To Fly or NOT to Fly?

You’d pretty much have to be living in a bubble not to have some idea of the goings on in Libya right now. The whole situation poses a number of salient questions?

1. Will Gadaffi fall?
2. Will there be a civil war?
3. Will there be a no fly zone?
4. And why… if Gadaffi was in charge of the whole country for 42 years, did he only promote himself to a lowly colonel?

Joking aside, the no fly zone presents a number of problems for all concerned and it remains to be seen whether the UN can sort itself out to arrive at a solution. What we do know is that the hardware is there to make this happen. We can also presume that a plan is in place to make it happen just as soon as they get the nod from the UN. What remains to be seen is whether the UN will green light it.

One of the major concerns for all involved is the sovereignty issue. Russia, and in particular China, are going to want to maintain Libya’s sovereignty at all cost. Any attempt to create a UN sanctioned no fly zone is going to grate with the Chinese, because this could easily be extrapolated out as a precedent in any Taiwan contingency, or even worse, Xinjiang or Tibet. Protecting unarmed protesters from their own government’s heavy-handed tactics and abuse with no fly zones might sound reasonable in the west but it is a frightening precedent for China.

So, China will veto any plan to create a no fly zone.

Or will they?

You see it’s not that simple for China. They have invested heavily in Libya. 35,000 Chinese nationals were evacuated from Libya, mostly on Greek chartered ferries. Estimates of Chinese investment in the country aren’t even known by the Chinese government at this stage, but everyone agrees it is considerable. With the new opposition leaders, who control most of the oil installations in the west where the bulk of the Chinese investments were, calling for immediate no fly zones, one can only imagine their consternation if it is vetoed by the Chinese. If Gadaffi’s forces are then free to bomb the people unfettered then we can suppose that the CCP will be persona non gratta in the west of Libya. Or even right across Africa, in other countries that are fighting for their freedom.

Of course, China could veto the no fly zone, hope that Gadaffi suppresses the revolt with the over bearing force air strikes can bring and then it’s back to business as usual. If Gadaffi can maintain power then vetoing the no fly zone is a good option.

But…

There’s a powerful force pulling in the opposite direction.

It’s called, democracy, and the responsibility that other democracies feel for those who don’t have it. Whether this is right or wrong, is not what matters here, but it is a fact. Unlike Mubarak, or Bin Ali, all the leading democratic countries of the world, led by the US have publicly stated that Gadaffi has to go. This will be very hard to backtrack on now. Even if Gadaffi can put down the uprising, Libya is going to be slammed with sanctions and contempt more profound than even North Korea enjoys. So any path led by Gadaffi is a pretty bleak one, both for him and the Libyan people.

On top of this, the UN is pulled by incidents such as the slaughtering of the Marsh Arabs after the First Gulf War in 1991. After the liberation of Kuwait and the total collapse of the Iraqi army, there was nothing in the way of the allies rolling all the way up to Baghdad. The only thing stopping them was President George H. Bush, who held them back as it was not their mandate to topple Saddam, but only to liberate Kuwait. What followed, in the south of Iraq, was an uprising by the Marsh Arabs, who had long hated Saddam. Trying to do the right thing, Bush Senior, did not want to play directly with local Iraqi politics, so they held back, hopping that the Marsh Arabs could lead a local, popular uprising to topple Saddam. What happened was the complete opposite. Left unrestrained the Marsh Arabs were massacred by Saddam as the world stood by and hoped for the best.

Massacres like this are a powerful force that could motivate the UN/NATO into direct action in Libya, even if Russia and China veto or abstain. The UN, US and Europe doesn’t want to see another out of control military massacre on forces of potential democracy.

The stakes are getting higher and higher and it will be interesting to see where this all goes.

My money is on limited, precision air strikes by NATO on Gadaffi’s regime in the near future – The West doesn’t want to be seen to be on the wrong side of the Jasmine revolution, despite the push back it will get from Russia, China and other authoritarian regimes who obviously want to see the Jasmine wilt.