Bosnia yesterday, Libya tomorrow?
The euphoria over the of the Gaddafi Era in Libya will fade quickly and the question will become: what next in this energy-rich North African country? Little is known about the rebels, other than they are largely tribal based (i.e. they come from the eastern tribes, while Gaddafi’s power was more based on the western tribes). And of course there is the fact that some of the rebels have ties to radical Islamist groups. Observers like Ted Galen Carpenter, a Bigpeace.com contributor, are pessimistic about what the future holds. As he writes at The National Interest:
The outlook for a post-Qaddafi Libya is midpoint between sobering and depressing. It is possible that the warring parties will accept a de facto division of the country between the eastern and western tribes, although a formal agreement to that effect is unlikely. Even an informal partition would more accurately reflect the demographics, politics, and history of that territory than an insistence on keeping Libya intact. Moreover, the most probable alternatives to a peaceful territorial division would be a continuous, simmering civil war or a rebel victory that would merely breed resentment in the western part of the country and pave the way for a new round of fighting a few years from now. The NATO powers must confront the question of how much they are willing to assist the insurgents in maintaining control of western Libya once Qaddafi is gone. Prospects are not good that a government formed by the eastern-dominated rebel forces would be able to win even a modest number of influential converts from the western tribes.
Perhaps the biggest reason to fear continued fighting? There is so much wealth at stake. If Libya were poor, there would not be nearly as much fighting because the stakes would be lower. But with billions in energy wealth available to the victors, the prospects of stability seem at this point to be fairly remote. And Carpenter fears that this means because NATO supported the rebels, they will now be compelled to deploy peacekeepers in Libya. (“If you break it, you own it.”) France should be the power to take charge, but they’re broke. So Europe will try to push the problem on to…..us.
Libya’s probable security and economic difficulties will create tremendous pressure on NATO to provide extensive financial aid and deploy peacekeeping forces. Therein lies the danger to the United States. Logically, if NATO does deploy ground forces, they should come overwhelmingly from France and some of the other countries bordering the Mediterranean. Those nations have the most at stake in trying to stabilize Libya. NATO members in central and northern Europe (with the exception of Britain) have shown little desire to engage in such a mission. So far, the Obama administration has indicated that the United States will not put ground forces into Libya either–a wise exercise in restraint.
But given the financial woes of Italy, France and other key European members of the alliance, and given the habitual desire of the Europeans to off-load security problems onto the United States as NATO’s leader, it is all too likely that we will see a concerted campaign to get Washington’s participation in a post-Qaddafi peacekeeping mission.
I hope Ted is wrong. I fear he is correct.
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