8:31AM
Time's Battleland: Right where we've always wanted us
Wednesday, September 7, 2011 at 8:31AM 
Philip Stephens of the Financial Times recently pens a rather pessimistic piece on what Libya said about "Britain's pretensions of influence." Noting that the "campaign has stretched the armed forces to their limit," he calls it a "last hurrah." Now, the underlying tone of the piece is his criticism of PM David Cameron's desire to pursue a foreign policy more independent of both the US and EU, thus reaching out to the emerging powers, but his overall use of the Libyan intervention got me thinking: isn't this what we've always wanted in terms of a balanced world?
Read the entire post at Time's Battleland.
Reader Comments (6)
Thank you for the nice reminder of COMPLETE Success which many have great difficulty recognizing.
Dr. Barnett,
As you American's are wont to say "it ain't over till the fat lady sings". It is far too early to determine the strategic impact of Libya or even whether Libya represents the exception rather than the rule. You cannot pull a Libya in Egypt or even Algeria so calm down a little.
Also remember that whatever "rule set" you formulate in response to the Libyan crisis can be used against you (recall the 2008, Russia - Georgia crisis). (Or life could made very difficult for you in Central Asia).
This kind of intervention might work for small relatively homogenous nations (all Libyans speak Arabic and all Libyans are Muslim) when all the right conditions are met, but it doesn't scale very well in large, complex, multi-religious and multi-ethnic societies and that is what most of the "Gap" looks like.
The view from African presidential palaces and the African street (which does not seem to be seriously considered by either you or the rest of the American policy establishment) is a growing realisation of the "true purpose of AFRICOM" which they see as regime change. You need to work hard to dispel that view.
Another issue is the future direction of Libya, it could go Islamist or it could go liberal democratic. There is a very strong possibility that it could go Islamist. Granted, there are a good number of Western educated, suit wearing folk at Benghazi but most of the fighting was done by the most religiously motivated.
(I am extremely worried about the theft of a large number of "Igla" surface to air missiles, knowing that there are no real borders between Libya and Nigeria).
Many you tend to sweep the blatant racism against Black Libyans and other Sub-Saharan Africans under the carpet, it is serious matter. About a third of Libya's population is "black" and sustained racism could lead to insurgencies in the majority black southern Sahara regions, with support from elements in Niger and Chad.
Libya is not likely to be the outsized strategic player it was under Gadhafi (and India, Brazil, Russia and China can live without it).
In dealing with more complicated situations in "the Gap", you might require more capabilities than your traditional Western allies are able or willing to supply. Let me tell you straight up - in future you will need grunts from either India, China or Brazil to deal with challenges in Africa. Wise up to that realisation.
Don't like the reports coming out of Libya about the Russian Shoulder Fired Surface to Air Missiles. More than one source reporting that hundreds have been looted from military storage areas. My guess is that some are on their way to Hezbollah and the Israelis will be the first to face them.
That's the thing about dictators...they do keep things tidy.
That has always been the theme of Dr. Barnett's books, that China, India, Brazil and others are the allies to partner with now instead of the Western nations.
Let's assume things will work out much better than under Muamar Qadafi instead of fearing the future. The dictator wasn't going to live forever anyway. I'm a bit more concerned about Yemen since the nation has 1/12th of libya's economy per capita with 3 times the people.
Exactly Ted, dictators keep things tidy. Both Libya and Iraq lead to very messy post conflict situations. The "Igla" SAMs could be heading south to Nigeria and eastwards towards Israel (you cross into Egypt, smuggle them into Gaza and viola! they are in Israel).
The World still needs a mechanism for dealing with very messy post conflict situations. In a sense, Libya is the dress rehearsal for Syria. If Assad goes (without Western intervention), there still will be massive looting of his arms stores and Syria is (a) a lot closer to Israel than Libya and (b) more likely to have a lot more nasty stuff.
I suggest the World goes a little bit easy on Assad until we can properly figure out what to do when he goes.
Also see A-Z ruleset in glossary section of Tom's blog/website for dealing with post-conflict situations.