Civilization Revolutions

[steuard]

I've been absolutely glued to news about the popular uprisings in the Arab world over the past few weeks. Tunisia was somewhat under my radar, but once that revolution succeeded and the spirit of it began to spread throughout the region I was electrified. This may wind up being one of the most significant political developments we've seen for a very long time; if the ripples keep spreading, I could even imagine it being the biggest upheaval since the fall of communism.

The fall of Mubarak in Egypt was a huge turning point, and that success obviously galvanized the entire region. It's hard to overstate the symbolic value of his removal: not only was a longstanding dictator of a major regional power vanquished, but that goal was achieved by the Egyptian people acting entirely on their own. I've seen some commentators claim that these revolutions may represent the first time that the Arab people themselves have wielded direct political power ever, and that these are the first truly post-colonial political events in the region (for some definition of "the region", anyway). Even if these uprisings don't achieve all their goals, even if some of them "fail", it's precisely this sort of movement that has served to advance the spirit of democracy among a population throughout history. (I've read a very nice article on Slate making this point in a comparison of these revolutions to the revolutions across Europe in 1848.) This is Big Deal stuff.

It's been a remarkably complicated situation for the US and the Obama administration the whole time: Egypt was a precarious balancing act from an international relations standpoint. Which is better for advancing US interests around the world: standing by our loyal allies, or standing by our basic principles? I've got to come down on the "principles" side, but it's not an easy choice. (Fun aside: Alma College has occasional Saturdays when faculty interview prospective students for scholarship consideration. When I participated a few weeks ago, I used this scenario as one of my questions to assess how the students think about this sort of dilemma.)

Popular uprisings continue to simmer across the Arab world, but Libya has now become very much the focus of the movement... and I'm terribly worried about how it's going to turn out. Ghaddafi is the first of the affected dictators to be willing to slaughter his own people, but the rebels are hanging on. I expect that both the people and the leaders of other nations in the region are watching very closely to see how this plays out, and I've felt from the start that this may well make or break the entire regional movement. If the people succeed in ousting Ghaddafi despite his use of violence (which, I expect, would end in a very messy way for Ghaddafi personally), I fully expect the dominoes to truly start to fall throughout the Arab world (and quite possibly with less bloodshed than we've seen in Libya). But if Ghaddafi hangs on (whether by crushing the rebels or just by maintaining a tenuous grip on power through an extended civil war), the people of neighboring countries will be demoralized, and I fear that the leaders of those countries will take Ghaddafi's example as a model of what works to maintain their power. This is a truly delicate moment.

And because of the danger of the situation, there is beginning to be some pressure for outsiders to intervene in Libya. As discussed in this New York Times article, some of the Libyan revel leaders are considering asking the UN to provide air strikes against Ghaddafi's forces. And of course, if it came to that, "the UN" would probably wind up meaning "the US". For that matter, there may already be pressure on the Obama administration to take military action to make sure that Libya achieves its freedom: getting rid of Ghaddafi and seeing the rebels establish a democracy there would be strongly in the US's interests.

But oh my word, I'm terrified of the thought of the US getting militarily involved there. I hadn't realized until very recently that it was a possibility. I mean, yes, getting rid of Ghaddafi would be fantastic (and if he remains in power now, it will come at a huge cost in blood), but this really shouldn't be our job! Not only are we already overextended militarily, but (as already noted) there is tremendous value in the Arab world seeing every one of these revolutions as their own achievement. If we were to intervene in Libya, we'd run the risk not just of devaluing the Libyan people's achievements but in retroactively cheapening Egypt and Tunisia, too. Worst of all, it's not clear how well our military could handle three serious regional conflicts at once, and (as my friend Will points out) even if they could pull it off there would be entirely too much temptation for other hostile regimes to take advantage of our overextended status.

So I'm not sure what our course of action should be here. If we're somehow forced to get involved, maybe there's a way to provide some support to the rebels in Libya without getting directly involved ourselves, but I don't really see it. (I've heard that Ghaddafi's forces rely heavily on foreign mercenaries; could we maybe create some sort of naval and/or border blockade to insist that "the people of Libya must be allowed to sort this out without foreign interference"? It would be a fine line to walk, and it wouldn't diminish the cost to our own military at all.) The best case scenario would be for Ghaddafi to recognize that he's lost control and to flee the country of his own accord. But that doesn't seem to be his style.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Comments

[donaithnen.livejournal.com]

Not done reading yet, but i certainly wouldn't say it was the first time Arab people have wielded direct political power. Not that it did them much good unfortunately =/ (And for that matter, didn't Iraq have elections recently?)

[donaithnen.livejournal.com]

Also, i've heard claims that Mubarak actually wanted to kill the protesters in Egypt, but the army refused. Which if true means that Ghaddafi isn't worse than Mubarak, but Egypt's military officers are better than Libya's.

And finally, have you already heard that we've got warships on the way over there right now?

Democracy without anarchy

[beth_leonard]

I think democracy without anarchy only works if you've built the pyramids.

"Pyramids: The Pyramids are the greatest and oldest of the ancient Wonders. Their construction requires great government control of the entire nation to make possible the effort of their construction.
A civilization that possesses the Pyramids may change government type without going through a period of Anarchy. In addition, that civilization may select any type of government, not just those for which it has made the correct advance. For example, the possessing nation may become a Democracy long before it acquires the technology of Democracy."

So clearly Egypt is going to be all right, but Libya is going to be in a heap of trouble for a few years.

...

I wish I had something more enlightening to say. I remember what a big deal the fall of the iron curtain was as a teenager, and until this is all resolved I don't know how best to share the current events with my children, when I don't yet fully understand them myself. Every night at bedtime we talk about one happy thing and one sad thing that happened during the day, and I've been considering having the childrens' fish state daily world news items as the fish's happy and sad events.

PS. Steuard, you made some good points over in patri's journal in response to my comment, but I didn't have anything constructive to add so I didn't respond.
--Beth

Re: Democracy without anarchy

[steuard.livejournal.com]

That's hilarious, and I'm embarrassed that I hadn't made the connection with the Pyramids myself. :)

I very much like the idea of casting the fish as the household's news junkies. I mean, what else would they do while they're swimming around that tank all day. :)

(As for "nothing constructive to add", I often wind up feeling that way myself.)

[steuard.livejournal.com]

That's a good point about Mubarak's desire and the ethics of Egypt's military, and I agree: the Egyptian military's refusal to attack the people played a huge part in what happened there. Ghaddafi, by contrast, has deliberately kept Libya's military weak and disunified for years, to avoid precisely that sort of event. (See also his reliance on foreign mercenaries for the serious attacks on his own people.)

I wasn't aware that we were sending warships to the area. I'm not really surprised: it keeps our options open. But yeesh.

[steuard.livejournal.com]

I was being pretty sneaky with my wording, actually: the majority of Iran's population is ethnically Persian, not Arab, and that still mostly defines its self-identity. (I also dodged the Iranian example with my "for some definition of 'the region'" comment immediately after.) Yes, I'd say that Iran's revolution was another example of all this, but certainly it didn't spread the way this round already has.

As for the Iraqi elections, that's a good point. I suspect that quite a few people would point to the fact that the candidate supported by the invading Americans just happened to win as evidence that this wasn't so much "independent political power" as "going through the motions of democracy under strict supervision". Now, if the next elections there roll around and they elect someone that our government really, really doesn't like (and we let it stand anyway), that will really mean something. (Heck, look at the last Palestinian elections: they unambiguously voted Hamas into power, and what happened? Israel and the Western powers largely rejected the result and continued to support Abbas, and the resulting upheaval more or less split the Palestinian people into two proto-nations instead of one. The lesson there being, "We'll let you have democracy, but only if you use it on precisely our terms." In that case, I suspect that the only "right" thing to do would have been to accept the Hamas win, and then base our treatment of all the Palestinians on Hamas's hostile policies just as we currently do in Gaza. I entirely understand the desire to have some possible partner for negotiations, but it's not useful if that partner has no legitimacy!)

[feuervogel]

The coup of 1953 was AGAINST the people's democratic revolution. The CIA and British intelligence supported the shah against Mossadegh, who wanted to nationalize the oil production (because BP was taking >90% of the profits). 1953 is a very poor example.

[steuard.livejournal.com]

Righto. I'm clearly runniing into the limits of my Iranian history here (one reason that I tried to dodge the topic initially). I apparently have very little sense of dates; I was thinking of the more recent revolution that got rid of the Shah, which I at least have the impression was another example of a home-grown uprising against (modern) colonialism (even if I'm not that happy with where it went).

Thanks for the correction!

[feuervogel]

That was 1979 :)

All the Shah's Men by Stephen Kinzer is a concise, eminently readable (he's a journalist) documentation of 1953. That's where I learned it. (I have an excuse. The setting of my novel in progress is a future space quasi-Iran after a 1953-style coup (with some elements of 1979 as well).)

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

There have been discussions of creating a no-fly zone over Libya like we did with Iraq. This would prevent foreign mercenaries from being able to be flown in.

Personally, I think this is one of the few times the US military should be involved in democratizing a country -- when the people are motivated enough to overthrow a dictator on their own, and all they need is a little cover. The trouble with Iraq (among other things) is that neither the US nor the Iraqis outside the Baath party were ready to take over when we came in and removed Saddam.

[steuard.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can see the argument that getting involved here would be good, and in the end it might end up being better in just about every way than for Ghaddafi to regain control and massacre everyone who showed the slightest sign of rebellion. But I hope there's some way to do it that doesn't take the focus away from the Libyan people themselves, and that doesn't leave our military dangerously overextended.

[nemene.livejournal.com]

Did the fact of French aid during the American Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_in_the_American_Revolutionary_War undermine the focus of the American Revolution being a local based uprising? I think it is all about drawing the line somewhere between supporting the locla efforts and making the war our own.

Also, given the questionable (outright disgusting) history of the USA supporting abusive regimes if they behaved in a US friendly fashion diplomatically nearby (Egypt) and around the world, I think we owe it to the opprossed people of the world to assist them. Not to mention that it might be a good idea to have those new goverments have reason to consider us favorably, to help balance out their legitment reason to hate us.

[pmb.livejournal.com]

The Marines have been ready for this for some time:

From the Halls of Montezuma,
To the shores of Tripoli;
We fight our country's battles
In the air, on land, and sea;
...

[akjdg.livejournal.com]

To cynically map the intervene-in-Libya question onto one variable, which is better for energy price stability: intervention or non-intervention? Some simplistic scenarios below. Equally plausible arguments likely exist for the opposite outcomes as well.

1. Intervention. Expedite collapse of Gaddafi's regime, stabilize/resume Libyan oil production. BUT, perhaps incite rebellions in bigger oil exporting nations, prolonging instability and resulting in a longer period of increased prices and possibly causing real energy supply issues and REALLY expensive energy. Some concern/uncertainty associated with an anti-western backlash to a western intervention. Too bad Egypt isn't in a position to intervene...

2. Non-intervention. prolonged civil war in Libya, perhaps eliminating Libyan exports for the intermediate term. Other oil exporters adapt, prices remain elevated but in a contained sort of way. Strife and war tend to dampen subsequent revolutionary efforts, and existing regimes entrench. The powder keg simmers to explode another year...

Glad I'm not making the decisions. I'll stick to developing low-impact hydroelectric projects in the frozen north, thanks.