In looking at President Obama’s explanations for why we are in (or at least above) Libya, several things seem to be very important (this is from the President’s Saturday radio broadcast):
“As Commander in Chief, I face no greater decision than sending our military men and women into harm’s way. And the United States should not—and cannot—intervene every time there’s a crisis somewhere in the world.
But I firmly believe that when innocent people are being brutalized; when someone like Qaddafi threatens a bloodbath that could destabilize an entire region; and when the international community is prepared to come together to save many thousands of lives—then it’s in our national interest to act. And it’s our responsibility. This is one of those times.”
So what we have here are three things: (i) innocent people being brutalized; (ii) potential to destabilize a whole region; and (iii) international community coming together.
This is important for Americans because it tells us when President Obama may be sending our troops out to fight again. It is important to know this because, based on what happened in Libya, if timing is tight, President Obama will wait for UN Security Council approval (see point (iii) above), but not U.S. Congress approval.
These standards are probably even more important to other countries, though, because it tells them what they need to do to avoid U.S. intervention.
Obviously, you can avoid U.S. intervention if you don’t brutalize innocent people, but a lot of countries can’t avoid doing that, so they need to look at points (ii) and (iii). For some countries, point (ii) answers the problem for them. If you are not important or are not in an important area, you can get away with most anything you want to. That pretty much covers all of Africa, except the Arab countries along the Mediterranean – and Somalia because of how close it is to world shipping lanes.
But what if you are in an important area and you still want to brutalize innocent people – because, for example, you have to do that to stay in power? What do you do?
For what we have seen in the case of Libya, two things seemed important to President Obama’s decision to bomb: The United Nations Security Council resolution and the Arab League resolution before that, which was, apparently, important to getting the Security Council to act.
The importance of the Arab League resolution tells dictators that they need to be friendly, or at least not too unfriendly, to their follow dictators. You can be a jerk of a ruler but don’t be a jerk to the autocrats running your neighboring countries. Be friendly to at least a few of the other dictators in the area so they won’t call for your removal. I mean, the Arab League is not a league of democracies. It couldn’t have been that hard for Colonel Gaddafi to stay on semi-decent terms with at least a couple of those guys. But he apparently ticked them all off, so when they got a chance, it was bye-bye, Moammar.
Then there is the United Nations Security Council. The key here is to stay on good enough terms with at least one of the permanent members of the Security Council so they will veto any resolution that could be used to justify intervention against you. (You could, I suppose, try to stay on good terms with enough Security Council members so that they can’t get nine votes out of fifteen to pass a resolution against you. But the non-permanent members change every two years, and seven votes are a lot harder to get than just one veto.)
So how do you stay on the good side (so to speak) of one of the permanent members of the Security Council while still brutalizing your citizens? Serbia was able get Russia’s protection by appealing to Slavic brotherhood. In fact, the U.S., et al, intervention in Kosovo in the late 1990’s ultimately had to be done without a UN resolution because Russia kept threatening to veto any resolution. Not having a UN resolution didn’t stop Bill Clinton, but it looks like it would stop Barack Obama.
Saddam Hussein used bribes and special deals on oil, especially through the United Nations-run Oil-for-Food program to prevent any real UN action for years. The bribes went to officials at the United Nations as well as China, Russia and France.* And they worked. When France opposed the last resolution that the United States and Great Britain wanted the Security Council to pass before the invasion of Iraq, was it because France was just being France or was it because of the bribes? Who knows, but that final resolution was never passed.
Obviously, this is not a complete list of how to avoid Barack Obama intervening in your country, but it should give the average citizen-brutalizing dictator some ideas of how to avoid us. And it may give Americans some idea of where our troops may be going next – which is good, because it doesn’t look like we’ll be consulted.
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* See, inter alia: David Brooks, “The Report That Nails Saddam,” The New York Times, October 9, 2004; “Iraq Amnesia,” The Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2004; Michael Barone, The Duelfer report’s case for war in Iraq,” USNews.com, October 8, 2004; “Truth About Iraq: Sanctions no longer were working,” DallasNews.com, October 12, 2004.
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