Putting Humpty Together

I frequently allude here to the classic movie, The Red Shoes. To refresh your memory at the end of the movie, despite the prima ballerina having committed suicide the performance of her ballet goes on, a member of the company carrying her red shoes to the places on the stage she would have been. She’s not there but her presence is unmistakeable. The reason I refer to it is that it confers meaning on things that would otherwise be surreal.

Like today’s editorial by the editors of the Washington Post, who never met a war they didn’t like. Consider this passage:

LIBYA, WHICH has lived with civil war off and on since 2011, now is on the brink of joining Syria as the site of a major multinational conflict. Last Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that he would ask his parliament as soon as this week to authorize the deployment of Turkish troops to defend Libya’s Tripoli-based government. The intervention is a response to the appearance of more than 1,000 Russian mercenaries in the ranks of rebel forces besieging the capital — something that has caused a shift in front lines for the first time in months.

Also pouring in resources to the insurgency led by warlord Khalifa Hifter are Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, France and Jordan, according to a recent U.N. report. Qatar has joined Turkey in backing the U.N.-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA). Both sides are now equipped with fleets of drones that have caused extensive civilian casualties. The escalation of fighting could touch off a new wave of refugees to Europe and allow a Libya-based Islamic State affiliate to gain ground.

What is absent from that passage yet evident everywhere? Could it be that the United States joined Britain and France to provide air support to the forces rebelling against Moammar Qaddafi’s regime and that without U. S. support for the rebels that regime would undoubtedly still be in power? The Brits and French couldn’t sustain an air campaign for more than a few days and without that air campaign Qaddafi would unquestionably have deployed his own air force against the rebels.

Adding insult to injury our campaign was a violation of the Security Council resolution which authorized us only to protect civilians, not to bring down the Qaddafi regime. Much of Russia’s subsequent actions in the Middle East are a specific response to that. Russia had voted in support of that resolution (China abstained). They learned that our good faith could not be relied on.

Now after nearly a decade of misery and chaos in Libya with torture, extrajudicial executions, and slaves being sold in Libya’s town squares, the editors feign innocence.

The lesson of Libya is that liberal interventionism is no more able to create liberal democratic governments in places where there is little domestic support for them than neoconservative interventionism is. We can defeat armies; we can occupy countries; we can maintain a shaky peace as long as we’re willing to maintain a sufficient troop presence and take the casualties. We cannot create liberal democratic governments.

We surrendered any moral authority to produce peace in Libya nearly a decade ago. What should we do now? Maintain a low profile. We certainly shouldn’t lead any stabilization efforts.