People complain about the U.S. intervening all over the globe, but when things get out of hand and innocent people are getting killed there is always pressure on Washington to do something. When we don’t, as in Rwanda, we get blamed for that, too. So, other than reimposing sanctions, what are we supposed to do about Libya? Are we supposed to take over their air space?
Personally, I think Gaddafi is on his way out, and the U.S. is all he has left to justify his rule. If we start pushing him out, it will only give him hope and a rationale for staying. Obviously there is some limit of violence beyond which we can’t just sit back and passively watch. But this is another case where I resent our role as the sole superpower. Why can’t the Europeans take over Libyan air space if that is what the international community feels needs to be done? And who’s offering to pay the bill for any intervention?
No one in Europe (that I know of) is asking the US to intervene, Booman. We have seen too many ham fisted US interventions which only make matters worse. Any actions which are taken should only be taken with UN support (and not an ambiguous resolution cooked up with false intelligence).
The ideal solution is for Libyans to sort out this situation for themselves and the question of foreign military intervention only arises if a large scale humanitarian disaster were to be on the horizon. At the moment it looks as if power is slowly slipping from Gaddafy’s grasp and a heavy handed foreign intervention or threat thereof would only lend credence to his delusional paranoia and reinforce his grip on power.
What IS needed is a much more powerful UN, but that won’t happen so long as the US continues to veto any UN initiatives (e.g. on Israel) and prevent it from becoming a much more powerful influence for human rights and world peace.
So far Obama hasn’t departed significantly from Bush in his attitudes to the UN so what we need – more than anything – is to stop the US exceptionalist delusion that the US has any legitimate unilateral military role outside the USA whatsoever.
Despite the veneer of NATO, Europe very much concedes or concurs in a unilateral role of the U.S. outside of our home turf. That’s the problem, as I see it. That’s our Fifth Navy making the waters safe from Umm Qasr to Sharm al-Sheikh. Or, trying, anyway.
Ireland isn’t a member of Nato so it doesn’t speak for us. I have no doubt some right wing European elites are happy to see the USA doing its military thing but the progressive EU blogosphere most definitely is not.
All European politicians are happy to let us carry a military budget equal to the rest of the world combined while they sleep well knowing that if some Tsunami hits Sumatra, we’ve got the wherewithal to bring in supplies, or if genocide breaks out somewhere, we can move in in a hurry. Or if Russia ever gets expansionist again, we can provide a check.
Korea and Japan are happy to house our troops rather than pay to build and sustain their own.
There is a ton of consensus that we should do these things and take the blowback for them. And when our right-wing politicians decide that our outsized responsibilities mean we don’t have to listen to the UN or respect international law, the Europeans don’t see how they’re partially responsible for that attitude, and why it is a kind of natural feeling to have.
agree, very annoying b/c we’re in a no-win situation. at least with pres Obama we can have confidence he’ll work to tread the fine line.
Booman Tribune ~ It’s Always Our Responsibility
I can’t think of a single Irish politician (right or left) who is happy with the level of US military spending or a left of centre European politician for that matter. (Don’t confuse Tony Bliar with left of centre politics!)
And no one thinks the US military is primarily about humanitarian intervention or that you need that kind of military capability to do humanitarian intervention.
As for Russia, it is causing us far less problems than US foreign policy is, and is an essential trading partner for the EU for gas, in particular, which creates a mutual dependency.
You really need to get the cold war blinkers off – it ended 30 years ago…thanks to Gorbachev and despite Reagan.
I don’t think you realize how much you take for granted. Call me when Europe or the United Nations gets together to build the capability to take over for the United States’ humanitarian responsibilities, or its mobilization capabilities, or it’s naval responsibilities, or it’s responsibility to enforce UNSC resolutions. When they build it, I’ll know that their politicians aren’t happy about our spending.
Most of what the US calls humanitarian intervention is in fact military intervention in the name of US strategic interests and which often makes matters worse for the unfortunate recipients of that “aid”. Ireland and Europe spend a far higher proportion of GDP on genuine humanitarian Aid than the US ever did.
US military interventions (it has military bases in over a hundred supposedly sovereign states) are generally in support of dictatorships which cause humanitarian problems and the US refusal to support climate change mitigation measures makes it by far the largest global contributor to global warming and the environmental and humanitarian catastrophes resulting from that the world over.
The US only enforces UNSC resolutions when they are in the US’s own narrowly conceived strategic interests and blocks all other measures regardless of how humanitarian they may be. I know all states act in their own self interest, but many are not as short term or narrow in defining them, and most don’t give us all this guff about acting for humanitarian purposes…
At least the US neocons are quite explicit about furthering US imperial ambitions and laugh at the humanitarian stuff for the public relations window dressing that it is. I never thought |I would look to US neocons for a more accurate assessment of US foreign policy…
You are missing my point. Badly.
I am not trying to characterize American foreign policy. And I am being critical of the U.S.’s role as sole superpower, not defending it.
I’m not saying that our military budget is ginormous so that we can carry out humanitarian relief missions. I am saying that Europe doesn’t have the cargo fleets to move more than one division to Afghanistan, let alone a grand scale humanitarian airlift. We’re the only ones who can do it, so we’re responsible for doing it…or it won’t get done.
We patrol the high seas searching out pirates and trying to make trade by sea as safe as possible. Anyone else want to pay for a Navy to do that, along with the basing requirements with kings and despots that go along with it? I mean, really, be my guest.
My sole point is that the world is really quite happy to have the United States do most of the things we do with our military. And why not? It’s expensive, and some of it pisses people off.
I think you underestimate European (and global) cargo fleets and most humanitarian relief efforts do not require military capabilities of any great import. We do not want to move more divisions to Afghanistan and I think you grossly over-estimate the degree to which “most of the world” are happy to see the US throw its military weight around. Saudi Kings. Israel, and a variety of despotic regimes I grant you. But let us not confuse that with a CNN view of “most of the world”.
No one likes to feel helpless or out of control. But I’m not talking about liking U.S. power. They like not having to do these things for themselves, but they don’t like l the consequences.
I wish you would evidence these enormous psychologistic assertions and their relevance to the points at issue.
How does dependency on US military power to achieve some objective (which may or may not be delivered depending on US foreign policy priorities) reduce a sense of helplessness unless you are part of a US aligned elite in a state?
As for exaggerating the cargo problem, NATO has had twelve years to address it and so far they’ve made very little progress. There are two programs…
the Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC) and the Strategic Airlift Interim Solution (SALIS)
that are designed to deal with the shortfall of capability, but the whole things has dragged on forever and is extremely modest in any case.
The US has status of forces agreements with all of the governments that have US forces on their soil.
The countries are glad to have US forces. You’re right.
The US have status of forces agreements with a wide variety of local dictatorships who regard the US base as a useful insurance policy against local popular dissent. The income deriving from a local base can be very useful for a very poor third world economy – or at least the elites – and the <del>prostitutes</del> service industries – who benefit directly from it.
You appear to be assuming that those status of forces agreements are all entered into without “special incentives” or coercion and in concert with the will of the populations of those countries.
If so, I suggest you reconsider that assumption. Not all countries, and by far not all populations of those countries are even remotely glad to have US forces on their soil.
I can see why NATO governments might be in no great hurry to purchase more Boeing aircraft…
I’ve always thought the US has “defended” Europe to its own detriment. It’s true that most Europeans have no love for the muscular US foreign policy and associated wars of choice. But, the US having underwritten collective security in Europe has allowed European nations to spend more freely on their citizens in terms of social programs and infrastructure. Monies that otherwise would have in some part been diverted for national defense.
Basically, I think we should close all or most of our European and Asian bases and let those countries take care of themselves. They neither need us nor want us there and we have better uses for the money.
I don’t agree that the US defense of Europe was to it’s own detriment during the Cold War. We are far better off with those countries having remained opposed to the Soviet Union, or at least not under the influence of it. It would have been nice for other countries to contribute more, but at this point it’s not something I would hold against them.
OTOH, I think the US made a mistake (and is still making it) in not drawing down it’s forces in Europe farther after 1987. Certainly, in the light of our budget problems, bases in Europe should be put on the block – along with all the things this country is fucking up in the Mid-East and Central Asia, of course. The NATO treaty should be jettisoned, too, just to emphasize the point that US won’t be showing up at a moment’s notice.
I’m wouldn’t be so quick to draw down in Korea, however, just because the size disparity between China and everybody else – individually or combined.
i think you’re missing frank’s.
point being, your political system is so addicted to military spending, and creating the global paranoia to justify it, it has a created a huge behemoth, used often for reasons perceived by the rest of the world as self-serving and unaltruistic.
since you built it, it’d be nice to see it used for good more often.
otherwise it becomes a race to have more hardware and a bigger MIC. no thanks, we see the results of that too clearly.
this ‘europe gets a free ride’ sounds a lot like a RW whining point, and surprising from you.
you chose to be globocop, it was great when it was more altruistic, saving our arse from the Nasties, but now we’re in a resource crunch, it’s obvious what it was really built for, to keep america merrily polluting, bizniz as usual.
the two countries that can’t intervene, as you say in your brilliant summation of the ME elsewhere on this page, are italy and the usa, for historical reasons.
if ruanda had oil, don’t you think you’da been onto it like white on rice?
could any country do a special ops job on gaddafi and not crow about it afterwards, is what i wonder.
very mixed feelings about use of force, but the tone of the whine really rankles, unsubtle dig at our lack of requisite perceived macho-ness. as long as you want to arrest/kill anyone without trial globally, practice torture and rendition, influence other sovereign nations’ judiciaries etc etc, then if you take that type of responsibility, do more good with it, instead of chiding us for not depriving ourselves of our social systems, which you could have too, if you didn’t spend such unholy amounts on deathware and lying propaganda to rationalise its exports.
europe’s hands are filthy too, just in case you think i try to score points off you, or the usa in general.
but maybe if you gave yourselves some of those social services instead of sniping at them, you’d find the world a less threatening place, and thus lower the need to arm it to death, literally. certainly weaning yourselves of the current levels of waste would endear you all greatly to the rest of a cooking planet.
not to mention set the example we all need, especially china.
normally i agree with so much of what you say, this just jars…
You really are missing Booman’s point: if (note the qualifier) the Western democracies decided to something needed to be done somewhere, the US is the only country able to project more than a company or two of soldiers for an extended period, or a larger force at all. That is a fact separate from the discussion of whether the US has, is, or will do something constructive with it’s military capability.
Also: the Cold War ended 24 years ago.
I don’t know where this dismissive attitude to European armies is coming from. In total they are quite large. True – only small numbers have been deployed in support of US wars of choice. That is because European populations have a very low tolerance for wars like Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. Europeans simply haven’t seen any Casus belli worthy of a large deployment since ww2.
I call bs.
I see you don’t like facts. What about US 2009 defence budget was $660 Billion and EU military expenditure was $406 Billion. Not a huge difference, is it – and both are probably far too high.
See my link below. Is all about money. Again.
It seems to me Richard Silverstein is calling for intervention:
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/02/21/the-shores-of-tripoli-run-red-with-martyrs-b
lood/
Daniel Larison dissents on “no fly zones” and intervention:
http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2011/02/22/the-problems-of-a-libyan-no-fly-zone/
This is another one of those “I’m glad I’m not president” moments.
I’m against intervention at this stage, even if it’s unilateral.
Grrr, even if it’s multilateral*.
What counts as intervention?
For example, I think it should be a matter of US policy that if a government is using its military to suppress protests – especially peaceful protests – then there should be an immediate embargo on weapons and other military hardware to that country. It should be able to go into effect by executive order and sit in place unless overturned by Congress.
Not a full-on trade embargo – which tend to hurt the people more than the leadership in most cases – but at least cut off some of the supply of ammunition and new weapons until the situation is resolved. The more countries you can get to agree to do the same thing, the fewer weapons the regime has to fire on crowds of protesters (and the more they have to pay to arms dealers from countries who refuse to sign onto the idea – so it still hurts the governments that go this route even if you can’t completely stop the flow of weapons into the country.
Too much executive power that could easily be ripe with abuse.
Besides, it’s just not realistic when nations for the most part are amoral.
Actually, U.S. law covers that. Under U.S. law it is against the law to sell military equipment to governments that use it against civilians.
Of course, that law is observed mostly in the breach, as in the case of Saddam Hussein in the ’80’s (U.S.-made helicopters were used in the gassing of Halabja, and a Congressional attempt to enforce the above law was hushed up very quickly), and, of course, Israel, which uses its U.S.-made-and-mostly-funded military death and destruction machine mainly against civilians and civilian/civil infrastructure.
Awkward moment for lefties:
The Associated Press
Tuesday, February 22, 2011; 10:58 AM
MANAGUA, Nicaragua — Nicaragua’s leftist President Daniel Ortega says he has telephoned Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to express his solidarity.
there’s a wtf moment.
Not at all. Qaddafi was, I believe, one of the few international regimes willing to stand by the Sandanistas in the ’80s, when they were under relentless attack by Washington. That sort of thing isn’t soon forgotten.
It should be forgotten immediately.
Why is it an awkward moment for “lefties”?
Least the Western world can do since we sold the weapons.
A crude mercantilist doctrine stands exposed
The Prime Minister is deluded if he think he can preach democracy while bolstering autocrats
And from the comments:
I wonder how many jobs are in the defense industry here in US? This is the Bush Legacy. And what percentage of our trade is military equipment and software.
And French and Russian exports? And we wonder why the world is falling apart. Crazy.
4.6% of GDP goes into the DoD (plus more for the rest of the security complex), so a proportional number of jobs would be about 6.1 million.
When you appoint yourself as sole world superpower/world’s policeman, and expend hundreds o billions upon hundreds of billions of dollars, and snuff out or destroy millions of lives in order to remain in that position, then you should not complain when you don’t like the consequences of your own voluntarily chosen actions.
I find blanket insults about the US to be offensive. There is no such thng as a pure of heart country. We usually agree, but this is a harsh comment.
Your comment could well describe Britian and India as well as the Boer War.
What part of my comment is not accurate? Is it my comment that is harsh, or reality? Or both?
The United States has chosen and fought to become and remain the world’s only superpower, so no whining about what comes along with it, please.
I’m not sure you can reasonably say that the US has fought to remain the world’s only superpower. In fact, I would say the wars of choice have endangered that status and will hasten an equilibrium.
The US did not need to fight two wars in this past decade to maintain superpower status. On balance, the demise of the USSR is good for the world but the lack of a rival to serve as a check on American imperialism has been unfortunate. The Chinese will probably fill that role shortly as they are the only power capable of doing so. The US has no ability to limit the Chinese in that endeavor.
My argument is based on the intent behind the actions of the U.S., not the consequences of the actions. You appear to be arguing based on the consequences, not the intent, so while I agree with the substance of what you are saying, it is not really relevant to my argument.
It is abundantly clear that the intent behind the aggression against Iraq was to gain control of that strategic (not to mention oil-rich) country and transform it into a dependent, compliant client state that the U.S. could use as a base for military, political, and economic operations in the region. The fact that that action very predictably didn’t turn out that way does not diminish the fact that the purpose behind it was to increase the power and reach of the empire aka “the world’s only superpower”. Therefore, in attacking and occupying Iraq the United States was fighting to maintain, aggrandize, and further solidify its position as “the world’s only superpower”.
I suggest that there was at least in part similar intent behind the attack on Afghanistan, though there were also strong domestic political reasons for it, e.g. to bolster the image of George W. Bush and the Republican party. Once again, the fact that it (again, very predictably) has not turned out so great for the U.S. does not alter the fact that it was intended to make the empire more powerful.
Same with your remark about the demise of the USSR. You and I might see the downside, but I submit that we who consider unchecked U.S. imperialism a bad thing are in the minority in the U.S. It seems clear that not only our past and current governments see unchecked U.S. power as a positive, so does the majority of the population.
It’s tough being an imperial power that overreached (thank you W). Everyone expects you to act to throw out a dictator just like you threw out a democratically elected government. They don’t understand that doing the first means suppressing the remnant power of the state, and doing the second just means suppressing the people.
Why not a cruise missile down Gaddafi’s house? Well, that’s what he was inviting, thinking that Barack Obama is Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. And after it missed him, he could claim the magical powers of having dodged another attack by the US. Only the armed forces that have flipped can evict him; only they know where he might really be.
As I recall the United States has tried the cruise missile down his house, snuffing out the life of his completely innocent baby daughter, leaving him unscathed in the process.
Leave Libya for the Libyans to sort out.
Exactly my point. I wasn’t advocating that. I was pointing out that it won’t be effective now exactly because it wasn’t effective then. And that Gaddafi wears his survival as a badge of honor. The sculpture in front of that house/memorial is a in-your-face statement, “I beat US air power”.
I’m very much for letting the Libyans sort out the situation. And the sorting seems to be moving steadily on Tripoli. The regime might collapse before the US-UK, NATO, and the UN decide what to do.
But Libyan ex-pats are calling for intervention. And the failure of the US to “do something” or “take action” are a repetitive narrative on al Jazeera.
They like to have it both ways. If the Egpytian rebellion had been ruthlessly put down by Mubarak you can bet that they would be criticizing the US for a failure to intervene and prevent bloodshed as well as continuing to enable the regime.
There would have been no need for intervention because had Mubarak done that it would have been with our blessing.
Obama? the usa population? not so. bush maybe, but he’s no longer pResident
The governments of countries always tilt in favor of stability (unless they have other motives). Russia and China are trying to have it both ways. So is the European Union.
And as hurria points out above, the people of the country have the moral authority and the best means to bring down even a repressive regime — once they conquer their fear of getting killed, tortured, or imprisoned. There very few effective ways of toppling a government in favor of the people. There are many more ways of having a coup that takes power from people, once you have the military or a significant portion of the military committed to the project. US power did not topple the Soviet government; it collapsed from within. US power did not take down Slobodan Milosevich or Muammar Gaddafi (despite many efforts). US power required a major expenditure of effort to topple Saddam Hussein; we know how that has turned out. Likewise the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The US has received the focus because of the many times in its imperial history (and remember that imperialism was considered the normal aspiration of nations until World War I and not dethroned as an ideology until World War II) that it has engaged in setting up puppets who suppressed the people or supporting dictators who were helpful to US business interests. And since World War II, the record has grown in stark relief as the US arguments for self-determination, such as in Eastern Europe, were undercut by hypocritical and cynical actions in Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Cambodia, and the failed effort in Cuba.
I got that you were speaking ironically, if not sarcastically, I was adding my 2 cents worth.