Libya: Neither Paradise nor Beyond Thunderdome

[tabatha]

Since the end of the NATO bombing portion of the Libyan civil war, there’s been a lot of speculation about whether the West acted in the right in intervening in the first place. The thrust of the two main arguments are that either: the United States and its allies prevented a massacre, upheld the Responsibility to Protect, and the future of Libya is a far brighter one than if Qaddafi had been allowed to hold power; or, the entire mission was a mistake from the beginning, one lacking the strategic components necessary to be worth it, and the aftermath is a Libya that is far from the ideal that the former group paints it as. Both groups have solid points, though I myself lean more towards the former. It’s hard to argue, though, with the fact that Libya’s transition to democracy is anything but smooth.

The National Transitional Council (NTC) which first consolidated the revolution against Qaddafi into political power has been less than effective when it comes to actually governing the state. This isn’t all that much of a surprise to me, considering that while several members did formerly serve in the regime, way back when, the Qaddafi government was basically one-man. Any semblance of lasting institutions were completely torn-down over the Colonel’s lengthy rule, and rebuilding those is going to take time, far less time than most outsiders are willing to provide rebuilding states. When one person has controlled all decisions, and changed laws and rules according to his whim, how then do you know how to run a state? And don’t accuse me of paternalism at this point; it’s not that I think the Libyans are incapable of self-rule, just that they don’t have practice.

One of the most frustrating things to see in the aftermath of conflict is an insistence that new governments move faster, seize control of their territory quicker, raise themselves to the standards we have set for them. Don’t get me wrong, I agree that new governments have a responsibility to move as quickly as possible in providing, among other things, security and good governance to their people. Pressure should be kept up on these states, less they think that its acceptable behavior to the international community. But I don’t expect perfection overnight, or for a government to completely rebuild its civil society in six months time. As someone who opposed the War in Iraq at its outset, one of the least convincing arguments I’ve heard about why it was a terrible idea is the current lack of political stability in Iraq, which oddly enough is one of the right’s largest reasons why we shouldn’t have withdrawn our uniformed forces. But I digress.

I’m not an expert in democratization, but I do believe that these things take time. Tripoli fell just shy of six months ago; Qaddafi was killed four months ago. Going by the standards that many seem to arbitrarily set on either completely new political entities like South Sudan or new regimes such as the one in Libya, the United States itself was an abject failure for the first several years of its existence. Soldiers went unpaid and over-armed, the central government wasn’t sure how to enforce its will on new territory, the original system set up to govern was found to be completely unworkable, there were questions on how to handle loyalists who still lived in the new country. The list goes on. Two centuries of practice exist between now and then, leading many to believe that the country sprung forth in its current form. The basic principles remain the same, so far as state-building goes, and those two-hundred years of practice aren’t easily transferred.

http://wherepoliticsstops.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/libya-neither-paradise-nor-beyond-thunderdome/

[TheWraith]

1. A good way to look at it is this.

If you had simply eradicated the US Congress, every state legislature, every state and federal government agency, how long would it take to rebuild those--with a population that had lived and grown up that way, with no experience of any kind of democratic government to draw on? More than six months, I'd wager.

[tabatha]

2. This is a post from another blog.

The United States did not get its act together for 12 years. In the beginning it was governed by an Articles of Confederation, which described a loosely joined 13 states, formerly the colonies. But there was no President, no central judiciary, no taxation, etc. Look it up on Wikipedia. The ex-colonies had problems working together in an effective government until 1789 when the US Constitution was adopted with what is the current form of government. During the 12 years a group of founders wrote the Federalist Papers, a series of opinions by many of the different founders of the US, arguing for a stronger federal government with more centralized control and ability to unify and protect the country externally. But it took that long because there was so much mistrust between colonies and peoples within them , bred by the war.

Libya has no reason to panic. But they could learn a lot by looking up the Articles, and the Federalist Papers about the process it took to create a firm national identity, after the war and the mistrust between parts of the colonies for each other.

And all the people who are pressuring Libya to get it together quickly are overreacting and unrealistic. People need to be patient, but persistently push to bring the country together and form a national identity with respect for everyone in the country. It takes time, especially with all the traumas that went into the rebellion against Gaddafi.