While a second, shattering earthquake in a matter of weeks takes Libya off the top of the headlines, great carnage is still taking place there in the North African state. Which is why yesterday, at last, such an easy step to make has been taken – France has recognised the rebel council (I’m tempted to call it the Rebel Alliance) as the legitimate government of Libya. The trouble doing so is if Colonel Gaddafi’s forces triumph over the protestors – as America’s top foreign intelligence official has said is indeed the most likely outcome. Then an awkward diplomatic stand-off lingers and France would be frozen out of any part of Libya’s development. Paris has crossed the Rubicon.
This would explain the reluctance of other western nations to follow suit, while President Nicolas Sarkozy is talking up surgical strikes on the Gaddafi command structure. France could not do this by itself – it would have to be agreed by a large majority of NATO. Unfortunately, this is not forthcoming at the latest reckoning. Turkey is the most vocal in opposing any measures, as it continues its Ottoman Caliphate syndrome, palling up with autocrats in Iran and now Libya against the populations of these countries and the outside world. Guido Westerwelle, Germany’s foreign minister, openly says he doesn’t want to get involved in another war, after Afghanistan; it may reflect his country’s post-WWII pacifist stance, but they’ve also just lost their defence minister to a plagiarism scandal, so his successor is still learning their brief, plus in the lands of the Hindu Kush, German troops were criticised for their copious beer-drinking – another war and alcohol poisoning might go up. Robert Gates is gloomy about enforcing the arms embargo, let alone anything more proactive – an arch-realist brought in to tame the excess of ideology in Gulf War II, he is also the calibre of man who would stand by impassively and not raise a finger as Saddam Hussein crushed the 1991 uprisings, following Iraq’s expulsion from Kuwait. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO chief, raises the buzz phrase ‘no-fly zone’ only ever in conjunction with a ‘UN mandate’, proving he either doesn’t understand or pretending to not understand international law. You don’t need a UN mandate if the government of a country invites you in.
The rebels are clamouring for outside help. Recognise the Libyan opposition as the government, like France and you avoid breaking international law. Russia spuriously cited this when it invaded Georgia in 2008, claiming it was asked to intervene by self-governing administrations in South Ossetia and Abkhazia against Georgina ‘aggression’, even though only Nicaragua and Moscow itself recognised these statelets (and Russia had stoked up the tension in the first place). On such a rationale, NATO could play the Russians at their own game. The elephant in the room during Rasmussen’s conference call is that there is no appetite to do so. In Brussels, they are hoping the Russians and the Chinese vote down the measure before the Security Council (and a no-fly zone would not ground helicopter gunships, illustrating the size of pygmy ambition).
Further south, an unusually muscular UN operation is taking place in Côte d’Ivoire. The UN ignores rogue president Laurent Gbagbo’s pronouncements against it, such as a no-fly zone on UN aircraft. This no-nonsense attitude is partly because of the widespread recognition of Alassane Ouattara’s democratic victory and partly because they ended an eight-year civil war and do not want a repeat. Yet still the country heads in that direction as regional and international actors in the political sphere sit on their hands, merely scolding Gbagbo, like they tut over Gaddafi
Meanwhile, our by-the-numbers Foreign Secretary, William Hague, blethers that the Libyan crisis is the biggest test to ‘Europe’ (however that is defined) for 20 years, i.e. since the fall of the Berlin Wall/Soviet Union. So the Bosnian and Kosovan wars, where genocide occurred for the first time on the continent since 1945, obviously do not figure in his mind. British foreign policy oscillates wildly, while its action lags behind that of everyone else. I opposed the 2003 Iraq conflict because we were going to war with transparent lies, a false prospectus and the wrong real reasons. The 1991 moment had passed. The hostilities were supposed to serve notice on dictators, yet (as in many ways) it has proved counter-productive, with the west weary on further intervention. Ordinary Libyans instigated a shot at democracy – it was not imposed from outside and top-down. Pragmatism and romanticism must be wedded in NATO policy, rather than pragmatism reigning supreme because otherwise Gaddafi could be doing the same in Libya quite soon and who want that?