{"id":12915,"date":"2011-03-18T11:29:48","date_gmt":"2011-03-18T18:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=12915"},"modified":"2011-03-18T11:41:46","modified_gmt":"2011-03-18T18:41:46","slug":"libya-declares-ceasefire-worriers-continue-worrying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=12915","title":{"rendered":"Libya Declares Ceasefire; worriers continue worrying"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Well, it appears that egg is on my face after I worried about disaster in Libya last night. I genuinely hope this egg remains on my face forever. From the BBC’s constantly-updating Libya sidebar<\/a>:<\/p>\n

To recap on the events of the last few hours. Following last night’s UN resolution in favour of military intervention, Col Gaddafi’s regime announced an immediate ceasefire at about 1240 GMT. Since then we’ve had reports of continued shelling in some cities, including Misrata, but elsewhere, suggestions that the security situation may be improving. The UK, France and US have said they want to see real evidence of a ceasefire on the ground – words are not enough, they insist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How solid this ceasefire is remains unclear; there are still doubts <\/a>and reports <\/a>of <\/a>conflict<\/a>. David writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Government forces continue to pound rebel-held cities, which means either that Qaddafi is just playing for time with a bogus ceasefire announcement or some of his forces are going a bit rogue. Either way, it essentially is a dare on whether the UN will follow through and launch some of those strikes on Libyan ordinance. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nonetheless, I’d be blind not to admit that it now looks possible <\/em>that, from a humanitarian and liberalization perspective, the UN action will wind up doing a lot of good. We’ll have to keep on watching, fingers crossed.<\/p>\n

Andrew Sullivan’s readers<\/a> make a lot of good points in favor of the UN action (and the US’s participation in it). (The dissents from Andrew’s readers are often my favorite things to read on his blog.)<\/p>\n

That said, there are still legitimate reasons to worry. For those interested in the voice of caution, I’d recommend reading:<\/p>\n

Michael Cohen<\/a> on the questions not being asked:<\/p>\n

If Assad starts massacring Syrian or the Saudi leadership starts killing pro-democracy protesters is the United States undermining the cause of freedom and liberty in the Arab world by doing nothing?[…]<\/p>\n

What if the war ends up in stalemate do we accept a status quo or do we send troops to Tripoli to liberate the entire country (Shadi seems to think we should)? What if the rebels are successful in overthrowing Gaddafi and begin massacring those loyal to Gaddafi? Would we have to respond to this violence as well? And to this point who exactly are the rebels that we are no going to war on behalf of?<\/p>\n

What if our military intervention creates a power vacuum in Libya leading to political instability and violence? What is our responsibility to clean up the mess i.e. the Pottery Barn rule?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Evan Levine<\/a> on what we’re signing up for (and why Libya?):<\/p>\n

While an argument can be made that to do nothing is effectively taking a side, i.e. Gaddafi has the initiative and will likely prevail without intervention, military strikes will definitely put us squarely behind the anti-Gaddafi forces. We will be responsible for their actions on the ground, now and in the future. Is anyone prepared for that? Is anyone prepared to intervene again if anti-Gaddafi forces no longer seem to be in the “right side” anymore? One can create an endless number of scenarios with “what ifs,” but just because we can agree that Gaddafi is “bad” that doesn’t necessarily mean that the other side is “good.” It’s far too easy, and extremely appealing, to turn things into black and white, good guys and bad guys, but the world, and history, just doesn’t work like that<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Daniel Larison<\/a> on the moral hazard of intervention:<\/p>\n

The more significant problem is that this has set a precedent that the states that were prepared to intervene in Libya will be expected to do the same in many more cases. An arbitrary, rather odd decision to treat the Libyan civil war as the greatest political crisis in the world will create the expectation of foreign support in other internal conflicts. That is likely to encourage rebellions and civil conflict. If a group believes it can win foreign support and political concessions by provoking a sufficiently brutal crackdown, that will make it more likely to rise up against its government, which may lead to humanitarian catastrophes that the \u201cresponsibility to protect\u201d is supposed to prevent. As Alan Kuperman has argued<\/a> (via Michael<\/a>), the \u201cresponsibility to protect\u201d creates a moral hazard:<\/p>\n

The emerging norm, by raising hopes of diplomatic and military intervention to protect these groups, unintentionally fosters rebellion by lowering its expected cost and raising its likelihood of success. Intervention does sometimes help rebels attain their political goals, but it is usually too late or inadequate to avert retaliation against civilians. Thus, the emerging norm resembles an imperfect insurance policy against genocidal violence. It creates a moral hazard that encourages the excessively risky behavior of rebellion by members of groups that are vulnerable to genocidal retaliation, but it cannot fully protect these groups against the backlash. The emerging norm thereby causes some genocidal violence that otherwise would not occur.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Glenn Greenwald<\/a> reminds us that there’s still this thing called the Constitution.<\/p>\n

And finally, Mark Lynch<\/a> discusses some possible outcomes:<\/p>\n

The intervention is a high-stakes gamble. If it succeeds quickly, and Qaddafi’s regime crumbles as key figures jump ship in the face of its certain demise, then it could reverse the flagging fortunes of the Arab uprisings. Like the first Security Council resolution on Libya, it could send a powerful message that the use of brutal repression makes regime survival less rather than more likely. It would put real meat on the bones of the “Responsibility to Protect” and help create a new international norm. And it could align the U.S. and the international community with al-Jazeera and the aspirations of the Arab protest movement. I have heard from many protest leaders from other Arab countries that success in Libya would galvanize their efforts, and failure might crush their hopes. <\/p>\n

But if it does not succeed quickly, and the intervention degenerates into a long quagmire of air strikes, grinding street battles, and growing pressure for the introduction of outside ground forces, then the impact could be quite different. Despite the bracing scenes of Benghazi erupting into cheers at the news of the Resolution, Arab support for the intervention is not nearly as deep as it seems and will not likely survive an extended war. If Libyan civilians are killed in airstrikes, and especially if foreign troops enter Libyan territory, and images of Arabs killed by U.S. forces replace images of brave protestors battered by Qaddafi’s forces on al-Jazeera, the narrative could change quickly into an Iraq-like rage against Western imperialism. What began as an indigenous peaceful Arab uprising against authoritarian rule could collapse into a spectacle of war and intervention.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And on another subject, some interesting information on how the decision was made within the Obama administration<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, it appears that egg is on my face after I worried about disaster in Libya last night. I genuinely hope this egg remains on my face forever. From the BBC’s constantly-updating Libya sidebar: To recap on the events of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[135,39,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crossposted-on-tada","category-in-the-news","category-international-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12915"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12917,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12915\/revisions\/12917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}