Endgames: local legitimacy is key

It is easy to get caught up in the drama and thrill of events as people throughout the Middle East lay claim to inalienable rights, but we shouldn’t forget  that revolutions don’t often end well.  What can and should we be doing to try to ensure that the hopes and aspirations of so many don’t end up serving the interests of a few?  And what vital U.S. interests need attention?

Libya.  Hillary Clinton will be attending a meeting Monday in London to talk about the future of Libya, which is a particularly difficult case because the country largely lacks a state.  What it has though is a strong tradition of local councils, most evident in Benghazi but also apparent in other places that have been liberated.  If these local councils can gain a degree of legitimacy by being inclusive, they could become the foundation for a decentralized post-Gaddafi regime.  My guess is that this would be far better than building the new Libya from Tripoli outwards, which won’t be possible in any event until Gaddafi departs.

As for U.S. influence, the most obvious way to guarantee it is to provide arms to the rebels, as Blake Hounshell suggests. There are many downsides, not the least of which is eventual misuse of the weapons to commit atrocities.  Revenge killings are more than likely in the aftermath of Gaddafi’s fall, which is one of the reasons he and his minions hold on so tenaciously.  That said, I would opt at least for the rocket-propelled grenades the rebels need to defend themselves against Gaddafi’s armor.  The bigger question is whether supplying them is done

• without changing the existing UN Security Council resolution (1973) on grounds that they are part of the “all necessary means” required to protect civilians (either overtly or clandestinely), or
• by adopting a new UNSC resolution that recognizes Gaddafi’s failure to comply with 1973 and adopts additional measures required to unseat him.

If arms supplies are to get there in a timely way, the former is obviously preferable to the latter.  But the latter is far better from the perspective of maintaining legitimacy of coalition operations against Gaddafi.

Yemen.  President Saleh’s days are numbered, but he is insisting on an orderly transition of power.  That is not a bad idea.  It would certainly be preferable to the kind of mess we are seeing in Libya, and it really does not matter much whether it occurs this month or next.

To whom should Saleh hand over?  The parliament is little more than a rubber stamp, some of the army leaders who have gone over to the protesters are arguably worse than Saleh when it comes to cozying up to terrorists, the political opposition is undistinguished and the protesters are still an amorphous mass.   Here is both challenge and opportunity for the Americans, in whose interest it is to guarantee an orderly transition to someone who will be at least as good as Saleh in pursuing Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is not saying much.  Here, too, they might look to grassroots tribal, religious, political, civil society and other leaders outside Sanaa for at least a validation of legitimacy.  Part of the Yemen problem is that the current regime really has little or no support beyond the capital.  Building a new regime that has serious representation from both north and south would be preferable to just finding another headman like Saleh.

Syria.  It has indeed gotten serious, as I’ve already suggested, with widespread demonstrations yesterday met with regime live fire, killing how many dozens no one knows:

This time it will be hard for President Bashar al Assad’s spokesperson to claim that he ordered no firing on demonstrators, though that won’t stop them from trying, but the protests have so far stopped short of asking for his ouster.  Bashar is still regarded by many Syrians as above the wrongdoing they associate with the regime, though it is hard to believe that his personal immunity will last much longer.

Bashar has been no friend to the Americans, even if Senator John Kerry thinks we owe him rather than the other way around (at least that is what he said in an appearance at Carnegie Endowment last week).  But again orderliness is next to godliness, now that we’ve got the U.S. military preoccupied with two and a half wars.  Bashar can still survive, but he needs to get serious about the reforms he promised this week, and stop the live fire on demonstrators.  I can’t for the life of me think what it is about the events of the last couple of months that would convince an autocrat that firing on protesters would help him survive.  It seems to me the evidence is all on the other side of the proposition:  let them demonstrate and adopt reforms to meet their legitimate demands, then you might survive.

The others.  The Moroccans seem to have understood that proposition, and until yesterday the Jordanians as well.  The Bahrainis, with Saudi support, seem ready still to test the effectiveness of regime violence and in the process turn popular protests into sectarian strife between a Shia majority population and a Sunni regime.  Their success is unlikely to be long lasting.  It is hard to think of anything worse for Saudi Arabia than linking its fate to the survival of the Al Khalifa monarchy in Bahrain, but that appears to be what the Saudis are determined to do.