In a contribution to CNN today, Gen. Michael Hayden, the retired
USAF four-star general and former Director of both the National
Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, described
the challenges facing a post-Gaddafi Libya in context of
America’s recent military interventionism in the Arab world. As he
knows better than most, collapsing the corrupt, illiberal, and
illegitimate old regime is usually the easy part. State
construction and the maturation of a robust civil society are
considerably more problematic.
Make no mistake — whether behind the scenes or from the skies
above — the resignation of Ben Ali in Tunisia, the collapse of
Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and the death of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya
were, in part, orchestrated by the United States of America. Of
course, as Hayden notes, there was more than “altruistic
international good citizenship involved here.”
Now, all three “states” exist in a condition of political flux.
In Tunisia, there are concerns about an Islamist advantage in the
country’s fragile, young parliament. In Egypt, Mubarak’s
“ancien régime” still holds the nation in a death grip,
stifling democratic development and a constitutional renaissance.
But Libya presents the most challenging security dilemma for the
U.S. and its NATO allies. According to Hayden:
If Libya is left to its own devices, it is not difficult to
conceive of it becoming Somalia on the Mediterranean, an ungoverned
space threatening the heart of Europe as well as critical
international lines of communication. We have already begun to fret
over the loss of control of thousands of man-portable
surface-to-air missiles. These are reasons enough to stay
engaged.
Lacking both Gen. Hayden’s aegis and articulation, I presaged
a similar
sentiment back in August. Undoubtedly, the end of Gaddafi
will have regional impacts for Egypt and Tunisia — two states that
will be watching with careful attention as yet another new nation
emerges on the Mediterranean rim of North Africa. In Syria, Bashar
al-Assad must be wondering how long his Arab League allies will
tolerate the Arab Street’s revulsion with his inhuman treatment of
his own people. In Tehran, the ruling Mullahs are undoubtedly
pondering the assumption that were Gaddafi to have refused to
surrender his nuclear and WMD program, the West might have thought
twice about poking the wounded “Lion of Africa.”
For the United States and NATO, the “responsibility to protect”
will need to be reassessed from the elucidatory vision of Western
fighter planes exceeding basic air support of rebel fighters to
wither and strafe the Colonel’s ground
troops. Now, Hayden says that the Libyan success
must be managed “within NATO.”
It was American intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance,
defense suppression, electronic warfare, refueling and precision
weapons that kept the alliance in the game. Will the lesson be that
Europeans will have to do more in the future? Or did the Libyan
adventure teach them that current levels of investment are “good
enough?
He’s right — these are not idle questions. This may come as a
surprise to many Americans who dared hope for an end to robust
interventionism — however prematurely — during a week that also
witnessed shades of twilight darkening peventive war in
Iraq.
Edited to fix typo.
