attempting to make.
- roidubouloi
April 5, 2011 at 5:26pm
You're just simply wrong on the facts roi. Even the most cursory survey of the post-WWII history of countries in the Soviet orbit like Poland, E.Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, etc--not to mention the states independent of the USSR before forceable incorporation like Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltics, Kazakstan, the Caucasus, and Central Asia--reveals a record of appalling and comprehensive intervention, including systematic mass murder, of the sort that has no parallel in any or all of our often misguided attempts to block communist expansionism. Absolutely apples and oranges.
- Robert Powell
April 5, 2011 at 6:11pm
I don't think so. A number, if not all, of the states you cite as forceably incorporated in the USSR, if not all, were already part of the Russian Empire. Leaving aside the legitimacy of historical empires, there was no invasion of sovereign states involved. The Eastern European states were occupied/puppets. I am not interested in arguing about "ongoing violations" and how many times they should be counted. If you look at the number of governments "changed" by the US through some form of overt or overt armed force from the creation of the UN onward, I think you will find that we were a lot busier than the Russians.
- roidubouloi
April 5, 2011 at 7:10pm
overt of covert armed forced
- roidubouloi
April 5, 2011 at 7:11pm
Still orbiting in outer space, roi. To name just a few of the more egregious examples, the "legally" independent states that were invaded, occupied, and/or incorporated forceably into the Soviet Empire included Poland, half of Germany, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, along with parts of others like Romania. Ukraine and Belarus, which also won their independence briefly after WWI, should properly be included along with a number of other nations that were formerly part of the Russian Empire. I'm unaware of any feature of "international law" that permits a former colonial power, much less a successor state of a former colonial power, to invade and subdue by rape, torture, enslavement, and mass murder former colonies, much less independent states of generally-recognized standing. We were involved in supporting factions friendly to us in a number of areas under threat of Soviet expansion, sometimes with excellent results (South Korea, West Germany, Austria, etc), sometimes with lousy results (Vietnam, Iran, Zaire), with a mixed bag in various Third World locations in Africa and Latin America. Some of our mistakes during this period were probably violations of "international law". In none of them did our actions include the deliberate mass murder of whole classes of people, the decapitation of entire societies by police terror, ethnic cleansing of tens of millions under circumstances that amounted to mass murder in its own right, and the kind of totalitarian micromanagement of formerly independent nations that characterized the Soviet model. I think we should be honest about the mistakes we made in the honest attempt to prevent the kind of horror Soviet-style communism had a well-established track record of bringing to nations that fell under its sway. But to suggest that they approached, or were even in the same universe as Soviet crimes in terms of "international law" is to demonstrate that this is a deeply flawed concept.
- Robert Powell
April 6, 2011 at 7:47am
You omit various coups and assassinations arranged by the US. No matter. The point stands. There is nothing flawed about the legal concepts. There is a difference between human rights law and the laws of self-determination and sovereignty. I was not comparing the human rights record of the US to that of the Soviets. If that was unclear, it was clarified in the subsequent discussion. As for actions traducing the self-determination of other states, removing and installing governments through various means, I think the record is clear that the US was much more active than the USSR throughout the Cold War. You seem to think that is justified by the human rights record of the Soviet Union. The people who had to live under the regimes we imposed, such as the Iranians burdened with SAVAK, might not agree. Your history of Eastern Europe is not accurate either. For example, Belarus never achieved independence, although it was attempted. When Germany withdrew, the states of which Belarus had been a part before the war wasted no time in moving to reclaim their territory. In a bit of irony, the nations doing so included Poland. The question as to what constitutes colonial occupation and what constitutes the incorporation of territory by force in the era prior to the founding of the UN is not simple. Large parts of the southwest US were conquered and forcibly incorporated. I don't suppose that alters your view of the secession of Texas in 1861. Many modern states, Spain for example, include territory conquered and ethnic minorities that still seek independence. It is anachronistic to impose current ideas about these problems on events in 1918 and 1919. One should also note that, as vicious as the Russian civil war was, it might have been less so had European states and the United States not invaded and given aid to the Russian Whites. In all these discussions, it is best to avoid anachronisms as this simply leads to intractable problems of infinite regress as modern ideas are pushed further and further into the past without resolution. The period in question is that under the UN Charter that established a new body of international law. I think it correct that there were many more violations of self-determination, to install friendly government, by the US than by the Soviet Union. Soviet human rights violations were also not a peculiar feature of its colonization of Eastern Europe. It treated its own population no less cruelly. If France killed a larger percentage of the population of Algeria than the Russians killed Czechs, that does not legitimize Russian colonization of Czechoslovakia. If, as was surely the case, Soviet violations of human rights within its empire were hideous and find nothing comparable in the West (with the exception of an outlier like South Africa), that does not exonerate US subornation of other states to install governments friendly to it. The whole business of excusing violations of law by pointing to worse crimes committed elsewhere is, frankly, ridiculous. It is a favored argument of Israeli rightists with respect to contemporary violations of law by Israel. Is it also a favorite of the right in general, or are you atypical? I do not excuse Soviet crimes because of those committed by the US, just as we do not in domestic law excuse a crime committed by one person because someone else did something worse and was not punished for it. I am able to hold in my head at one time that both the Soviet Union and the US committed crimes under international law, and that those of the Soviet Union were far worse. That the incidents of subornation of other states by the US were greater in number is also true.
- roidubouloi
April 6, 2011 at 9:04am
I'm still with RP, but thanks for the explanation, roi. We'll just agree to disagree.
- butchie b
April 6, 2011 at 12:00pm
Okay, that's good with me. I enjoyed the discussion, truly.
- roidubouloi
April 6, 2011 at 12:48pm
First, the Soviet Union invaded with tanks, aircraft, artillery, and massive NKVD deployments tasked with murdering elites the sovereign states of Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, among others. All of these states were commonly recognized, with seats in the League of Nations, embassies in foreign capitols, the works. Casualties were in the millions, but this argument is not, as you say, about human rights. Second, although you are correct that Belarussian nationalism was frustrated, that of Ukraine was not, and the repression aimed at their attempts to maintain independence was met by the shooting and starvation deaths of at least five million people. Ironically, they had their own seat in the UN General Assembly under the Soviets. There is nothing remotely like that in the history of the modern USA although minus your appropriate caveat about anachronism, we might suggest our treatment of the native Americans as the closet we've come ever. Third, the operations of the KGB in Eastern Europe and other regions in the Soviet sphere after WWII and the advent of the UN were aimed directly at suborning the sovereignty of recognized states, and was both extremely bloody and extremely effective. We engaged in a handful of coups and fewer assassinations, but again in a different universe of aggression than the Soviets. They killed more people in Warsaw and Gdansk than we did in every coup and assassination we were involved in worldwide, combined. In countries where our mistakes were the most egregious like Iran or Vietnam, there was a very large element of the population that asked for our help on the credible grounds that they faced communist subversion of the sort endured by Central Europe. I have not made any attempt to "excuse violations of law". Where we made mistakes it is in our interest to own up to them and attempt to learn how to avoid them in the future. But the historical record reveals no examples of US action remotely on par with the repression of states like Hungary, East Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, never mind Afghanistan. Probably the most comprehensive unclassified catalog of our errors can be found in the recent award-winning "Legacy of Ashes". You will search it in vain for anything anywhere near the scale of Soviet subversion and repression of other states. You're going to need a lot more, and more legitimate, data than the sort of rumor, innuendo, and urban legend that has erected a giant myth about CIA activities if you're going to verify American meddling on anywhere near the scale of the Soviets. My own experience indicates that if the CIA, and American meddling generally, was anywhere near as widespread and pernicious as is taken as fact by conspiracy theorists, we would be living in a different world. But then I suppose those in the "Blame America First" camp already are.
- Robert Powell
April 6, 2011 at 1:10pm
Hmmm. Roid has this Pauline kind of in for a penny in for a pound equivalence thing going. All fall short before the glory of God thence do not thump too proudly lest blah, blah, blah. Now there is some truth there within a context but I can't help but wonder if your thoughts and feelings aren't motivated by something other than the metaphysical. Perhaps you are suffering Republican/Reaganitis. I can't help but imagine you yowling about the injustice of bullshit fictions as the wall is being torn down. It didn't really happen like that thus determined to resurrect that wall according to new and improved specs and all shall worship at the altar of the UNSC in humble supplication.
- jacko
April 6, 2011 at 6:58pm
Roid. I want to change that first sentence and please consider it directly to you as in Roid, you have this Pauline..... No need to imply talking about you rather than directly to you. That is kind of a small approach. But I too fall short occasionally. As a matter of fact it is an kind of SOP for me. No conspiratorial offense intended.
- jacko
April 6, 2011 at 7:39pm
RP: the reason I missed this thread was because I was reading Snyder's "Bloodlands" and dealing with some real-life. Now that I have read most of this thread, I think the main point for you to understand is that roid starts historical tallies of violations of national sovereignty maybe in 1948, by which time, the USSR had already occupied Eastern Europe. Before I read "Bloodlands", I read Harry S. Truman's memoirs, two volumes discovered in my tiny village library. Truman went into great detail about Stalin/Molotov post-war deceits, especially when they trampled Truman's vision for the UN, and how so much of the post-war occupations were determined by which Allied army was geographically convenient to accept the surrender of the Germans or Japanese. How Korea got divided. Wherever the Soviets accepted the surrenders was where they stayed, except for bits of Yugoslavia. Truman wanted to kill Stalin over Poland :) Truman's memoir is selective, but far more detailed on Korea than any Wikipedia entry. I believe "Bloodlands" will (should) win the Pulitzer Prize for history. I just turned to the US Civil War, but keep wanting to re-read "Bloodlands". paradigm-shifting. well, back to Antietam...
- K2K
April 6, 2011 at 8:59pm
btw, Truman does mention Libya in his memoir - as a fragmented colony that had to be cobbled together so that Italy could sign the formal peace treaty, join the United Nations, participate in the Marshall Plan, and avoid a political takeover by Communist Party in the next election....
- K2K
April 6, 2011 at 9:03pm
Yeah, the record is pretty clear if one wants to look. I'm expecting this thread to disappear in cyberspace now that tnr has "improved" the website again--constant bombardment by ads to subscribe even after logging in as a subscriber, impossibly scrambled previous posts, etc. I wish they would get a real IT department/consultant and stop letting their grandchildren work on the site...
- Robert Powell
April 7, 2011 at 4:08am
RP: a few of us bookmark an engaging TNR thread, but Libya will move on to the next post, and it would appear the new TNR format is skewing easy to find posts to domestic hyper-partisanship in hourly fits. Today's headlines make it sound as though NATO is now fighting for Qaddhafi - more 'mistakes'? At least the Berkshires are getting some nice weather today. As usual, American history hits too close to whatever present we are in, so I put aside the Civil War and started "King Leopold's Ghosts" last night. Only way I can get my mind off the tragedy that is today's America is to read tragic, horrible histories of places I will never know.
- K2K
April 7, 2011 at 8:27am
You never know. I hear there's a new luxury hotel opening in Kinshasa/Leopoldville.
- Robert Powell
April 7, 2011 at 12:27pm