We should also remember where this started. A young man, frustrated at the lack of freedom of speech and economic opportunity, killed himself in the ultimate act of defiance in a rural Tunisian town.

It always intrigues me that this is the spark that is send to have lit the fire of the Tunisian revolution, but I have never seen a name for the unfortunate man who probably would never realise the outcome of his actions. If this is true (and I have no reason other than the lack of the name to doubt it) perhaps the name should be remembered.

That aside, nice analysis, albeit one point of concern – Libyans, although sometimes tribal, generally identify each other as Arabs, sharing (almost overwhelmingly) their religion and ethnic background (and the Al’Qadfi tribe seems to be still fighting in Libya…).

Syrians are more divided – and Assad exploits this. It is more like Iraq (or Yemen) than Libya, Egypt (where the Copts might be a minority, but are still seen as Egyptian Arabs by the mainstream) and Tunisia. That is to say, there may be ethnic reasons for conflict in Syria missing in Libya – if we intervene there, it has to be done very carefully.

The NATO powers had an interest in the outcome of the Libyan civil war being the establishment of stable government in the whole of the country, preferably without the eccentric Gaddafi in charge. So their material interests were in temporary alignment with actions that would produce a humanitarian outcome, i.e. an intervention guarenteeing the success of the revolution. And that is certainly to be welcomed.

However – and I’m sorry to break this to some of our liberal friends – it does not follow from this that the West is a moral force for good in the region, and can be trusted to pursue an activist policy of liberation. The suggestion simply doesn’t pass the laugh test. Britain was arming and training Gaddafi’s security forces right up until the moment when it became necessary to back a different horse. In fact, Britain sells arms to practically every single despotic regime in the Middle East and North Africa
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/feb/22/uk-arms-sales-middle-east-north-africa
It shouldn’t be too much to ask that people draw some obvious conclusions from this about the moral character of the British state and its policies in that part of the world.

British support for tyranny is nothing new. The material interests of the British state have contradicted those of the people of the Middle East for as long as the UK has been involved in that region. Hence our long record of backing dictators in, including the very worst, such as Saddam and the House of Saud.

Recently, the Bahraini monarchy invited Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain in support of its violent crushing of the pro-democracy movement there. Can we look forward to Britain ceasing its long-standing and substantial support for the Saudi military in light of this, and in light of its grotesque human rights record? No. Were we ever going to hear talk from Western leaders of intervening to prevent Israel from carrying out its massacre of people in Gaza in 2008-09? The very idea never arose. Again, it shouldn’t be too much to ask that people draw some obvious conclusions from all this about the moral character of the British state and its commitments in the Middle East and North Africa.

Military powers invariably cloak the violent pursuit of their material interests with lofty moral rhetoric. Sometimes, by happy coincidence, their actions happen to produce welcome results. More often, as history shows us, they don’t. I’m not going to reflexively oppose every last thing Britain does in the world. But I am going to insist that people talk about these matters with a minimum level of seriousness and a basic awareness of the relevant history.

Luke Bozier,

Let’s not get carried away with ourselves.

Assad may well get off the hook because it will be impossible to organise a campaign (fiscal or military) without being accused of trying to assist those nasty Zionists across the border to the south. To do so in the ‘Arab world’ is the equivalent of Standing up and advocating paedophillia in the rest of the globe.

Assad is a nasty piece of work (probably nicer than his dad) but he’s only doing what dictators do – trying to stay in power.

I have little regard for the Arab League and was surprised they rubber-stamped the France/UK/US intervention in Libya. Once bitten, twice shy. NATO have engaged in mission creep on an epic scale, so no matter how awful Gadaffi’s regime was I don’t think there will be an appetite to sanction more killing in the name of saving lives. Every life lost on both sides during the campaign are real whereas the lives of people in Benghazi were saved in theory only. With time this could become the predominant narrative.

In Libya, the UK had major national interests — not only in oil but also in avoiding a huge refugee problem. In Syria, we have no direct interest that I can discern…

Assad may well get off the hook because it will be impossible to organise a campaign (fiscal or military) without being accused of trying to assist those nasty Zionists across the border to the south. To do so in the ‘Arab world’ is the equivalent of Standing up and advocating paedophillia in the rest of the globe.

Is it? Or is just convenient for certain leaders to use the zionists as hate figures? Israel may not be popular, but I doubt there is widespread love for Assad either – apparently even Hamas have managed to fall out with him (they refused to condemn the demonstrations against him and he threatened to cut funding…).

“Every life lost on both sides during the campaign are real whereas the lives of people in Benghazi were saved in theory only. With time this could become the predominant narrative.”

Or possibly not – remember Gaddafi did take back some significant areas from the rebels before the intervention. We’ll only start to find out what Gaddafi’s forces did to suspected rebel sympathisers in those areas once the fighting is over.

But on the other hand, Luke Bozier seems to be happily assuming that success with a military intervention in Libya means that success in Syria with a similar intervention would be assured, so we should do it. But they are very different situations in very different countries.

For starters, there’s a blatently dangerous ethnic dimension in Syria (with the Alawite ethnic minority totally dominating government and commerce). Reportedly there is a great deal of popular hostility to Alawites as a result, which could possibly spill over into violence. There are also regions of Kurdish and Turkish-speaking population, who may well consider the only long term solution to oppression from Damascus to be independence. Oh yes, and just to make things even more awkward, there are loads of Palestinians in refugee camps, too.

You’ve also got to remember that in Libya, western forces were invited in by a an already semi-viable armed popular movement; nothing similar appears to be happening in Syria yet. Without rebels prepared to fight on the ground, I fail to see how you could achieve much without ground troops – something which would dangerously resemble a western occupation.

Finally, there’s the complication of the country being an immediate neighbour of both Israel and Iraq. A major reason that insurgent attacks have reduced in Iraq is because there aren’t many foreigners to attack any more. Giving them targets just the other side of a very porous desert border could be a serious problem. Also, if there’s a situation of anarchy and Israel believes Islamic militants to be roaming around unchecked, they may well invade to protect their border, creating a truly hideous quagmire.

I’ll support humanitarian intervention where it saves lives, but you’ve got to have a strong chance of improving the situation. Much as I’d like to think we could do something to help, I don’t see that possibility in Syria.

However, I’m not too worried we’ll do anything stupid here: the real reasons we’ve seen military action in Libya are that it is a crucial oil producer (so we don’t want a long guerrilla-based civil war) and possibly also Sarkozy’s fear of the political consequences of a flood of Muslim refugees across the Mediterranean. Neither of these issues affect Syria.

Bozier:

Is anyone else spotting the contradictions in this passage:

Syria is the next obvious focus, once things settle a little in Libya. Russia for one will stand in the way of an intervention in Syria; although Russia’s approach to backing dictatorships is starting to look like a tired failure in the face of all the citizen-led revolutions in the region.

But just because NATO can’t bomb Syria doesn’t mean tougher action can’t be taken against the Assad regime; au contraire – recent weeks have seen thousands of deaths in Syria, and something does need to be done to stop President Assad thinking he can get away with impunity after murdering multitudes of his own citizens. He needs to be stopped, where possible, from killing any more people.

That will require a mixture of sanctions, arming and backing rebel movements that come about (Libya style) and targeted, laser-like military operations which we may be able to carry out under the auspices UN Charter chapters VI & VIII. [emphases added]

Anyone else on LibCon know what a ‘laser-like’ military operation is? Or how it can be conducted without either bombs, boots on the ground, or arming of rebel groups (which was illegal under the Libyan UN mandate)? Please note I’d like to see Assad go and democracy for Syria.

Shorter Bozier: maybe we can pull the same trick of a UN mandate to protect civilians to get regime change in Damsacus. Next stop: Tehran!

jungle @ 6:

Many very good points there!

Judicious liberal intervention in Libya surely does not justify romantic revolutionist intervention in Syria, which would be simply crass.

So far, things look promising in Libya; but we may yet be disappointed by an authoritarian regime…

Watchman re comment 5:

Thanks for your message.

“Or is just convenient for certain leaders to use the zionists as hate figures? Israel may not be popular, but I doubt there is widespread love for Assad either”

Assad may not be loved but Israel is by far and away the most reviled country in the region. For over 60 years Arab leaders have hidden their continual failings behind the bogeyman they call the ‘Zionist Entity’ – so one can’t make a comparison between the two. It would be like comparing the perception of cancer (the longstanding Arab view of Israel) with piles (the recent inconvenience of witnessing a member of the Arab League slaughter it’s own people).

“The NATO powers had an interest in the outcome of the Libyan civil war being the establishment of stable government in the whole of the country, preferably without the eccentric Gaddafi in charge. ”

Except prior to Jan this year this NATO powers had an interest in preventing any change throughout North Africa. Even in February, Italy was publicly backing Gaddafi. The interests only changed once it became clear there was a massive change occurring, and the western powers didn’t want to be on the wrong side of history, and couldn’t publicly support massive state repression as they have done in the past.

Its a crucial point; regime change in Libya was unplanned.

Or how it can be conducted without either bombs, boots on the ground, or arming of rebel groups (which was illegal under the Libyan UN mandate)?

Quite. Assad has a functioning military, that have passed the threshold of repeatedly killing significant numbers of their own people on his orders. That means the only way he will be leaving office is following the military defeat of that force.

Syria is unlikely to throw off Assad’s military by itself: there hasn’t been a successful war of revolution fought in a country as urbanised as Syria since about the early years of the last century.

NATO is unlikely to do so: it would be expensive, unpopular and risky, and all the identifiable impacts on western interests would be negative.

As far as I can see, Assad is just going to continue on digging himself deeper into a hole, until Syria becomes one of those countries like North Korea where the best you can hope for is they stay contained within their own borders.

I suppose it is possible Turkey or Iran may intervene.

soru re comment 11:

“As far as I can see, Assad is just going to continue on digging himself deeper into a hole, until Syria becomes one of those countries like North Korea where the best you can hope for is they stay contained within their own borders.”

Sounds like ‘Axis of Evil’ to me……….
Hey, maybe George W wasn’t the complete dumbass people loved to portray.

@1 Watchman

The name of the man in Tunisia widely regarded as having started the revolution there was Muhammad Al Bouazizi – it’s hardly a secret, or indeed hard to discover.

@ OP

“That will require a mixture of sanctions, arming and backing rebel movements that come about (Libya style) and targeted, laser-like military operations which we may be able to carry out under the auspices UN Charter chapters VI & VIII.”

You think? Sanctions, whilst welcome are unlikely to be enough… they have a relatively poor record in many places where they have been tried over a long period. Military action is vanishingly unlikely because the Russians and Chinese (who are hardly shining examples of liberalism) will veto any such action under the aegis of the UN, the Arab league are unlikely to initiate it as they did in Libya, and there is zero appetite in the west for getting involved.

If (and it is a VERY big if) there is a Libya style uprising in Syria including some of the Syrian armed forces, and there is some support from other Arab states, there may be some leeway. Just as Libya isn’t Iraq however, Syria isn’t Libya.

The question for the West and other liberal democracies, is how they bring about change in situations like Syria (or Zimbabwe, or Burma, or North Korea, or Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Bahrain, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China etc, etc) where the regimes have no qualms about killing innocent civilians, repressing minorities, discriminating against political opponents, homosexuals, religious minorities.

An ethical foreign policy presupposes not only cutting ties in the area of “high politics”, but where necessary isolating such regimes to the maximum extent possible economically; discriminating against them, denying them access to markets and funds, and ensuring that those who give them comfort (as for example the Russians and Chinese in many cases) suffer the consequences if they try to bale out odious regimes elsewhere.

It isn’t rocket science, it’s just that our leaders don’t have the “cojones” and the vision to try it.