book review of book on libya

TOPPLING GADDAFI: LIBYA AND THE LIMITS OF LIBERAL INTERVENTION 
By Christopher S. Chivvis 
Cambridge University Press, New Delhi, 2014, pp. 249, Rs. 495.00
http://www.thebookreviewindia.org/articles/archives-4427/2015/April/4/ethics-of-liberal-intervention.html
VOLUME XXXIX NUMBER 4 April 2015

Christopher Chivvis is the quintessential policy wonk having rotated in and out of government and the academia, so typical of the career profile of public intellectuals in the United States. Given that he needs the government for access to information and the policy high table, as much as the government needs his brains, it is inevitable that he would write up a favourable account of the US role in toppling Gaddafi. Billeted in the RAND Corporation that has over the decades provided the strategic community in America grist for its incestuous debates, he is as much an insider as a bystander. Consequently, it is entirely understandable that he concludes: ‘The results are far from perfect and postwar stabilization has faltered, but ultimately the choice to intervene was the right one (p. 205).’

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The book is an account of the events in 2011 in which the French and UK supported by the US initially launched Operation Odyssey Dawn to be followed soon thereafter by the NATO’s Operation Unified Protector. It covers the events leading up to the intervention; the diplomacy that attended the intervention; the military operations of the NATO; and US policy choices during the war. It makes the case that the regime’s actions in Benghazi in early 2011 created conditions for the intervention under the framework of the new fangled concept of Responsibility to Protect (R2P). As a slim volume priced affordably, it has something for everyone. But it is unlikely that readers in the region will find in it much to agree with.
In particular, the author’s answer that the intervention was right is rather glib. At the time of writing of this review three years after the intervention, primetime news has it that Tripoli’s airport has been shut down because of fighting between rival militia groups in the vicinity. This cannot but be attributed to the influx of weaponry and perfunctory training given by Special Forces troops to the tribal militias that sprung up in wake of the intervention. It shows how easy it is to engineer the conditions that can then be used to legitimate premeditated operations citing R2P. Similarly, regimes were displaced in Afghanistan and Iraq and there is a concerted move underway to displace the one in Syria. The human cost in volved has been borne by the societies subject to the ‘liberal’ attention of the West, but more likely subject to its incessant quest for strategic and commercial advantage.
In Kosovo, where liberal intervention made its debut, the Albanians continue to remain at odds with the Serbs both in Serbia and within their own state, now with a considerably thinned down Serb population. Kosovo, with runaway unemployment and poverty by European standards, even a decade and half since the liberal intervention there is far from a success story. The US ignominiously quit Iraq and TV screens today tell us in no uncertain terms the outcome. It is in the process of leaving Afghanistan and it is inescapable that an Iraq like future awaits that benighted state.
Therefore, the author’s conclusion that the outcome cannot be taken to gauge that an intervention is untenable. In fact, discerning the possible consequences is a prerequisite to intervention. Indeed it is a just war precept that the possibility of success must be considered prior to resorting to military means. The first precept in humanitarian affairs is ‘do no harm’, or do not proceed with anything that can make a bad situation worse. By this yardstick intervention was not only illegitimate but also immoral.
It is by now well known as to why this was so in the case of Libya. Though Gaddafi had mended fences with the West, yet the eagerness of France and UK to attack and displace him requires explanation. It is now common knowledge that the Libyan dictator had reportedly funded the campaign for Presidency by Sarkozy, detained at the time of writing of this review for political corruption. It is no wonder the French led the coalition, with the US in this instance ‘leading from behind’. ‘Old Europe’ was in the lead, with Germany keeping out due to reservations on the advisability of the intervention. That the author notes this as a useful extension of NATO’s out of area operations, begun in Kosovo and later extended to Afghanistan, itself is clue as to the motives behind the intervention. To then claim that this owed to liberal principles is to stretch credulity a bit.
A tenet of R2P that was violated was in such interventions ceasing when the conditions that give rise to them are reversed. Even if it is assumed that Benghazi was about to fall to the dictator’s atrocities, the threat to Benghazi had receded within a week of the intervention. However, continuing with the intervention was necessary. This was easily provided with the initial intervention itself providing the rationale for further protection necessary for the rebelling population at multiple centers across Libya. Easily fanned, these rebellions attracted Gaddafi’s military action, thereby providing cover for continuing operations and mission creep that culminated in displacement of Gaddafi as the aim of the operation, even though this was not envisaged in the enabling UN resolution. The regime’s chances of survival were sealed with NATO’s airpower dominating the airspace as were the hopes of any conflict resolution initiative, such as by President Zuma on behalf of the AU.
The author situates the intervention in the context of the unfolding Arab Spring that had by then rocked both neighbours of Libya, Tunisia and Egypt. He reasons that it was necessary in order to preserve the Arab Spring’s momentum lest it be suppressed by dictators. By that yardstick what the Bahrainis did, with Saudi backing, and Saudis do to keep any fresh breeze out of their sheikhdoms should invite western liberal attention. Selectivity further vitiates the liberal intervention paradigm.
Clearly, if there are such potent arguments against the concept and its precedence setting practice by the West, there needed to have been greater engagement with these counter arguments by the author. By instead faithfully regurgitating what his Pentagon and Foggy Bottom informants feed him, the author has lost credibility. The crux of the matter encapsulated by the subtitle of the book— the limits of liberal intervention—remains unaddressed. Even in military matters, the book provides limited insight since the choice of the dictator to displace was made by the US-NATO combine: an isolated dictator earlier already defanged of his nuclear ambitions.
Clearly, the book is a propaganda tract, an example of how the academia-strategic community embrace in the US. This is important to register in India in the midst of a strategic partnership with the US, lest India’s intellectual distance from the US, that endlessly irritates the US, dissipates under the onslaught of not only such tracts but also of their universities and think tanks set to open doors into India.

Book Review - COIN in Sri Lanka

Conflict Resolution As Janus-faced?

Ali Ahmed 

WHEN COUNTERINSURGENCY WINS: SRI LANKA’S DEFEAT OF THE TAMIL TIGERS 
By Ahmed S. Hashim 
Foundation Books, Delhi, 2013, pp. 267, Rs. 850.00

VOLUME XXXVIII NUMBER 7 July 2014
http://www.thebookreviewindia.org/articles/archives-3460/2014/July/7/conflict-resolution-as-janus-faced.html

The author has impressive credentials. With a doctorate from MIT, he has taught at the US Naval War College and lectured at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He is currently Associate Professor at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. The catch is that an American of Turkish-Egyptian origin, he served three terms advising the US command in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. His earlier book Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq carried his impression of that conflict. His service in Iraq perhaps explains the term ‘defeat’ in the title. To him, Sri Lanka’s ‘defeat’ of the LTTE is without a doubt ‘the first counter insurgency victory of the twenty-first century’ (p.2). This fixation with ‘victory’ and ‘defeat’ is a conceptual error that Americans have been guilty of across many conflict theatres. It can be be attributed to their strategic thinkers, such as the author; but then, the author’s interest itself can be attributed to socialization in the American school of war fighting.

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In all fairness to the author, it must be acknowledged that he has taken care to caveat his title and effusive introductory lines covering the death of Prabhakaran by highlighting that military victory is but a step towards conflict resolution. His concluding chapter does justice to the miles that remain for the Sri Lankan state to traverse out of the post-conflict environment it is in. He brings out the important point that victory can be lost in case the politics does not keep pace. That this is not happening in Sri Lanka is apparent with its latest stricture in the UN Human Rights Council which decided with a vote of 23 to 12 and 12 abstentions to investigate Sri Lanka’s record during the final stages of the conflict. It is clear that Prabhakaran may yet have the last laugh with the three Rajapakses—the President, the Defence Minister and his advisor—possibly being arraigned in front of the International Criminal Court at curtains to the conflict. That would indeed be a befitting end, not least from poetic justice point of view but as instruction to governments that watched, and prefer to continue to do so, with hands firmly behind their backs, not excluding the Indian Government. As the regional power, it is curious that Ahmed barely notes India’s role. India was in the midst of its last elections in 2009. This was the critical ingredient in Rajapakse’s timing of his offensive. An Indian Government distracted by national elections, fearful of the implications for the Tamil vote and encumbered by the Gandhi family’s grip on the ruling party, was unable—and perhaps unwilling—to force moderation on the Sri Lankans.

The latter is more likely given India’s extensive commitment to training of the Sri Lankan army for almost two decades, largely, incidentally in conventional operations. Knowing Tamil sensitivities, voiced now and then by their competing politicians, Karunanidhi and Jayalalitha, India was averse to large scale counter insurgency training. It therefore concentrated on training the Sri Lankan Army extensively on conventional operations. This turned out to be very useful as the LTTE itself transformed into a ‘hybrid’ force with capabilities across the insurgency spectrum from terror through guerrilla tactics to conventional operations, brought out very well by the author. However, his coverage of the Sri Lankan Army’s transformation neglects the Indian hand in it. (Incidentally, this reviewer was in the very first training team for Sri Lankans involved in training of junior leaders by the Indian Army as early as immediately following the exit of the IPKF from Sri Lanka.)

The book misses also a look at the LTTE perspective. Acknowledging a lack of access to the Tamil camp, the book is unable to tackle crucial questions as to why the LTTE chose to take a stand, that in the event turned out its ‘last stand’. The author restricts himself to apprehending a profound misreading of the international opinion by the LTTE. The LTTE assumed international pressure for yet another pause in fighting after it yet again fought the Sri Lankan Army to a standstill. In the immediate aftermath of the Bush era, this was a misreading of international opinion on terrorism. Also, interventions for peace such as from Nordic countries were fatigued by the mid-decade failure of the Norwegian mission. As mentioned, India too kept a distance and the Tamil parties, divided in the run up to the elections, could not force India’s foreign policy in an interventionist direction.

While true, India’s sitting on fence then, as now, owes also, not so much to its view of national sovereignty, as much as the possibility of resorting to such measures in case of any future politico-military challenge it may itself face. Its enabling of the Sri Lankans and keeping a reticent position thereafter is supposedly for geopolitical reasons that include a need to balance Chinese interest in the Indian Ocean and Sri Lanka. However, the danger is in its learning the wrong lessons and believing that the Sri Lankan model holds any water in democratic societies. India has left itself open for an option of similar action in case any challenge acquires the magnitude of that faced by Sri Lanka.

This brings one to the core issue of the place of violence in counter-insurgency. In Clausewitzian terms, the dialectic between two opposing forces, representing the wills of the two sides in conflict, is such as to tend towards ‘absolute war’. In internal conflict, this implies an annihilatory tendency; only to feed the contest making for a closed loop as obtained in Sri Lanka. Allowing the military logic to take its course is what ensures that the politics of the conflict are locked out, even after the opponent is overthrown, as is the case obtaining in Sri Lanka. This means that a glib reversion to politics at the end of the military tryst in internal conflict, such as usually attends international conflict, is seldom possible. Therefore, to advance theory, the expectation of reverting to politics once the military prong has done its bit is fallacy. Consequently, the search for ‘victory’, as has been the American lodestar over the past decade and half, is chimera. In trying to use the Sri Lankan case, the author is attempting to reinforce an American-led global strategic culture.

In any case, if the problem can only be fixed by a political solution—as is invariably the case in internal conflict—then there is no need for a military dominant interregnum. It needs fixing straight off, without the contest of wills and the inevitable ‘collateral damage’ suffered by the human terrain of internal conflict. In fact, it is the temptation to go for the military option that creates the conditions for its employment. This needs being the take away from the book and not what the author has it: a political turn once the military has done its bit. His take has not succeeded in Iraq, where he spent time; in Afghanistan now; and—what he stops short of predicting—will not succeed in Sri Lanka. One hopes India—sitting on the fence—is listening.