Some Things Never Change

Posted by John Ballard.
As I listen to the news lately, my memory keeps playing out this scene.
Listen to the lines. Too many to quote.
A tight little recapitulation of how military operations intersect with international relations, politics and diplomacy  which is predictable as the weather. We know the seasons will change but cannot know for certain exactly which days will be cold or hot, rainy or sunny.

What we are witnessing in Africa today is significantly different from this colonial snapshot. There are no young people in this scene, no revolutionaries, no idealists.

The looming unanswered question is how much of thier energy and idealism will survive the denouement of Arab democracy.  Energy, idealism and enthusiasm are important but as we see in the Libyan example, without discipline, training and coordination those critical qualities are not sufficient to overcome established tyranny.

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Thanks to a Blake Hounshell RT with a broken link I found this which is a good overview of the Libyan adventure as seen through a German/European prism.

Dr. Luis Sim�b. 1981) is a posdoctoral research fellow on European Security at the Institute for European Studies (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) and co-ordinates the security and defence programme at OPEX (Fundacion Alternativas). More at this link.

The politics behind Europe�s Libya split

...Just as with the famous case of Iraq in 2003, the way in which the debate over military intervention in Libya has been conducted tells us as much about Northern Africa and the broader Middle East as it tells us about the state of European geopolitics....

[...]
Given its economic potential and central geographical position on the European continent, the exercise of restraint has always been a pre-requisite for the exercise of German power. This has been the case since unification in 1871, and was best understood by Bismarck . Twice during the twentieth century, failure to exercise restraint led to war in Europe and resulted in decades of German weakness. Since the end of the Cold War, German restraint has come wrapped up in an increasingly �soft power� narrative. Such a �soft� narrative is most instrumental for Germany as it helps consolidate a pan-European political and economic settlement � with Germany as its hub � and, by propping up a certain image of neutrality, it feeds into Germany�s trade superpower status globally. In short, and without prejudging the important domestic political dimension of �softness�, it is a grand strategic calculation that drives restraint and not restraint that drives German grand strategy. To be sure, the Germans do understand that the military instrument remains crucial in international politics. But they calculate that the United States and Atlantic Alliance continue to play a last resort guarantee of European stability and provide insurance for the risks associated with soft power. Not least, Germany disposes of a formidable territorial defence capability as well as a strong economy and a productive and competitive industrial and technological base, upon which a sustainable military instrument ultimately depends in the long run. Arguing that Germany�s foreign policy is defined by an �uncontrollable� societal value (i.e. pacifism), somehow independent from material considerations, is a profound mistake.

[...]
If the European Union is to be preserved and maintain its potential as a global power, a strong Franco-British partnership is crucial. However, to think that a new European Union can be built around a new Franco-British engine that excludes Berlin, only to incorporate it once the British and French have agreed on its strategic direction, is as non-recommendable as it is unrealistic. That would mean assuming that the Franco-British front is a conflict-free one. It would only stimulate Germany to exploit Franco-British cleavages and would further push Berlin to strengthening its alliance with non European Union Member States. It is unrealistic because the French are aware that their own interest in maintaining a strong relationship with Russia represents a �check� or �limit� insofar as its partnership with the United Kingdom and United States is concerned. A second reason � not as crucial but still important � for why a strong and exclusive Franco-British front would be a mistake is that it would surely incentivise a balancing behaviour on the part of other medium European powers (such as Spain and, perhaps most importantly, Italy).

Conclusion: Any attempt to preserve regional stability in Europe and Europeans� ability to exercise their power globally in the twenty-first century, must lean on a strong Franco-British-German triumvirate around the European Union. Anything else will lead to a dangerous mixture of inter-European balancing and external penetration that could put in jeopardy the regional stability that Europeans have so carefully crafted over the last decades, let alone European global power aspirations.

Missing in this analysis is any reference to the large and growing Muslim populations now very much a factor in almost every European country.  I cannot imagine that domestic politics is not on the minds of everyone participating in the decision-making. As I recall, the status of Muslims in Germany is legally and categorically different from that of German citizens, unlike France and Britain where immigrants more easily become nationalized.

The "fog of diplomacy" seems to be more opaque in the aftermath of US air strikes than the fog of war. I'm fascinated (as I'm sure the president also must be) watching the international community struggle to formulate what we like to call the political will to do something. Without an American interlocutor it becomes an exercise in democracy writ large, with countries vying for power instead of local groups or national coalitions.