“The international community had to intervene to stop Gaddafi from massacring the rebels, because not acting would give license to other autocrats to use violence in response to protests.”
Implied in the above statement (which I've heard many times in various forms over the past week) is that by intervening in Libya, the West can achieve the lofty goal of removing violence as an option for autocrats seeking to preserve their rule. This is, of course, is pure fantasy.
The West’s intervention in Libya has not made Assad go soft in Syria, nor will it make the Chinese respond to future protests with flowers instead of bullets. The most likely response of authoritarian states will be to study why Tunisia and Egypt were unable to divide the protesters, and why Gaddafi failed to deter the West from invading Libya.
Indeed, North Korea is already offering survival advice to fellow dictatorships, which differs noticeably from what humanitarian activists are saying:
North Korea’s official news agency carried comments this week…suggesting that Libya had been duped in 2003 when it abandoned its nuclear program in exchange for promises of aid and improved relations with the West.
In fact, looking at recent history from the perspective of North Korea tells a very different story from the ones that the humanitarians are telling. Since 2003, the US invaded the one “axis of evil” member lacking a WMD program, and is now pummelling the one country that “got the right message” from Bush in 2003 and handed over its nukes. Do you think Kim Jong Il, or Iran for that matter, is now more likely to renounce nukes and violence against protesters?
So what is the moral of the story? Be suspicious of any risky foreign policy measure that is justified on the basis that it will convey a specific message, especially one to a wide audience. Different people interpret messages differently, and sometimes in unintended ways.
Again, I can't help but think about Iraq. After capturing Saddam, baffled American interrogators asked him why he had publicly insisted that he had WMD’s, even at the cost of inviting a US invasion, when he had in fact disbanded all such programs years earlier. Saddam explained that “Iraq could not appear weak to its enemies, especially Iran," according to FBI special agent George Piro’s notes. While “Iraq could have absorbed another United States strike,” he perceived an Iranian invasion as a greater threat.
Implied in the above statement (which I've heard many times in various forms over the past week) is that by intervening in Libya, the West can achieve the lofty goal of removing violence as an option for autocrats seeking to preserve their rule. This is, of course, is pure fantasy.
The West’s intervention in Libya has not made Assad go soft in Syria, nor will it make the Chinese respond to future protests with flowers instead of bullets. The most likely response of authoritarian states will be to study why Tunisia and Egypt were unable to divide the protesters, and why Gaddafi failed to deter the West from invading Libya.
Indeed, North Korea is already offering survival advice to fellow dictatorships, which differs noticeably from what humanitarian activists are saying:
North Korea’s official news agency carried comments this week…suggesting that Libya had been duped in 2003 when it abandoned its nuclear program in exchange for promises of aid and improved relations with the West.
In fact, looking at recent history from the perspective of North Korea tells a very different story from the ones that the humanitarians are telling. Since 2003, the US invaded the one “axis of evil” member lacking a WMD program, and is now pummelling the one country that “got the right message” from Bush in 2003 and handed over its nukes. Do you think Kim Jong Il, or Iran for that matter, is now more likely to renounce nukes and violence against protesters?
So what is the moral of the story? Be suspicious of any risky foreign policy measure that is justified on the basis that it will convey a specific message, especially one to a wide audience. Different people interpret messages differently, and sometimes in unintended ways.
Again, I can't help but think about Iraq. After capturing Saddam, baffled American interrogators asked him why he had publicly insisted that he had WMD’s, even at the cost of inviting a US invasion, when he had in fact disbanded all such programs years earlier. Saddam explained that “Iraq could not appear weak to its enemies, especially Iran," according to FBI special agent George Piro’s notes. While “Iraq could have absorbed another United States strike,” he perceived an Iranian invasion as a greater threat.
