anyone else following Egypt on Aljazeera?

[Scarpia]

That is the sad thing - there is no national interest in it, it has to be from public pressure stemming from an ingrained sense of morality. I suppose western citizens have more free time on their hands, as they tend to hassle their governments more about this kind of thing - and support them equally when they make such gestures (although ill-judged blood baths like Iraq or Vietnam excluded). An example: Germany's government did its usual policy of no action on the Libya crisis, which has actually backfired politically, as a large proportion of its population support the action.

I don't follow you.  I think Germany is on the right side of this thing.  Iraq was actually done "right."  Bomb, then use a military occupation to create conditions where a democracy has a chance to take hold.  Even then it is not clear that the country is much better off, we can only hope that hatred of "Persians" by Iraqis will prevent it from becoming a satellite of Iran and a foreign policy problem for the US.  The trouble is even the US doesn't have the resources to do this sort of thing (our budget catastrophe was worsened by the invasion if Iraq) and who is to say that we are in charge of deciding which regimes are queued for removal.  Bombing and hoping that something good comes out of the resulting chaos is not a good strategy. 

It does make for great TV programming, I'll grant you that.

[Lethevich]

Their own population doesn't seem to agree.

I think that the Arab revolutions have changed the game. Iraq was a very outdated way to do things - no matter how good the intentions, or how friendly the country, people don't like to feel that they are occupied or that control is out of their hands. Egypt and Libya have pointed the way to much less dangerous and ruinous ways to enact change - coming from the ground up, not enforced from the top-down. The protests have revealed that even in the most oppressive countries, the desire for something better remains there and only requires a catalyst (providing it's not a rare nightmare state like North Korea or Burma where this is effectively impossible). In Libya the rebels needed some help, but it can be done infinitely more safely and cheaply (compared to Iraq) by an air campaign like is currently in action, and seemingly working well. A few days later and all opposition would be crushed and murdered, but as of now they are protected and Gaddafi's ability to harm them is being whittled down. I think that it's "super neat", but again I must be naive to feel this way.

[MishaK]

I don't follow you.  I think Germany is on the right side of this thing.  Iraq was actually done "right."  Bomb, then use a military occupation to create conditions where a democracy has a chance to take hold. 

That was never the "right" way. This interventionist attitude comes from a misreading of the aftermath of WWII, where according to lore the US brough democracy to Germany, Japan, etc. through force. Except that in those cases where democracy did indeed blossom (Germany, France etc.), it did so due to the country's own pre-existing civil society and legal system; and in Asia, countries liberated from Japanese rule turned into militarist dictatorships (Korea, Taiwan), while Japan itself was more of a one-party corporatist oligarchy for the longest time. So democracy was in fact not achieved in Asia at the end of WWII through US force. In other words, the idea of bringing democracy to a place through invasion is based on a romantic misreading of the precedent of WWII. It simply has never been done and it basically doesn't work, unless the target country has a pre-existing civil society and legal system that it can fall back upon, and those things can't be developed overnight and not through overt pressure from an outside power of which the population is distrustful. If it doesn't have those pre-requisites, then the extreme circumstances of war and occupation invariably create panic and gloom among the voting population which tends to provide fertile grounds for more extreme movements. In those cases, where lack of civil society is exacerbated by ethnic divisions, the introduction of democracy basically turns into a demographic census, where people vote along ethnic lines. Completely pointless exercise.

That said, if you do want to help fix up a post-war country economically (which is the best thing you can do to support democracy), you don't do it the way the US did it in Iraq, but do it the way the US did it in Western Europe. The difference between then and now is that the European postwar effort was directed by people who grew up in New Deal America, who had faith in the ability of government to organize a large-scale infrastructure of reconstruction which could benefit society at large (in the case of the Marshall Plan, benefitting also American workers who produced all that stuff that got shipped overseas) and had some expertise in doing it; whereas those pimps who ran Iraq afer getting rid of Hussein, basically believe the state to be a problem, so they made deals with unscrupulous outside private sector suppliers who have no stake in either Iraqi or American society and whose main concern is the bottom line not the functioning of Iraqi democracy. Both Iraq and the US ended up being losers. That's the key difference. Private sector investors don't have the stamina for reconstruction in unstable war zones. That has to be a government effort, and it has to be large scale, taking control of all public works and infrastructure, not just security, from day 1.

Even then it is not clear that the country is much better off, we can only hope that hatred of "Persians" by Iraqis will prevent it from becoming a satellite of Iran and a foreign policy problem for the US. 

Those who hate the "Persians" are fewer than a third of Iraqis who are of Sunni background. The Kurds can't be bothered and the Shia who are the majority in the south are really quite happy being allied with their Iranian brothers, whom they never really wanted to shoot had Saddam not made them do it.

and who is to say that we are in charge of deciding which regimes are queued for removal.  Bombing and hoping that something good comes out of the resulting chaos is not a good strategy. 

The problem is that the whole field of international law on just wars is in a bit if flux since at least the disintegration of the USSR and the proliferation of intranational wars. Under the old system, national sovereignty was sacrosanct. While nation states could ask the rest of the world for help to defend against an outside attacker, a population, or part of a population, of a nation state has no standing to ask for help to protect it against what is supposedly its own state. That began to change with Bosnia and Kosovo, but there are still no worked out rules. Arguably, the Libyan case is a bit clearer since the rebels in Benghazi did in fact ask for support from the world community. We will see how this plays out. At the moment, nobody in the West seems to be in any sort of drivers' seat. We still don't have a system that provides a road map for what to do when a government is shooting its own population and remaining idle bystanders is not morally palatable.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I think that it's "super neat", but again I must be naive to feel this way.

I wonder if this fits your definition of "super neat": the Arab League, which requested action in the first place, is now upset that their request is actually being taken seriously:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110320/ap_on_re_af/af_libya_arabs

"Humanitarian intervention" means, in plain English, war (y'know, killing people and blowing stuff up)....I don't see anything particulary neat about that.

[Lethevich]

I wonder if this fits your definition of "super neat": the Arab League, which requested action in the first place, is now upset that their request is actually being taken seriously:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110320/ap_on_re_af/af_libya_arabs

What matters is that the measure got through and that something could be done. International bitching is inevitable. I don't see how the Arab League's statement can be taken seriously, nor Russia's almost immediate "stop doing exactly what you said you would do and we didn't veto" soundbyte. I can understand an everyday Joe (or Saif) taking war lightly then being shocked at its extent, but the Arab League really have no place to complain about something two days ago they agreed to, even if they try to claim that they didn't fully understand what was happening (and such a miscalculation could only be slight incompetence on their part). I also take that statement with a grain of salt given how diverse opinion in the Arab world is on the matter.

"Humanitarian intervention" means, in plain English, war (y'know, killing people and blowing stuff up)....I don't see anything particulary neat about that.

I know - doing nothing is easy, it's cheap and doesn't risk you looking bad, but it's not a conclusion that I can accept in this situation.

Edit:

Syria protests spread, authorities pull back

Army chief deserts Yemen leader

This movement has to be considered a major and permanent shift in attitudes civilians have towards their governments. Arabs previously appeared to be content with leaders they had no control over, but this has been revealed spectacularly not to be the case. One of the most interesting things is, no matter how many differing ideological factions there are, the words that the protesters keep mentioning are always synonyms of "freedom" and "democracy" (and usually literally those two). It's such a powerful thing to witness, especially from good reporting sources actually embedded rather than skimming over the events: that political freedom is not propaganda from the west, but is in fact an ingrained desire in many cultures which wells up when suppressed ready to explode at a later time.

I find it very difficult to view many images of these protests and feel fear to look at them. Some of the movements will be crushed, some will go bad, but some could flourish. It will be crappy inefficient democracy, perhaps India style or worse, but it could gain a toehold, and this will create a crucial change: a Democratic system will no longer feel disingenuous to wish on Arabs - a western thing - if there is a middle-eastern example which was established by the wishes of the population, the inevitable development and excitement will attract the attention of the population of nearby countries. Most amazingly, nobody saw it coming.

[drogulus]

     I don't think there's a problem identifying the despicable regimes, nor a problem choosing who gets to decide to attack them. The ones who want to intervene get to decide to do it. The ones who don't want to do it have the option of opposing it. Why don't they?

[Scarpia]

     I don't think there's a problem identifying the despicable regimes, nor a problem choosing who gets to decide to attack them. The ones who want to intervene get to decide to do it. The ones who don't want to do it have the option of opposing it. Why don't they?

Well, there are lots of places that the US is considered despicable, so I guess we are fortunate that they don't have the wherewithal to attack.   

[Todd]

I don't think there's a problem identifying the despicable regimes, nor a problem choosing who gets to decide to attack them. The ones who want to intervene get to decide to do it.

Ah, the law of the jungle.  I guess we should dispense with the UN then.

And just what are the despicable regimes?  Try writing the list from a Russian perspective rather than an American one.

[Todd]

Arabs previously appeared to be content with leaders they had no control over

To whom?  The large number of jailed dissidents and opponents imply exactly the opposite of what you write.  Did no one see this coming, or did you not see this coming?  A few weeks ago it would have been hard for many people who don't follow the Arab world closely to fathom what is happening, and that it could happen so quickly, but potentially violent civil unrest was expected by some, not least the governments in the region. 

[Philoctetes]

I guess we should dispense with the UN then.

I agree.

[drogulus]

Ah, the law of the jungle.  I guess we should dispense with the UN then.

And just what are the despicable regimes?  Try writing the list from a Russian perspective rather than an American one.

     The despicable regimes are the ones that require no perspective to identify. Incidentally, if you require a perspective to validate your list then people won't take you seriously except as an obstacle. Yes, Russia has a perspective. Does it come with an argument about principle or is it narrowly self-interested? Gosh, that's such a tough question!

     The law of the jungle is what you get when you let the U.N. be your guide. It's the last refuge where good people go to be unaccountable. It's motto should be:

     I'd really like to help but my hands are tied

    The real argument against the Libya action, the one that matters most, is that it might turn into a horrible mess, an expensive failure that discredits humanitarian intervention for years. That's why even though the U.S. is involved in 3 such wars now we still refrain from intervening, as in Sudan, Rwanda, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Lebanon (after 1983), and the list will grow. We can't be everywhere, but that's not a good excuse to be nowhere.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

One of the most interesting things is, no matter how many differing ideological factions there are, the words that the protesters keep mentioning are always synonyms of "freedom" and "democracy" (and usually literally those two).

I am skeptical that they mean the same things by such terms as we do. When Algeria had an election in the 90s, the Islamist wackos won. When Palestinians had elections, Hamas won. Such were the practical results of democracy in the Middle East. Muslims, strangely enough, want to live under an Islamic government.

Some of the movements will be crushed, some will go bad, but some could flourish. It will be crappy inefficient democracy, perhaps India style or worse, but it could gain a toehold, and this will create a crucial change:

Much hedging in the above paragraph, as highlighted. It doesn't sound like you're willing to bet on a positive outcome.

[Florestan]

I am skeptical that they mean the same things by such terms as we do. When Algeria had an election in the 90s, the Islamist wackos won. When Palestinians had elections, Hamas won. Such were the practical results of democracy in the Middle East. Muslims, strangely enough, want to live under an Islamic government.

Add Turkey, the most "westernized" Islamic nation: the recent political developments points in the same direction. Ataturk's framework (itself not exactly a model of democracy) is slowly and silently undone.

That was never the "right" way. This interventionist attitude comes from a misreading of the aftermath of WWII, where according to lore the US brough democracy to Germany, Japan, etc. through force. Except that in those cases where democracy did indeed blossom (Germany, France etc.), it did so due to the country's own pre-existing civil society and legal system; and in Asia, countries liberated from Japanese rule turned into militarist dictatorships (Korea, Taiwan), while Japan itself was more of a one-party corporatist oligarchy for the longest time. So democracy was in fact not achieved in Asia at the end of WWII through US force. In other words, the idea of bringing democracy to a place through invasion is based on a romantic misreading of the precedent of WWII. It simply has never been done and it basically doesn't work, unless the target country has a pre-existing civil society and legal system that it can fall back upon, and those things can't be developed overnight and not through overt pressure from an outside power of which the population is distrustful. If it doesn't have those pre-requisites, then the extreme circumstances of war and occupation invariably create panic and gloom among the voting population which tends to provide fertile grounds for more extreme movements. In those cases, where lack of civil society is exacerbated by ethnic divisions, the introduction of democracy basically turns into a demographic census, where people vote along ethnic lines. Completely pointless exercise.

That said, if you do want to help fix up a post-war country economically (which is the best thing you can do to support democracy), you don't do it the way the US did it in Iraq, but do it the way the US did it in Western Europe. The difference between then and now is that the European postwar effort was directed by people who grew up in New Deal America, who had faith in the ability of government to organize a large-scale infrastructure of reconstruction which could benefit society at large (in the case of the Marshall Plan, benefitting also American workers who produced all that stuff that got shipped overseas) and had some expertise in doing it; whereas those pimps who ran Iraq afer getting rid of Hussein, basically believe the state to be a problem, so they made deals with unscrupulous outside private sector suppliers who have no stake in either Iraqi or American society and whose main concern is the bottom line not the functioning of Iraqi democracy. Both Iraq and the US ended up being losers. That's the key difference. Private sector investors don't have the stamina for reconstruction in unstable war zones. That has to be a government effort, and it has to be large scale, taking control of all public works and infrastructure, not just security, from day 1.

Some excellent points here, but the arguments you made about the impossibility of implementing democracy " unless the target country has a pre-existing civil society and legal system that it can fall back upon, and those things can't be developed overnight and not through overt pressure from an outside power of which the population is distrustful" are equally pertinent for the Marshall Plan. Germany, France, Italy and other European countries at its receiving end were just as Western as the US with respect to the civil society and the legal system (totalitarian experiments notwithstanding), mentality, customs and manners, and certainly did not feel they were overtly pressured by an outside power they distrusted. This is hardly the case with Iraq, Lybia, Egypt or other Arab countries, with their centuries long history of radically different civil and legal systems, mentality, customs and manners and their deep distrust of the "Crusaders", i.e. the Western world.

A "Marshall Plan" for the Arab world sounds great in theory but the probablity of its coming into being is nil.

[Florestan]

     The despicable regimes are the ones that require no perspective to identify.

IOW, there are no despicable regimes.

Incidentally, if you require a perspective to validate your list then people won't take you seriously except as an obstacle. Yes, Russia has a perspective. Does it come with an argument about principle or is it narrowly self-interested?

Yeah, right, to be sure an argument about principle could not go hand in hand with self-interest...

The real argument against the Libya action, the one that matters most, is that it might turn into a horrible mess, an expensive failure that discredits humanitarian intervention for years.

Iraq did turn into a horrible mess, but just as Gaddafi didn't learn anything from it, so the US and some of its allies seem not to have learned anything from it either.

We can't be everywhere, but that's not a good excuse to be nowhere.

Incidentally, where you are there is also oil, natural gas or mineral resources. Seems like the best places to be are those that require no perspective to identify. 

[Florestan]

Some interesting "perspectives". 

http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/03/no-debate-and-no-objective-obama-enters-war#

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/21/lind_libya_war/index.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/03/at_the_end_of_last.php

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/03/rhetoric_intervention

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/21/lind_libya_war/index.html

Lind is right on, as he often is.

I find it hard to believe that this Obama character ever (1) taught constitutional law at a major university; (2) was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Funny world we live in, eh?

[Florestan]

I find it hard to believe that this Obama character ever (1) taught constitutional law at a major university; (2) was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

Why not? He promised a "change we can believe in" --- and voila: he changed visibly. 

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/03/21/what_intervention_in_libya_tells_us_about_the_neocon_liberal_alliance

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Walt hits the nail with these 2 paragraphs, which I think are worth quoting in full:

The only important intellectual difference between neoconservatives and liberal interventionists is that the former have disdain for international institutions (which they see as constraints on U.S. power), and the latter see them as a useful way to legitimate American dominance. Both groups extol the virtues of democracy, both groups believe that U.S. power -- and especially its military power -- can be a highly effective tool of statecraft. Both groups are deeply alarmed at the prospect that WMD might be in the hands of anybody but the United States and its closest allies, and both groups think it is America's right and responsibility to fix lots of problems all over the world. Both groups consistently over-estimate how easy it will be to do this, however, which is why each has a propensity to get us involved in conflicts where our vital interests are not engaged and that end up costing a lot more than they initially expect.

So if you're baffled by how Mr. "Change You Can Believe In" morphed into Mr. "More of the Same," you shouldn't really be surprised. George Bush left in disgrace and Barack Obama took his place, but he brought with him a group of foreign policy advisors whose basic world views were not that different from the people they were replacing. I'm not saying their attitudes were identical, but the similarities are probably more important than the areas of disagreement. Most of the U.S. foreign policy establishment has become addicted to empire, it seems, and it doesn't really matter which party happens to be occupying Pennsylvania Avenue.

A personal note. As it happens, I've been acquainted quite closely with some members of Washington's think-tank and policy-making world. The disconnect of some of these people from the real world is astounding. I knew a guy who built a career as an "expert" on a certain Middle Eastern country despite the fact that he didn't know its language, had never been there, and had hardly any contacts there. He is not an exceptional case. The making of policy has hardly anything to do with knowledge about a region, or the objective situation there. In fact, those who have genuine knowledge are typically sidelined, as happened just before the Iraq war.

"Ignorance is strength!"

[Lethevich]

To whom?  The large number of jailed dissidents and opponents imply exactly the opposite of what you write.

I was referring to the everyday people, not a small minority of political 'radicals' (by the standards of the government that imprisoned them, natch). The everydays who go about their jobs and don't complain. Few westerners looking from such a remote perspective (such as myself) could have really guessed at how intolerable they found their leaders. The silence seemed more like tacit acceptance.

Did no one see this coming, or did you not see this coming?

Basically any commentator on this subject - reporters who have been following individual countries for years, etc - all say that this is unprecedented. Everybody from journalists to the American government thought Egypt was the most stable country in the middle east (although Saudi Arabia comes close). Everybody thought that Arab countries were so diverse that movements like this would always be dissident and localised. I don't get how anybody could've even guessed about the sweeping extent and flash-fire nature of these events, although feel free to offer some examples.

Much hedging in the above paragraph, as highlighted. It doesn't sound like you're willing to bet on a positive outcome.

It's realism, I guess. There's a big difference between the potential that excites me and seeing countless things like this go bad. But I do feel that this movement is the best chance for change for a long time precisely because it's so infectious - it doesn't rely on laborious chipping away at individual despots, the opposition it causes can materialise out of nowhere within days.

Also "positive outcome" is hard to gauge given the diversity of the countries involved - Egypt to Yemen. I do feel that a lot of good will come of this, as well as plenty of bad, although I've yet to see many concrete examples of the latter. Expecting everthing to go magically well is what went wrong with Iraq. People can become frustrated by slow transitions in Egypt, but the population now know that civil disobedience is an option - and that is a key historical differentiation between western and some dictator states: western populations don't feel the need to "respect" their governments, and view their transitory nature as being a positive thing. Some in countries like Libya still genuinely believe that to even criticise the leader is to insult the country. Undermining "love" for the leadership, and encouraging criticism and analysis is a core requisite for democracy to work, as it allows for poor judgements to be pressured into correction - the key basis for a democracy is being able to tell the leaders "stop this idea, it sucks" without reasonably expecting them to shoot at you with tanks for doing so (which is where western intervention in Libya comes in - talk about a "don't be a prick" warning to other countries?)

[Florestan]

Most of the U.S. foreign policy establishment has become addicted to empire, it seems, and it doesn't really matter which party happens to be occupying Pennsylvania Avenue.

Addicted to empire --- that's an excellent and accurate description. Now, mutatis mutandis, it bears a striking similarity with the process Theodor Mommsen described so vividly and in a delightful prose in its Roman History: how a small Republic founded on virtue, self-restraint and frugality gradually became --- more by the inexorable logic of the "snowball" and "unintended consequences" than by design --- a hedonistic, expansive and greedy empire.