BBC map of air bases involved in Libyan air strikes
One of the most interesting things about the shift in the US position on Libya, to support a no-fly zone, is the role played by women leaders in urging military action to halt the killing of anti-Gadhafi rebels and civilians. As the New York Times reported over the weekend, the pressure for action in Libya came from an emerging triumvirate in the Obama administration: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UN Ambassador Susan Rice and the National Security Council human rights expert Samantha Power.
In a story co-bylined by Helene Cooper (and Stephen Lee Myers), the Times noted:
The change became possible, though, only after Mrs. Clinton joined Samantha Power, a senior aide at the National Security Council, and Susan Rice, Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had been pressing the case for military action, according to senior administration officials speaking only on condition of anonymity. Ms. Power is a former journalist and human rights advocate; Ms. Rice was an Africa adviser to President Clinton when the United States failed to intervene to stop the Rwanda genocide, which Mr. Clinton has called his biggest regret.
According to the story, the women broke with an equally powerful triumvirate of men: Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, and counterterrorism chief, John O. Brennan. They “urged caution. Libya was not vital to American national security interests, the men argued, and Mr. Brennan worried that the Libyan rebels remained largely unknown to American officials, and could have ties to Al Qaeda.”
But the advocates for intervention won the day with President Obama. Why? It’s not hard to link their thinking to a formative moment in the careers of all three: the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Clinton was then First Lady, with a husband who later described the US failure to act to stop the genocide of over 1 million lives in 100 days as one of the biggest regrets of his presidency.
Rice was at the NSC then, and is on the record as saying that what happened in Rwanda “deeply affected me.” A YouTube video of her speech at a Rwanda commemoration is worth viewing.
As for Power, her Pulitzer-prize winning book, “A problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide, devotes a chapter to Rwanda, a genocide that was only halted when the rebels finally won (and I use “halted” reservedly, since in important ways the conflict continues in the Congo).
In her conclusion, Power write that the United States has “consistently refused to take risks in order to suppress genocide.” But in an age of social networks, cell phones and live video feeds, it’s no longer possible for nations to claim they “didn’t know” or “didn’t fully appreciate,” as was argued (falsely) in Cambodia, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. To avoid entanglement, she wrote, US officials would also argue that intervention was something the US “could not afford,” echoing the objections reported in the Times.
But as they did in Kosovo (and Operation Northern Watch, protecting Kurds fleeing Iraqi forces in 2001-2002), Western forces have chosen to act. This has, predictably, divided human rights groups. Human Rights Watch’s Ken Roth celebrated the declaration of the no-fly zone in Foreign Policy:
Just when the “responsibility to protect” doctrine seemed to have become irretrievably tainted at the United Nations, the Security Council at last lived up to its duty to prevent mass atrocities. For the second time in three weeks, the council accomplished the politically impossible, first referring Libya to the International Criminal Court, then, yesterday, authorizing military force to protect civilians from Muammar al-Qaddafi’s wrath.
In contrast, Amnesty International is virtually mute, calling only for both sides to avoid causing civilian casualties. While both groups are fierce defenders of human rights, HRW has always taken a more aggressive stand about intervention as a “last resort.” Amnesty applies human rights as a kind of enlightened pacifism, refusing (as far as I know) ever to cross the line into actually endorsing military action, even in the face of obvious genocide.
What is clear is that new ground has been gained by the proponents of humanitarian intervention, as least so long as no disasters occur and the engagement is limited. Now, Clinton, Power and Rice are enmeshed in the predictable mire of what to do now that the shooting has started. The Associated Press quoted Henri Guaino, a top adviser to the French president, as saying that the allied effort would last “a while yet.” Now, the US and Europe must begin to adjust their three-day old air campaign and decide when — or if — they should — officially intended to protect civilians — should go toward actively helping the rebel cause.
And remember, it was only the rebels in Rwanda — and Cambodian dissidents assisted by Vietnam — that ended those genocides. Air power alone won’t prevail, if history is any guide.