My default position on U.S. military interventions in the name of human rights is to support them. I recognize that, in the case of Libya, serious questions have been raised as to whether our intervention — and even outright regime change — would improve, or end up harming, the human-rights situation in Libya. I have nothing to add to that debate. But there is an interesting question posed over on Daily Kos about one possible unintended consequence of our effort in Libya:
I’m sure the government of Iran must be watching the events in Libya with particular interest. In December of 2003, Libya announced it had a nuclear weapons program and that it would get rid of it. The last of the nuclear weapons technology exited the country in 2009. Libya’s repressive, dictatorial regime was welcomed back into the fold of the great Western powers and their friends (a.k.a., the “international community”) and trade flourished. Now, just over seven years later, Libya is under military assault from those same powers, only now without the nuclear threat that keeps the West out of North Korea. For the power centers in Iran this must be particularly instructive.
If I understand the author correctly, the implication — or at least the strong suggestion — is that “Hands off Libya” is a wiser policy. But I see another lesson here: It is in the urgent interest of world peace, and of the Iranian people themselves, that the regime there be prevented from nuclearizing. If we permit the regime to protect itself with nuclear weapons, it will only become more entrenched, and inflict suffering on its people with impunity: Qaddafi, writ large.
People — some of them too young to remember the Cold War — console us with the fact that, in the case of the Soviet Union, containment, in the end, worked. But I lived through much of that period and remember it, and I’m not eager to pay the price that containment exacted: a massive U.S. spending on defense to ensure our bare national survival against a nuclear-armed enemy, not to mention the sufferings of the millions of people condemned to live under Communist tyranny for decades. I’d really rather not go through all of that misery, that staggering waste of human resources, again. If we accept Iran’s nuclearization as a fait accompli, we — and the Iranians — will end up paying for it dearly.
I can already hear the response: What a great idea, Mike! We’re stuck in two endless wars, we’ve just begun a third, and your knee-jerk response is to start wishing for a fourth! I hear ya. But I just think we need to remember that the decision to kick the can down the road is not cost-free.
I disagree with the claim (that you accept at face value) that containment worked with the Soviet Union. It was confrontation, not containment, that worked in the end. Kennan launched our containment policy in 1948, but by 1980 nobody believed in it anymore. Some, like Reagan, argued for confrontation. The rest, especially in Europe, argued for cooperation and closer integration. Nobody of consequence was left in 1980 defending continued containment.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMike - good post. I largely concur. Anyone but Wacky/Quaddafy I think is 99% a plus. Libya did have a liberal constitutional monarchy before Mr. Q - let's try to restore that...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think the writer's implication was that Libya giving up its nuke program and winning western approval and inclusion was a fleeting and illusory deal, that cooperation with the west is a good deed eventually punished, that the west will still come knock down your house sooner or later. The writer implies our treatment of Libya since 2003 is a lesson to Iran to go forth with nukes because giving them up will not appease us.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJust curious: is the Daily Kos post arguing that so long as a regime gives up its nuclear ambitions, it should get a free pass to slaughter its own citizens?
The lesson the Iranian regime should learn from the Western intervention in Libya is that it can't rely on Western passivity and implied assent the next time it decides to slaughter its own citizens. The Syrian regime should be taking notes as well.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe technological threshold for developing nuclear weapons is not all that high. A lot of countries are already at it, or soon will be. India, South Africa, Pakistan, Israel, and (allegedly) North Korea all managed to get "the bomb" without the benefit of being exceptionally wealthy or technologically advanced societies.
I don't think that the United States can prevent the rest of the world from crossing that threshold. There have been many attempts throughout history to limit certain weapons - the knights in Europe and Japan sought to ban guns from warmaking, with various degrees of temporary success. But technology always proves to be too fungible. Trying to confine it will be financially and morally ruinous for America. Financially, because it will commit us to endless wars around the world. Morally, because these wars will be fought to preserve American military dominance and will be understood as such by everybody else on Earth.
This is not the cause for alarm which Potemra suggests. Libya or Iran with a nuclear weapon would be about as dangerous to us as Pakistan or North Korea with one - not very.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse>"I’m not eager to pay the price that containment exacted: a massive U.S. spending on defense to ensure our bare national survival against a nuclear-armed enemy, not to mention the sufferings of the millions of people condemned to live under Communist tyranny for decades."
I'm not sure what the implications of this are - that if no nuclear weapons existed, the US would have waged a conventional war to "liberate" the Russian people? That's obviously absurd.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think we are mixing apples and oranges here. We aren't interfering in Libya because of a danger he poses to the outside world, we are doing it to protect Libyans from other Libyans. Let's be clear on that. I don't think we should interfere, both sides are crazy anti-American nutters that we should let kill each other off.
If we were to go to war with Iran it wouldn't be to support some slightly younger islamofascist movement than the current old islamofascist movement. It would be to enforce the non-proliferation treaty, which really means it would be to knock Iran off before they CAN be a threat to us or our allies.
The author of the quoted piece is just another in a long line of anti-exceptionalist leftists seeking to denigrate any and all action by the United States. Academic honesty is not required, hence the false comparison.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBack in the day when spies were spies (Reagan years), we had a CIA with boots on the ground intelligence and a network of contacts. It doesn't seem like we have anything of the sort now, despite the billions we spend on "National Intelligence".
A covert supply of arms and communication equipment provided to Libyans a few weeks ago would have allowed them to fight for themselves. I don't mean air to air missiles...but guns, ammunition, explosives and radios.
The no fly zone was instituted at the 11th hour more for the benefit of the west, which was afraid of losing face. Doubt this will work out as expected.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"But I lived through much of that period and remember it, and I’m not eager to pay the price that containment exacted..."
And I am not eager to pay the price that my landlord demands. Yet I do. We are not entitled to the perfect piece of mind. The fact that you didn't like what you had doesn't mean that something significantly better was possible.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@Henry Hawkins - I think your reading of the Daily KOS comment is correct. I also think the Daily KOS comment is very perceptive and accurate. If there was any possibility that Iran would give up its nuclear ambitions (and personally, I don't think there was), that possibility is gone. The lesson Iran has learned from the Libya situation is that it needs a nuclear deterrent.
Quite frankly, Iran is going to get nuclear weapons unless someone uses military force. Because I don't think anyone is going to use military force -- (Israel may try, but an Israeli effort would at most be temporarily effective) -- my prediction is that going to get nuclear weapons.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOur hubris, on the left and on the right, is sometimes breathtaking. Both sides of the ideological spectrum think that our Islamic enemies (the true believers, like Iran) can be influenced, cajoled, coerced or threatened. They can't. We can't talk or demonstrate ourselves out of this pickle. The pickle being a nuclear-armed Iran.
Nothing we promise nor threaten will either persuade or deter them. If we're nice and capitulating, they'll still work to destroy us. If we're threatening and intimidating, they'll still work to destroy us. Whatever we do, or don't do to Qaddafi has absolutely ZERO influence on Iran, at least with respect to their end game. They will continue to work to the ends that they desire, and they won't stop until either they're destroyed or they achieve their goals, which would of course include our destruction.
Sure it sounds fatalistic, but so is their religion.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDespite the source, the point is valid. The only thing universally respected in the Middle East is strength. It was American strength, exercised in Iraq, that got Libya to halt it's WMD programs.
It doesn't matter what message we think the Iranian's should draw from all this; it only matters what message they actually do draw. And that message is, keep your powder dry. Aside from the lesson of never disarming, they'll also note the lesson that the west only attacks easy targets, weak nations without the ability to resist, and then only after dithering about debating the idea for weeks.
flenser makes a nuclear capitulation not required, by virtue of faulty reasoning. We do not have to stop nuclear proliferation. We can try and we may fail. What we do have to stop, and where we cannot fail, is in stopping nuclear proliferation among those who might actually use a nuclear warhead against us or our allies. Not at all the same thing as stopping nuclear efforts completely. His faith that Iran would not use such a weapon is at odds with all we otherwise know about that country's leadership. Other than that, a fine explanation of, "don't worry, be happy" as a national defense strategy.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIran already learned everything it needs to know -- that a popular movement for liberalization will not generate the "don't just stand there so something" impulse that activates otherwise risk-averse American politicians.
I'm not saying the U.S. is in any position to fight all those battles, even when the uprisings are truly liberal. I'm just saying the mullahs probably feel very safe (now that they've gotten over the shock of "how did they not push us off the cliff last time?").
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDitto what Mr. Wilson said.
Diplomacy, compromise, negotiation, fine things all, but where Iran and other dictatorial Islamic states are concerned, there is no point to it. We, meaning the secular West where you have freedom of religion, are infidels. We must die. Period. That is the irrefutable, immovable core of fundamentalist Islam: Infidels must die. Perhaps they might negotiate with we infidels on how we must die, or when we must, but not if.
Convert or die. That is the extent of negotiating leeway afforded the fundy Islamist by his religion.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEveryone, but conservatives especially, should stop suggesting that Afghanistan, Iraq, now Libya, and tomorrow Iran (if such should occur) amount to the US being in four wars. Around here at NRO, it's hard to fathom why people who presumably are reading Steyn, McCarthy, VDH and others cannot see that we are involved in ONE war that is transpiring in several theaters.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOnce that insight is achieved, the relevant questions can begin. Some of them are:
1) Which theaters are the important ones? (Hints: Steyn didn't recently call it Whogivsastan for nothing, and Next Up for Nukes should perhaps carry a little weight.)
2) If engaging in Libya held any vital interest for America, would the UN, Russia, China and the Arab League (!) have assented to it?
3) Seen in this context, is not the most likely private Iranian response to our engagement in Libya something like, "Oh, good, they're fixated on a Bright Shiny Thing. Crank the centrifuges up to eleven!"
Conservatives think that a war in three or more theaters should be declared by Congress.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm deeply skeptical about our involvement in Libya, but if we get a good opportunity to knock off the Iranian regime I think we should take advantage of it. Iran has its hands in many of our problems in that area. The situations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, and probably a few other places all get easier if the Iranian regime falls.
Libya's threats to us were effectively eliminated when Reagan's bombing raid quenched Qaddafi's interest in supporting terrorism, and the fall of Saddam Hussein persuaded him to abandon his nuclear program. So our interests there are fairly limited. Iran is still an active and aggressive enemy who would be well worth taking down.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@Flenser: If the Soviet Union had not acquired nuclear weapons the Cold War would have been very, very different. The Prague Spring may have ended the Cold war by itself. You really think that a Soviet Union would have challenged us the same way without Nuclear weapons? It was the not the only thing of course. The willful ignorance of our governing elite to Communist evil and Imperial ambitions was a BIG FACTOR in not rolling back their conquests early. FDR used to give speeches about religious freedoms in Russia while over 30,000 priest were being killed and at least 2 million others for just being faithful believers. They could not turn on the USSR and start fighting them after lying so often about the nature of the Soviet regime in WWII. Besides the Socialists hoped it all would work out for the USSR in the end.
People also forgot that we nearly lost the cold war in the 70s we were on the edge of defeat in 79 and in 10 years we won, remarkable and we should not count on repeating that feat in every war.
Finally the Iranians are learning that you can't be gross dictators and oppress your people forever. Nukes will help them do it for longer but not forever. People talk all the time that Iran wants security guarantees and that Nukes are about having a deterrent against the West must remember that the only security the Mullah's care about is there own. The Iranian people can rot as long as the Mullah's are protected. For the safety of us all Iran must not become an aggressive version of North Korea. The horror inflicted on the world will be hard to bear.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe lesson to be learned is how our posture toward one tyrant affects the behavior of other tyrants. When we brought the full brunt of the US military against Iraq, it scared Gaddafi into voluntarily giving up his weapons program.
Once a far weaker President was in office, he felt at liberty to respond differently to this present crisis. For this reason, I believe that if we wish to act in Libya, we must follow a similar script to Bush's in Iraq. Set an ultimatum under threat of removal, then let Gaddafi choose.
If Gaddafi's removal is not the goal, then we should not intervene at all. Such halfway measures are doomed to fail. Besides, if a nation's leader is so terrible that we have to intervene to protect his own people from him, what's the upside to leaving him in charge?
The lesson Gaddafi learned from Saddam is the same one that Iran can learn from Libya today if we use our big stick.
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But in order to go that route, it is imperative that Congress authorize such action. Otherwise, military intervention is illegitimate.
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Of course, this is all hypothetical since we are talking about President Obama.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe difference is that there would be no 50-year Cold War containment policy with Iran. The basis of that policy was MAD - mutually assured destruction - and the Soviet Union was evil but not willing to allow its own destruction by a nuclear strike from the U.S. With Iran, such a policy would not work because the regime is evil and MAD - its Islamist ideology is perfectly accepting of its own destruction, national martrydom, if it can take out the Little (Israel) and Big (U.S.)Satans in the process.
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