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391. Opting for Second Best in Libya?

Author:
Riccardo Alcaro
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
The looming stalemate in the Libyan conflict is likely to lead to more civilian casualties, a de facto separation of Libya, the under-use of the country's energy resources, and an increase in illegal activities due to the legal and governance vacuum in the country. In addition, it risks denting NATO's credibility as a security provider. To break the stalemate, the coalition is leaning towards intensifying military operations and/or arming the rebels. Both imply a number of risks and political costs. A way to contain such risks and costs would be for NATO and its partners to re-calibrate the mission so that, alongside military action, the mission would foresee also a national reconciliation process, mediated by an international team. Linking military operations to a credible plan for Libya's political future would improve the odds for Gheddafi's regime to collapse.
Topic:
Security, NATO, and Oil
Political Geography:
United States, Libya, Arabia, and United Nations

392. Libya's year zero: Finding opportunity as a country rebuilds

Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
Libya's rebels have pushed the regime of Muammar Qadhafi out of power, and are poised to take complete control of the country. This in itself is a monumental achievement, but it marks only the start of what is likely to be a long and fraught process of rehabilitation. The new leadership must rebuild a state that for decades was run on the whims of an authoritarian leader, determined both to monopolise and to hold on to power. There are few institutions that work, and even fewer that work to the benefit of the general population, so the challenge amounts to little short of building a functioning state from scratch. Views on what form that state should take are as diverse as the regional, ideological and sectarian interests making up its would-be architects, and these stake holders must be persuaded to support the process — or at least not to obstruct it — before it can even begin.
Topic:
Development, Oil, Political Economy, and Regime Change
Political Geography:
Libya, Arabia, and North Africa

393. Whither the Arab Spring? 1989 or 1848?

Author:
Robert Springborg
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The International Spectator
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
The dramatic thawing of the Cold War at the end of the 1980s accompanied by the rapid democratisation of Eastern Europe served as inspiration and model for political transitions in other settings. Now the Arab world, the securitisation of which has kept it frozen in what amounts to a regional cold war long after the global prototype ended, may be entering its springtime of political freedom. Tunisia's 'Jasmine' and Egypt's 'Midan al Tahrir' Revolutions chased established autocrats from power, thus making possible new domestic political orders and substantial reorientations of foreign policies. Imitative uprisings in Bahrain, Yemen, Libya and Syria have thus far resulted in widespread violence, regime retrenchments and even foreign interventions, although prospects do remain for more positive outcomes. Intermittent demonstrations in various other Arab countries, including Morocco, Algeria, Oman, Jordan and Iraq, have typically been met with limited political reforms and promises of more to come. So the region is definitely in political ferment, but whether that presages transitions to democracy à la Eastern Europe in 1989, or revanchist reconsolidations reminiscent of those that overwhelmed the 1848 liberal nationalist movements in Western Europe, remains to be seen.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Iraq, Europe, Libya, Yemen, Arabia, Algeria, Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain, and Oman

394. Power, Leadership and US Foreign Policy

Author:
Erik Jones
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The International Spectator
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
The Obama administration is attempting to 'lead from behind' in Libya, causing much concern among its allies and derision among its adversaries. Nevertheless this strategy represents an appropriate response both to the specific situation in Libya and to the wider constraints on American global leadership. With the shift in global resources from North to South and West to East, collective action has become more difficult to organise and global institutions have become harder to reinforce. Meanwhile governments in the United States and elsewhere must wrestle to bring their fiscal accounts back under control. A cooperative approach is the only answer. The difficulty for the Obama administration is that by emphasizing cooperation they make the success of their Libya intervention depend upon the actions of the other countries involved. Should France and Great Britain fail in Libya, President Obama's new conception of American global leadership will falter as well.
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
United States, America, France, and Libya

395. Qatar and Expanded Contours of Small State Diplomacy

Author:
Bessma Momani and Andrew F. Cooper
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The International Spectator
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
It is increasingly obvious that Qatar is playing above its weight in the international role. There is no one script that defines Qatar's diplomatic role. It is best seen as a maverick, willing to work with the US as well as Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. It operates a complex form of public diplomacy via Al-Jazeera and other high profile initiatives at the same time as it mediates behind the scenes with Israel and Lebanon. Qatar's role as a unique hybrid diplomatic actor is reinforced by the enthusiastic support it displayed towards the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, including operational support for the UN Security Resolution to place a no-fly zone with respect to the Qaddafi's regime, while being more circumspect on the uprising in Bahrain. Such an extensive, unconventional and differentiated approach creates risks as well as opportunities. Yet, through a combination of resources and vision, it is skilled resilience not vulnerability that defines Qatar.
Topic:
Security, Diplomacy, and United Nations
Political Geography:
Iran, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia, and Dublin

396. Will Oil Drown the Arab Spring?

Author:
Michael L. Ross
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Summary: No state with serious oil wealth has ever transformed into a democracy. Oil lets dictators buy off citizens, keep their finances secret, and spend wildly on arms. To prevent the “resource curse” from dashing the hopes of the Arab Spring, Washington should push for more transparent oil markets -- and curb its own oil addiction. MICHAEL L. ROSS is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of the forthcoming book The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations. Even before this year's Arab uprisings, the Middle East was not an undifferentiated block of authoritarianism. The citizens of countries with little or no oil, such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia, generally had more freedom than those of countries with lots of it, such as Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. And once the tumult started, the oil-rich regimes were more effective at fending off attempts to unseat them. Indeed, the Arab Spring has seriously threatened just one oil-funded ruler -- Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi -- and only because NATO's intervention prevented the rebels' certain defeat. Worldwide, democracy has made impressive strides over the last three decades: just 30 percent of the world's governments were democratic in 1980; about 60 percent are today. Yet almost all the democratic governments that emerged during that period were in countries with little or no oil; in fact, countries that produced less than $100 per capita of oil per year (about what Ukraine and Vietnam produce) were three times as likely to democratize as countries that produced more than that. No country with more than a fraction of the per capita oil wealth of Bahrain, Iraq, or Libya has ever successfully gone from dictatorship to democracy. Scholars have called this the oil curse, arguing that oil wealth leads to authoritarianism, economic instability, corruption, and violent conflict. Skeptics claim that the correlation between oil and repression is a coincidence. As Dick Cheney, then the CEO of Haliburton, remarked at a 1996 energy conference, "The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas reserves where there are democratic governments." But divine intervention did not cause repression in the Middle East: hydrocarbons did. There is no getting around the fact that countries in the region are less free because they produce and sell oil.
Topic:
NATO, Government, and Oil
Political Geography:
Iraq, Ukraine, Middle East, Kuwait, Libya, Vietnam, California, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, and Tunisia

397. The Libyan War: A Diplomatic History February - August 2011

Author:
Emily O'Brien and Andrew Sinclair
Publication Date:
08-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on International Cooperation (CIC)
Abstract:
Some crises flare up and are forgotten fairly quickly. Others offer lasting insights into the global balance of power and the state of international diplomacy. The Libyan crisis falls into the second category. In a period in which serious commentators dwell on "the decline of the West" and "the erosion of the post-Cold War order", the war has been both a test of Western military might and international cooperation. There have been multiple surprises. A pundit who predicted in January 2011 that NATO was about to embark on a new war involving a Muslim country would have been dismissed. But it would have seem equally outlandish to suggest that China and Russia might permit Western military actions against an Arab leader to win a UN mandate, let alone that the Arab League would actively support this outcome. Wellestablished assumptions about the evolution of the international system in the wake of Iraq and the financial crisis have been found wanting.
Topic:
NATO, Civil War, and Diplomacy
Political Geography:
Libya, Arabia, and North Africa

398. Libya: Beyond Regime Change

Author:
Henrik Boesen Lindbo Larsen
Publication Date:
10-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
NATO's intervention in Libya has highlighted the risks connected with enforcement of humanitarian principles in Europe's neighbourhood through engaging in regime change. The EU now seems to remain the only viable forum if the Western states wish to play a more permanent role in Libya.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Regime Change, and Insurgency
Political Geography:
Europe, Libya, Arabia, and North Africa

399. International Intervention in Local Conflicts: Crisis Management and Conflict Resolution since the Cold War

Author:
Emre İşeri
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Rest: Journal of Politics and Development
Institution:
Centre for Strategic Research and Analysis (CESRAN)
Abstract:
At a time of Arab 'revolutions', particularly the one in Libya , once again - following the impotence of international community in Bosnia, Somalia and, Rwanda in the 1990s - there have emerged a heated debate on the concept of international intervention. This poses one of the toughest tests for an international society that is built on Westphalian principles of state sovereignty, non-intervention, and the non-use of force. It is expected from sovereign states to act as protectors of their citizens' security and well-being, but a hard question arises when states act like gangsters toward their own people and/or they are impotent to find a lasting peaceful solution to their local conflicts. Should those 'tyrannical' states be considered as legitimate actors of the international society and immune from international interventions? As related questions in this regard, what are the responsibilities of other states to enforce newly emerging global human rights norms against governments violating them? What are the obstacles on the way of effective international intervention? In the light of these questions, the volume is compiled of thirteen essays that were categorised into five parts examining the impact of international intervention on the resolution of local conflicts as well as the roles of local actors in determining the course.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Bosnia, Libya, Arabia, Rwanda, and Somalia

400. The Arab Spring Gathers Clouds: Why the Revolts for Change Have Stalled

Author:
Yasser M. El-Shimy
Publication Date:
10-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
The wave of popular protests engulfing the Arab Middle East has yielded markedly different results. While the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia prompted meaningful, and immediate, political change, the regimes of Syria, Bahrain, Libya and Yemen are able to put up a fight. The violent stalemates in the latter countries may eventually give way to political reform, but for now the fate of their popular uprisings is anything but certain. What explains this outcome divergence between the two sets of nations? What makes one autocratic Arab regime stronger than another? What roles do societies and militaries play in shaping the future of the Arab Spring? This article suggests that authoritarian regimes with established networks of social patronage and unwavering military loyalty are better able to withstand calls for change.
Political Geography:
Middle East, Libya, and Syria