US retreats post-haste from Libya
The closure of the American embassy in Libya was probably overdue, as that country has descended into anarchy. The wheel has turned full circle since the Western invasion of Libya three years ago under the NATO flag, pushing the agenda of ‘regime change’.
From wherever he is, the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi must be watching with glee that the Europeans and Americans who hunted him down are themselves now running away in panic, fearing the prospect of butchery and sudden death, while the NATO cannot be of any use anymore. In any case, NATO has its hands full, busy mobilizing in the Black Sea and the Baltic states.
But amidst the avalanche of media accounts on the evacuation of Americans from Tripoli yesterday, what arrests the mind and compels it to think is the graphic report by ABC News giving the inside track on how the evacuation actually took place. Of course, it wasn’t from the rooftop of the American embassy in Tripoli in helicopters, but nonetheless this is indeed high drama — with F-16 fighter aircraft, drones, a naval destroyer and rapid reaction force on deployment.
One doesn’t know quite whether to laugh or cry in such moments of mixed feelings. Most certainly, the ABC report doesn’t convey an elegant picture of the superpower in retreat. To be sure, this spectacle will hurt President Barack Obama politically and will become a signpost in world politics, especially international security.
Unsurprisingly, Obama — or V-P Joe Biden — is nowhere to be seen or heard and state secretary John Kerry is left to carry the can of worms. That is, perhaps, a prudent decision by the White House, carefully taken. And Kerry scrambled to announce that this won’t be “permanent” retreat from Libya. Sure thing, this can’t be a permanent retreat. Wherever there is oil in the Middle Eastern sands, America has to be there.
But the real sophistry lies somewhere else — in Kerry’s claim, here, that the Americans as such are not the targets of the free-wheeling Libyan militia. Now, that’s a white lie. Forgot the grotesque killing of Ambassador Christopher Stevens in the pin-pointed 2012 Benghazi attack on the CIA station by killers it only had trained to kill?
In fact, the Obama administration is playing safe lest the Benghazi attack — which still haunts Hillary Clinton’s political future and already capped Susan Rice’s expected surge in the Obama cabinet at that time — repeats itself. Conceivably, Libya could figure in a big way in the 2016 presidential election in the US.
But then, that will be more as the stuff of polemics and grandstanding by the American politicians. The big question is why the searing experiences in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan aren’t compelling a rethink of the ABC of the US’ regional policies in pushing the agenda of ‘regime change’ in foreign countries. The US needs a serious self-introspection here.
Syria has been destroyed and it could soon be Ukraine’s turn — and in both cases it is the US’ interference in these countries’ delicately poised internal dynamic on the basis of geopolitical calculations and cold-hearted self-interests, albeit camouflaged as something else, which led to the bloody upheaval.
Libya becomes particularly important, because radical islamists are tasting victory there and they are potentially part of the global project of the Caliphate. It may not be the blood of Westerners that is reddening the Libyan sands, but human blood nonetheless — and the cry of the ‘jihad’ in Libya will resonate all across the Middle East — and even beyond.
Suffice to say, it is the Western policies that are the breeding ground for ‘jihadism’ today. Wherever Americans go in the Muslim world to establish their hegemony, ‘jihadis’ follow. The point is, the demons that the US-led NATO let loose in Libya to destroy the Gaddafi regime are coming for the Americans now. It’s quintessentially a replay of Afghanistan and Iraq.
A second issue concerns the role of the NATO as a global security organization, which Washington is promoting. The western alliance was in a triumphalist mood over the ‘victory’ in Libya in 2011. and the way NATO handled the war was projected as “a new model” (here). In retrospect, NATO has so much blood on its hands and the touted gains are highly dubious, to say the least. As the NATO prepares for the summit in September in Wales, Libya is presenting itself as a ’stimulant’ to make western statesmen rethink the alliance’s future. But, can they cope with such an intellectual, moral challenge?
However, a much larger question also arises here. The US’ diplomatic retreat from Libya becomes hugely symbolic. It presents the picture of a superpower in disarray, retreating in fear and trepidation. To be sure, the Taliban won’t have to look far to know what to to next if they are serious about scuttling the upcoming US military bases in their country — simply, lob a missile or two into the American embassy compound in Kabul.
Furthermore, this unseemly spectacle from the Libyan deserts of Obama’s men and women beating the retreat is not going to help make the US’ pivot to Asia any more convincing as a strategy in the sceptical eyes of the Asia-Pacific countries.
Pray, why should, for example, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi take seriously the lavish invitation extended to his government last week by the US assistant secretary of state Nisha Desai Biswal for India to play a “vital role” in the Obama administration’s rebalance to Asia — or even take seriously what she lauded rhetorically as Washington’s “strategic bet on the consequential role of Asia’s 4.3 billion people in the 21st century”? (here).
The really good thing from the Indian perspective is that the Obama administration’s Libyan retreat has sailed into view just days ahead of the US-India Strategic Dialogue in Delhi. It cannot be lost on the policymakers in Delhi that India’s strategic autonomy and its capacity to navigate an independent course in the contemporary world keeping its national priorities of development in full perspective is not a debatable foreign-policy ideal anymore, but has become a compelling necessity today.
Posted in Diplomacy, Military, Politics.
Tagged with BRICS, Iraq, ISIL, Islamism, Libya, Syria, Taliban.
By M K Bhadrakumar – July 27, 2014
