Statebuilding in Libya is not optional
While top officials scramble to straighten out how NATO will handle Libya, the situation on the ground there is getting much less attention than it merits. Our new-found rebel friends are not doing well, either in their military efforts or in their attempts to create a proto-governing structure. Heather Hurlburt writes at The New Republic:
I am less frantic about the endgame than many observers, not because I am more sanguine but because very often planners who have a clear endgame in mind are deluding themselves anyway. (The architects of the Iraq War believed they had thought through how everything would play out).
She certainly has a point about the architects of the Iraq war, but that is no reason for not planning now for the end of the Libya war, which will pose difficult problems, whenever it happens.
Libya is a country with less than a complete state, a condition that is readily exploited for nefarious purposes (in the past colonial ones, in this century usually extremist ones). No one should imagine that the state is going to emerge magically from the ashes, ready to accept whatever new leadership we decide it deserves. That in fact was the thoroughly flawed plan for “decapitation” at the end of the Iraq war that she refers to so disparagingly.
Nor should we be imagining that building a Libyan state is somehow a U.S. responsibility, though it is not unreasonable to expect the Americans to contribute in some way to the effort. Arab League? Doubtful. UN? Lots of experience, limited means. EU? Decent experience, lots of means, geographic proximity. It seems to me there are ample options–the important thing is to decide who will lead (I’d obviously opt for the Europeans) and then try to ensure that whoever does brings to bear the necessary resources.
Leaving state-building after this war to chance is dangerous. It could mean a partitioned Libya, or one that collapses like Somalia, or one that becomes a haven for extremism. To be fair, Heather also says,
We should be skeptical, frantically collecting information, hedging our bets and figuring out what the various forces are in Libya and how we can promote better outcomes and hedge against worse ones…
That does not go far enough: we need to ensure that Libya after this war is stabilized and develops the kind of state that will not allow it to go off the rails again. Less than that would be irresponsible. The effort can, indeed should, be led by the Libyans, but they will need help. If someone forgot to tell the President that state-building was part of the package, that was a big mistake. Focusing on the end-state may not seem urgent, but it is more important than the NATO scholasticism that has preoccupied the Secretary of State for days.
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Send in the EU? The colonialists who are held as responsible for all of Africa’s and the Mid-East’s problems, the western imperialists intent on seizing their oil, gold, diamonds…? The UN at least is not composed exclusively of the traditional enemy, but it’s hardly covered itself in glory in Bosnia and Kosovo. (They deal with Serbia like some teachers do with bullies, by trying to raise their self-esteem while showing no favoritism to the kids being picked on. It would have been kinder simply to have said from the beginning that they lost a war and any right to rule another people by their treatment of them, and therefore had lost the territory the people have inhabited since the Bronze Age, if not the Neolithic. Despite the absence of monasteries.)
Turkey, maybe? And – depending on how long this all takes – Egypt and Tunisia? (Is a reconstituted Ottoman Empire the solution to regional problems? The Turks and Arabs haven’t always been best friends, of course …)
Libya at least has the resources to pay for its own recovery. And the rebels are showing some pragmatism, maybe based on Russian moves – they’re promising to honor existing contracts. Depending on how resistant the west of the country proves to be to uniting with the east, maybe they’d settle for a federation? Tripolitania might turn out to be as resentful as Serbia, especially if they have to turn admired leaders over to the ICC, but at least it wouldn’t be fueled by the racial disdain and religious antagonism you sense in Serbia.