Will Gaddafi outlast Obama's first term?
Sadeq Khan
The 'reset' of US foreign policy and world dominance in the new American century envisaged by President Barack Obama professedly sought to minimise Pentagon's direct involvement in global policing and to maximise US diplomatic clout by a mixture of carrot and stick initiatives, manoeuvres at the UN, and throwing the weight of US military might around to smartly cajole hesitant nations to submit to American will. And in pursuing this smart strategy, the Obama administration like his predecessor tends to shift the borderline of what is legal or what is mandated in both national and international dealings.
Questions are being raised in the US congress. Questions are also being raised, albeit less forcefully, in some international forums. As Tom Engelhardt observes in Tom Dispatch.com, May 30: "Is the Libyan war legal?
"In terms of what used to be called 'foreign policy', and more recently 'national security', the United States is now a post-legal society. (And you could certainly include in this mix the too-big-to-jail financial and corporate elite.)
"The Intelligence Community with its $80 billion-plus budget, the National Security Complex, including the Pentagon and that post-9/11 creation, the Department of Homeland Security, with its $1.2 trillion-plus budget, and the imperial executive have thrived in these years. They have all expanded their powers and prerogatives based largely on the claim that they are protecting the American people from potential harm from terrorists out to destroy our world. "Welcome to post-legal America. It's time to stop wondering whether its acts are illegal and start asking: Do you really want to be this 'safe'?"
Indeed the US Congress, where many Republicans think that US military mission in Libya (under NATO cover) is a waste and an Obama electioneering stance, as there is no significant American national interest involved, is questioning the President on a technicality that Congressional approval was not obtained by Obama for warring in Libya within the stipulated time. Obama, like his predecessor, will probably be able to fuzz the issue by informing Congress about US interests and involvements in Libya and asserting that US in the backseat of NATO is actually not at war there.
Meanwhile, the Obama strategy is being very effectively practised with invaluable inputs from his globe-trotting Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton in Africa. Invited to attend an African Union assembly, US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton warned African leaders that authoritarian governments ruled by aging despots "were no longer acceptable", and those who refuse democratic reforms would find themselves "on the wrong side of history." She urged the African Union on June 13 to end its lingering relations with Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. She acknowledged that many members, though not all, disagreed with the military intervention in Libya led by the United States and NATO, but she urged all members to call for a genuine ceasefire and the departure of Col. Gaddafi.
But the Libyan leader, who over the years had ample time to regiment his people to submit to his oriental-style messianic authority in a social order very different from the Western world, is not yielding. As NATO air-raids continued to pound Gaddafi compound in Tripoli, and NATO officials repeatedly said that Gaddafi was on the run, the Libyan leader calmly played a game of chess with an informal envoy from Russia in the Olympic stadium of Tripoli and expressed his own resolve. As reported by Kirsan N. Ilyumzhinov, a former Russian provincial governor and president of international chess federation FIDE, Col. Gaddafi wanted NATO to stop bombing and rebels to join him in peace negotiations. "I do not understand why they want to send me away. I am not the president, I am not the minister, I am not the king." The Libyan leader indeed quit all the formal positions in 1977, assuming the non-executive role of the "guide" and the title of Brother Leader.
Kremlin's official peace envoy to Libya, Mikhail V. Margelov had asked Mr. Ilyumzhinov to convey a tough message to Col. Gaddafi over the chessboard: "I asked him to play white and move E-2 to E-4 and make it clear that his side is close to the end game. (Evidently, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Supremacist camaraderie is catching and now includes Slavic orthodox Russians playing white as power symbol).
But as time passed, the Obama strategy was faltering in Europe, its main base for tackling Africa. The revived trans-Atlantic partnership was not proving as dynamic as before. The outgoing US defence secretary, Robert M. Gates did not mince his words in expressing disappointment over NATO performance in Libya. Mr. Gates warned the Europeans that unless they improved their military capabilities, spent more on defence and pooled resources, NATO faced "the very real possibility of collective military irrelevance."
Gates expressed satisfaction that NATO had stayed the course in the theatre, although Afghanistan in a war that is highly unpopular among all European capitals. "Four years ago, I never would have expected the alliance to sustain this operation at this level for so long, much less add significantly more forces in 2010," Gates said at the Brussels gathering.
The contrast with the current air campaign in Libya could not be more striking. "While every alliance member voted for the Libya mission, less than half have participated at all, and fewer than a third have been willing to participate in the strike mission," Mr. Gates said, referring to NATO's North Atlantic Council and not the United Nations, where Germany abstained. He blamed the lack of military capabilities.
Most European countries, apart from Britain and France, do not see the need for military power. They seem not to believe that military force can resolve conflicts. And despite the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, the Europeans do not share the same threat perceptions as the Americans. That, say analysts, is what is undermining the trans-Atlantic relationship.
"The U.S. is a global power, while Europe thinks regionally and believes it is surrounded by friends," said Markus Kaim, defence expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. "The U.S. sees how this demilitarization is undermining NATO."
Only 5 of the 28 NATO members — the United States, Britain, France, Greece and Albania — spend the agreed 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defence. Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, "the U.S. share of NATO defence spending has now risen to more than 75 percent, at a time when politically painful budget and benefit cuts are being considered at home," Mr. Gates said.
"If that trend continues, in which the Europeans are not willing to share more of the burden, then the trans-Atlantic relationship is in serious trouble."
Analysts suggest that there is also lack of political will of Europeans in taking risks over the Libyan war, although they are keen to profit most by the fruits of victory in that war. There are ample distractions as well with economic troubles and agitations in Greece, in Portugal, in Spain, in Ireland. Analysts refer to both military and political unprepared ness of Europe, and point out, Libya is the clearest example which shows why the United States can no longer rely on the Europeans to do some of its bidding but also why the Europeans are unwilling to use military force as a tool for regime change.
"Libya is for NATO its first post-Afghanistan mission," said Mr. Kaim. "The Europeans have learned the lessons of Afghanistan. They are more and more reluctant to get involved in state and nation building on the back of using force."
There is rumour, denied by Hilary Clinton, that the Secretary of State may be opting out of her office to become World Bank Chief. Obama has a campaign to run and an adverse Congress to face. One wonders whether wily Gaddafi, a fugitive in his own ravaged country, will be able to outlast wary Obama's first term in office.