Now, after careful deliberation, I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian targets. This would not be an open-ended intervention. We would not put boots on the ground. … But I’m confident we can hold the Assad regime accountable for their use of chemical weapons, deter this kind of behavior, and degrade their capacity to carry it out. …
But … our power is rooted not just in our military might, but in our example as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And that is why I’ve made a second decision: I will seek authorization for the use of force from the American people’s representatives in Congress. …
I know well that we are weary of war. … In that part of the world … the hopes of the Arab Spring have unleashed forces of change that are going to take many years to resolve. And that’s why we are not contemplating putting out troops in the middle of some else’s war.
—BARACK OBAMA
THE BIGGEST TESTS FOR PRESIDENT Obama in the realm of foreign policy came not so much in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which he was winding down, as in the popular upheavals in the Arab Middle East and Maghreb against tyrannical regimes. Starting largely as peaceful demonstrations and modeled initially on the civil disobedience campaigns of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., the uprisings provoked repressive crackdowns by the targeted governments, which gave further credence to the cries that they were illegitimate regimes. But the crackdowns in turn frequently provoked some of the militant protesters to engage in violent counteraction, which fed into the claims of the beleaguered autocrats of being bulwarks against anarchy. As the so-called Arab Spring burst forth and spread throughout the region, Obama could not avoid facing the dilemma of on the one hand endorsing the demands of the demonstrators, thereby alienating governments with whom the United States had geostrategic partnerships; or on the other hand continuing to treat those governments as valued allies or partners, thereby appearing to validate the claims of the most anti-American and anti-Western elements among the reformers that the targeted governments were puppets of U.S. imperialism.
Was there a basic response to these upheavals that would put the United States on the (right) side of history? And what short-term and long-term strategies could be derived from such a grand strategy? Or was there no grand strategy from which particular policies could be deduced and would the connections between the unfolding events and U.S. interests and values have to be induced uniquely from each situation on a case-by-case basis? Obama’s deep ambivalence in dealing with these issues was one of the distinguishing characteristics of his presidency.
TUNISIA: THE APPLECART OF STABILITY TURNED OVER
A catalyst of the storm of protests that would sweep across the region starting in late 2010—though it was at first regarded as country-specific turbulence—was the eruption of demonstrations in Tunisia against regime of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Although notoriously autocratic and corrupt, the government of Tunisia was one of Washington’s favorites in the region due to its cooperation in the campaign against terrorism. But under the relatively calm surface, grievances had been seething—on the part of Islamic fundamentalists against Ben Ali’s secularism and on the part of liberal reformers against the regime’s concentration of wealth and power.
Activated by the self-immolation on December 17, 2010, of a fruit and vegetable vendor whose cart had been confiscated by police, the initial street protests, mobilized through Twitter and Facebook transmissions, were soon joined by labor unions, middle-class professionals, and even elements of the country’s elite. The resort to deadly force by Ben Ali’s security forces, also transmitted by the social media, only exacerbated the resentments and enlarged the demonstrating crowds, to the point where the Tunisian army chief of staff refused orders from President Ben Ali to fire on the protesters.
In less than a month, Ben Ali was compelled to leave the country, while other members of his government, the courts, and opposition leaders attempted to institute a process of transition to a more democratic regime. The Obama administration, caught by surprise, maintained an aloof stance during the first few weeks of the uprising, not knowing which side would prevail. It restricted itself to statements urging the Tunisian government to respect freedom of assembly and not use force against the demonstrators.
In mid-January, however, as the tide turned decisively in favor of the reformers and as dissident groups in Algeria, Morocco, and Jordan—inspired by social media reports of the successes of the demonstrations in Tunisia—took to the streets in their own countries, Secretary of State Clinton, speaking at a forum in Doha, Qatar, signaled the growing appreciation in Washington that neutrality was not in the U.S. interest. In too many places, in too many ways, she told the assemblage, “the region’s foundations are sinking into the sand. The new and dynamic Middle East that I have seen needs firmer ground if it is to take root and grow everywhere.” And in remarks unmistakably directed at the high officials present, she warned, “Those who cling to the status quo may be able to hold back the full impact of their countries’ problems for a little while, but not forever. If leaders don’t offer a positive vision and give young people meaningful ways to contribute, others will fill the vacuum.”1
With respect to Tunisia itself, the United States would give material and moral support and advice if it was requested for the transition toward a constitutional democracy, however bumpy the road. Caretaker governments some dominated by Islamic parties, some by secular technocrats, kept the peace for the next three years as the national assembly struggled to draft a democratic constitution, to be ratified and a new government selected in the 2014 elections.
Meanwhile, the hope in Washington was that Secretary Clinton’s prophecy of further revolutionary upheavals against regimes who failed to reform themselves would prod governments in the region to at least open up a dialogue with their opponents as to how to institute peaceful change. But in country after country the official responses to what was now being called the Arab Spring proved too little and too late to avoid explosions of protest that to the regimes’ embarrassments, the social media beamed around the world.
EGYPT: THE (FAR FROM) PERFECT STORM
The Obama administration’s response to the uprising in Egypt that forced President Hosni Mubarak from power followed a pattern similar to its response to the situation in Tunisia: initial reluctance to take sides, giving way to strong suggestions from President Obama himself urging the dictator step down to facilitate a transition to democracy. That there should have been any ambivalence at all in the White House, and not forthright expressions of support for the most dependable and important U.S. partner in the Arab World, was itself a symptom of the growing recognition in the U.S. policy community, cutting across party lines, that the turbulence and upheavals underway in the Maghreb and the Middle East might well be part of a profound but as yet unpredictable sea change in power relationships in the region.
Moreover, the initial reluctance to take sides was based on skepticism that the Mubarak regime, though very unpopular, was all that vulnerable. There was uncertainty in Washington about how the government in Cairo was going to react to the evident capacity of the opposition to mobilize huge crowds of angry citizens from all walks of life, including young information technology specialists and other professionals, who were demanding that the dictator step down. One stratagem for Mubarak was the demagogic one of fractionating the opposition by catering to its radical Islamic elements and dramatically realigning Egypt with the most emotional pan-Arabic/pan-Islamic cause: the Palestinian conflict with Israel. From Washington’s perspective, this would be a disastrous development, for it was the Israel-Egypt peace accord of 1979 brokered by President Carter that brought on the geopolitical partnership between Egypt and the United States.
For the past three decades Washington had relied on Cairo to be a moderating influence on militant Islam, an opponent of aggression by both Iraq and Iran, a guarantor of U.S. commercial and naval use of the Suez Canal, and an important ally in the campaign against al-Qaeda and other terrorists. The United States having invested over $60 billion in economic and military assistance to Egypt since 1979, the Obama administration was in no mood to alienate either the Mubarak regime or its possible successor; but this counseled a wait and see posture.
As huge crowds chanting anti-Mubarak slogans gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and public spaces in other cities during the last week of January 2011 and the first week of February, and as protestors clashed with riot police, Ministry of Interior security forces, and pro-Mubarak squads of thugs, high U.S. military officials urgently but quietly entreated their Egyptian counterparts not to allow themselves to become instruments of violent repression. Mubarak loyalists countered this American counsel with the argument that the real alternatives were either persisting chaos exploited by the radical Islamists or survival of the modernizing secular regime, which might require tough emergency measures.
In a partial response to the protests, Mubarak announced on February 1 that he would not run for reelection in the fall of 2011 and was prepared to oversee a peaceful transfer of authority at the end of his term; meanwhile his reshuffled cabinet would engage in a dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood and other representatives of the protest movement on constitutional reforms, including provisions for the presidential election. But the dominant voices from Tahrir Square shouted that they would not leave until Mubarak left.
Observing the turmoil, President Obama was in a quandary. He realized that unless and until Mubarak resigned, the conflict would continue to escalate and become increasingly violent. Although he did not publicly call for Mubarak to step down right away (White House aides later confided to journalists that the president was concerned that such open insistence could backfire, allowing Mubarak to whip up nationalist sentiment against U.S. interference), Obama insisted in a tense president-to-president phone conversation that Mubarak’s resignation was in the interest of both countries.2 And in his public remarks just after the phone call, Obama was unequivocal in stating that the United States was now on the side of the Egyptians demanding fundamental reforms and a wholesale change of leadership in Cairo. “Now, it is not the role of any other country to determine Egypt’s leaders,” he said. “Only the Egyptian people can do that. What is clear—and what I indicated tonight to President Mubarak—is my belief that an orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and it must begin now.”3
Over the next ten days, on-again, off-again negotiations between representatives of Mubarak’s regime and representatives of the various opposition groups focused mainly on the timing and rules of the next national elections. There were sporadic outbreaks of violence that the military, without taking sides, tried to contain.
Then on February 10, the situation appeared to be coming to a head. Things could go either way: toward resolution or violent rebellion. Government officials warned protestors to disband or the military would forcibly exercise control. President Mubarak announced he was delegating some of his powers to the vice president Omar Suleiman but was otherwise emotionally defiant, reiterating he would stay on until the election of a new president in September. Obama went public again, now speaking as advocate and ally of the opposition: “Too many Egyptians remain unconvinced that the government is serious about a genuine transition to democracy,” he said. “The Egyptian government must put forward a credible, concrete and unequivocal path toward genuine democracy, and they have not yet seized that opportunity.”4
On the next day, February 11, 2011—less than three weeks since the start of the protests in Tahrir Square—Vice President Suleiman announced that President Mubarak had resigned and had departed with his family to the town of Sharm el Sheikh and that the Supreme Higher Council of the Egyptian armed forces had taken control of the country.
President Obama promptly took to the podium to identify the United States with the defining historical moment represented by Mubarak’s stepping down, but being careful not take credit for it. It was a victory not only for the Egyptian people, he intoned, but also “a victory for universal rights and human dignity.” The Egyptians did this “by putting the lie to the idea that justice is best gained through violence. For in Egypt, it was the moral force of nonviolence—not terrorism, not mindless killing … that bent the arc of human history toward justice once more. … Today belongs to the people of Egypt, and the American people are moved by these scenes in Cairo and across Egypt because of who we are as a people and the kind of world we want our children to grow up in.”5
As the smoke from the celebratory firecrackers in Cairo cleared, however, the Obama administration—like the variety of Egyptian dissident groups who now had to coalesce around the complex agenda for constructing a new political order—found itself in the proverbial situation of not being all that happy with getting what it wished for. The dictator was out, but the military commanders (all of whom he had appointed) retained their privileges and power; and without the restraining hand of their former commander in chief, they fell into the habit of violently crushing street demonstrations of citizen groups attempting to influence the content and pace of the constitutional system the military had promised to bring about.
Moreover, what was functional for forcing Mubarak out—a very broad coalition of religionists (Muslims of various degrees of orthodoxy and Christians) and secularists, angry unemployed, globally active entrepreneurs, and young technocratic intellectuals—was turning out to be dysfunctional for negotiating with the interim military regime over the sequencing and rules for the democratic transition. The quite disciplined Muslim Brotherhood, however, taking advantage of the lack of unity among the secularists, got the military regime to preside over nationwide elections in November 2011, which the Brotherhood correctly calculated would allow it to win a plurality of seats in the parliament and, in coalition with the even more militant Salafis, to dominate the constitution-writing process and the selection of the top leadership of a postmilitary government.
The military also cooperated six months later, in May and June 2012, in presiding over the election of a president. But as it looked virtually certain that the Muslin Brotherhood’s candidate would win the runoff election, the junta (still acting as the interim executive) and the Supreme Court (acting on behalf of the military) summarily shut down the parliament and awarded themselves sweeping powers to promulgate laws, control the national budget, and issue a new constitution themselves—in effect, preemptively emasculating the new president and the Islamic-oriented government he was expected to install.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, ostensibly attending the reopening of the U.S. consulate in Alexandria, flew to Egypt in an effort to persuade the military to confine itself to “a purely national security role,” as she put it, and to “reaffirm the strong support of the United States for the Egyptian people and for their democratic future.” But she wanted to be clear, she insisted, “that the United States is not in the business, in Egypt, of choosing winners and losers, even if we could, which, of course we cannot.”6 Protesters at the consulate in Alexandria, charging that the United States was again meddling in Egyptian politics, threw tomatoes and shoes at her motorcade and shouted “Monica! Monica! Monica!” (the name of the White House staffer with whom her husband had an affair) as Secretary Clinton left the building.7
As former Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi was sworn in on June 30, 2012, as the country’s first elected—but seemingly powerless—head of state, the Obama administration and other governments were essentially paralyzed when it came to pressuring the military to accept legitimate civilian rule. But President Morsi was not bereft of power plays of his own for reversing what the military had done: Invoking the inherent authority of his office, banking on widespread popular endorsement—secular and sectarian—of the results of the electoral process the country had enthusiastically adopted, he fired top generals responsible for giving themselves illegitimate power and appointed one of the most respected military leaders, General Abdul Fattah el-Sisi, formerly head of military intelligence, as minister of defense.
But ironically, in amassing the powers of the presidency vis-à-vis those who might try to usurp it—particularly during the period of transition in which the drafting and ratification of the new constitution had yet to be completed and new elections held under its auspices—Morsi claimed for himself autocratic law-making, judicial, and law enforcement prerogatives that renewed fears of the Muslim Brotherhood establishing a theocratic dictatorship.
When in late November 2012 President Morsi issued a series of decrees claiming virtually absolute power for himself, not subject to judicial review, Cairo’s Tahrir Square and other city squares throughout Egypt again erupted in massive protests against the government. Now it was the Muslim Brotherhood who called upon the military to provide the state with minimum civic order. But General el-Sisi was not about to have his troops take sides for or against the pro-Morsi or anti-Morsi agitators.
During the rest of 2012 and the spring of 2013, the situation deteriorated further, with pro- and anti-Morsi demonstrations frequently escalating into violent encounters. Coptic Christians also became targets of attack by extremist Muslims. On June 30, the anniversary of Morsi’s inauguration, millions of anti-Morsi protestors took to the streets all around the country. As incidents of violence multiplied, on July 3, 2013, General el-Sisi and his military colleagues—having determined it was necessary to prevent total anarchy—removed President Morsi from power and placed him and several other Muslim Brotherhood leaders under house arrest. The general appointed the chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court as interim president (subordinate to the military) with the responsibility for forming a transitional government mandated to oversee the completion of a new constitution and electoral process while the military enforced order. In response to the nationwide explosion of protests this takeover triggered, el-Sisi declared martial law and his forces engaged in preventive detention of senior Muslim leaders and closed down the Brotherhood’s media and newspapers.
The Obama administration was back in its damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t quandary. For once again, as during the anti-Mubarak phase of the uprising in Egypt, not to weigh in against the military’s preemptory role would be to allow the junta to make a mockery of the democratic transition. Turning this dilemma into a trilemma for the United States, minority religious groups, most notably the Coptic Christians, plus many of the secular liberals who were in the vanguard of the Arab Spring uprising, were now considering a tacit alliance with the military regime despite its anti-democratic moves. They appeared to fear the older and known evil of an Egypt dominated by the military less than they feared the unknown evil of a theocratic state run by the Muslim Brotherhood that might suppress the other religions and secularists.
Human rights groups in the United States and around the world were similarly torn, for they had been growing increasingly alarmed at Morsi’s own tyrannical attempts to centralize power and suppress dissent prior to the military’s coup. But was it a coup? The Obama administration refrained from using the term because that would activate provisions in U.S. foreign assistance legislation prohibiting military transfers to governments established by “coups”—which would apply to the $1.5 billion of annual military aid being provided to Egypt. The ambivalence in the Oval Office was reflected in the president’s pubic statement that
we appreciate the complexity of the situation. While Mohamed Morsi was elected President in a democratic election, his government was not inclusive and did not respect the views of all Egyptians. We know that … millions of Egyptians, perhaps even a majority of Egyptians were calling for a change in course. …
Instead, we’ve seen a more dangerous path taken [by the military] through arbitrary arrests, a broad crackdown on Mr. Morsi’s associations and supporters, and now tragically the violence that’s taken the lives of hundreds and wounded thousands more. …
The United States strongly condemns the steps that have been taken by Egypt’s interim government and security forces. We deplore violence against civilians. We support universal rights essential to human dignity. We oppose the pursuit of martial law, which denies those rights to citizens under the principle that security trumps individual freedom or might makes right. …
And given the depths of our partnership with Egypt, our national security interests in the pivotal part of the world and our belief that engagement can support a transition back to a democratically elected civilian government, we’ve sustained our commitment to Egypt and its people. But … our traditional cooperation cannot continue as usual when civilians are being killed in the streets and rights are being rolled back.
As a result, … we are canceling our biannual joint military exercise which was scheduled for next month.8
Anticipating that critics would brand the military exercise cancellation as a mere slap on the wrist, the president revealed that he had asked his national security team to assess “further steps that we may take as necessary with respect to the U.S.-Egyptian relationship.”9
With debates raging in the U.S. Congress over whether and how to force the president’s hand, and reports showing the el-Sisi regime itself brutally persisting in human rights violations, the Obama administration was moved further to announce in early October 2013 a temporary and “modest” freeze on the delivery of military items. The equipment being withheld included Apache attack helicopters, Harpoon missiles, M1-A1 tank parts, and F-16 warplanes. The $260 million earmarked for the general Egyptian budget was also frozen.10
But the administration was still unwilling to define General el-Sisi’s ouster of Morsi as a coup, for that could require a full cutoff of military aid. Obama did not want, as he said, the geopolitical relationship with Egypt to “trump” human rights. Nor did he want the larger agenda of U.S. interests in the region for which Washington depended on Egyptian cooperation—resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, restricting the Iranian nuclear program, mitigating the Syrian civil war, assuring free flow of the region’s petroleum, combating terrorism—to be held hostage to the way the Egyptians handled, or mishandled, their internal political crises. As he put it in his September 2013 address to the United Nations, “The United States of America is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure our core interests in the region.” Yet emphasizing once more the softer aspects of U.S. power, he reminded the world body that for him to say these are America’s core interests “is not to say that they are our only interest. We deeply believe it is in our interests to see a Middle East and North Africa that is [sic] peaceful and prosperous. And we’ll continue to promote democracy and human rights and free markets because we believe these practices achieve peace and prosperity.”11
Field Marshall Sisi’s next step in consolidating and trying to legitimate his autocratic rule was to doff his military uniform and run for president as a civilian in the 2014 elections. His victory was a foregone conclusion, having suppressed the anti-government and pro-Muslim Brotherhood media and marshalled the government’s ample public-relations resources to glorify his campaign. The best the United States could now look forward to, without the power to assure it, would be an el-Sisi regime modelled on Anwar Sadat’s or, second best, Mubarak’s dictatorship, that would maintain peace with Israel and would be amenable to coordinating its counterterrorist actions with the United States. It soon became clear that in roughly three years since the popular uprising forced Mubarak’s ouster, the cowed Egyptian electorate in effect reinstituted his clone—albeit officially retired from the military, but in fact still one of them and their leader. And reluctantly, despite Egypt’s full-circle return to a human-rights-repressing regime, official Washington, with a sigh of relief from the Netanyahu government, quietly welcomed Cairo’s resumption of an honest-broker’s role, at least for the Israel-Palestine conflict. Critics called Obama’s Egypt policy “dithering,” but to the president the administration’s ambivalence—his ambivalence, throughout the Arab Spring and the return of bad weather—was the essence of realism.
Bahrain
The basic dilemmas the contagious Arab Spring fever posed for the Obama administration were also thrown into stark relief when Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa invited Saudi Arabia and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to help him put down the democracy-espousing uprising against his regime. The resulting intervention visibly pitted key allies of the United States against the basic transformatory trend in the region that the United States under George W. Bush and now under Barak Obama claimed to be supporting.
Inspired by the events in Tunisia and Egypt, leaders of the majority Shiite community—the majority of Bahrain’s population—who had been agitating for decades against the discriminatory policies of the Sunni-run regime, were energized to stage their own “Day of Rage” on February 14, 2011. The heavy-handed response of the army and police, in which some demonstrators were killed, generated international reactions and intense but quiet efforts by U.S. diplomats to get both sides to compromise. King Hamad promised to investigate and take legal action against unjustified uses of force by its security forces and to initiate a series of constitutional reforms to allow the Shiite population more equitable representation. President Obama voiced approval. “As a long-standing partner of Bahrain,” the president affirmed, “the United States continues to believe that Bahrain’s stability will be enhanced by respecting the universal human rights of the people of Bahrain and reforms that meet the aspirations of all Bahrainis.”12 In the following weeks, however, as the regime’s opposition escalated their demands, claiming the king’s promises were basically a hoax, the U.S. government showed no inclination to weigh in against its strategic ally.
Not just any small ally, Bahrain is headquarters for the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which includes a carrier battle group based in Manama. Under the regime’s cooperative defense agreement with the United States, nearly 2,500 U.S. military personnel are stationed there, and a $580 million project is underway to expand U.S. naval facilities. So when the king in mid-March 2011, fearing the protests were getting out of hand, invited the Saudis and other GCC members to send in troops to help him stabilize the situation, the U.S. reaction continued to be equivocal—and muted. The GCC states justified their combined deployment of over 2,000 troops on the basis of suspicions that the uprising was aided and abetted by the Iranians and that Tehran was attempting to generate a full-scale popular revolt by the Shiite majority against the Sunni-run regime.
Nonetheless, there was concern in the White House that the Saudi/GCC troop presence, branded an “occupation” by Tehran, would further radicalize the opposition movement in Bahrain and allow the Iranians to claim legitimacy for counterintervening, whether overtly or covertly. Throughout the rest of 2011, therefore, U.S. diplomacy proceeded on two tracks: strongly urging both the regime in Manama and its opponents to agree on a graduated process for expanding the political rights and civil liberties of all of the country’s people and persuading the Saudis and other members of the GCC to withdraw their forces and turn the stabilization and pacification roles fully back to the Bahraini government. Most of the U.S. entreaties were conveyed privately. Yet in a major speech on his Middle Eastern policies the president did include a public rebuke to the Hamad regime for not doing enough to moderate the crisis. Although recognizing that “the Bahraini government has a legitimate interest in the rule of law,” he pointed to “mass arrests and brute force … at odds with the universal rights of Bahrain’s citizens.” The only way forward, he said, was for the government and opposition to engage in dialogue, “and you can’t have a real dialogue when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail. The government must create the conditions for dialogue, and the opposition must participate to create a just future for all Bahrainis.”13
At the end of June 2011, King Hamad and the leading opposition group, Al Wifaq, said they were launching a “national dialogue in Bahrain” and the Saudis announced they were withdrawing their troops. Obama hailed these developments as consistent with his premise that the path to stability for the countries in the region was via dialogue, democratization, and the expansion of human rights; and that brutally enforced public order was inherently unstable. But further turmoil in Bahrain and its neighbors over the months and years ahead, pitting the champions of reform against recalcitrant governments, while seeming to confirm what was being called the “Obama Doctrine,” did little to resolve the here-and-now predicaments resulting from the fact that the recalcitrant governments were often strategic partners of the United States and the reformers were not all that reliable as future partners.
Libya
A day after the February “Day of Rage” uprising in Bahrain and five days after Mubarak stepped down, it only took a few peaceful anti-regime protests in eastern Libya for Muammar Gaddafi to unleash a heavy military crackdown on demonstrations. But his swift and brutal response only brought angry crowds into the streets demanding his ouster, some of them retaliating with small arms. The rapid expansion of the conflict across the country, even into Tripoli and other cities thought to be Gaddafi strongholds, plus a number of defections of high officials from his regime, signaled an impending civil war with previously intimidated tribes and their militias joining the rebels.
The Obama administration was at first highly ambivalent toward the situation in Libya—Gaddafi having cooperated in covert actions against al-Qaeda, and having relinquished his effort to develop his own nuclear weapons. Also U.S. intelligence on the fractious rebel groups did not inspire confidence in either their ability to mobilize a sufficiently coherent force to bring down the Gaddafi regime or in the unlikely event that they did succeed, to establish and sustain a viable government. But in this case, unlike in the two previous U.S. interventions in the region (the 1991 Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom), it was now a core group of West European countries plus Saudi Arabia and other friends in the GCC that were prodding the initially reluctant United States to join in military actions to prevent Gaddafi’s forces from massacring Libyan civilians.
Following the lead of French president Nicolas Sarkozy and British prime minister David Cameron, President Obama—despite opposition by Secretary of Defense Gates and some other key advisers, but urged on by Secretary of State Clinton—instructed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice to cosponsor a Security Council resolution approving a “no-fly zone” to protect the Libyan civilians Gaddafi was preparing to slaughter. Security Council Resolution 1973, adopted on March 17, 2011, by a vote of 10 in favor with 5 abstentions (Brazil, China, Germany, India, Russian Federation), called the situation in Libya a threat to international peace and security, demanded an immediate cease-fire, and authorized member states “to take all necessary measures … to protect civilians and civilian populated areas” under threat of attack. The authorization specified “a ban on all flights in the airspace of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” (the area including Benghazi and other rebel strongholds Gaddafi’s forces were about to attack). But consonant with White House concerns about being drawn into another military occupation of a Muslim country, Resolution 1973 excluded “a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.” 14
In his statement the next day, President Obama explained that in enforcing the UN resolution the U.S. military would be providing “unique capabilities” as part of an international coalition in which the British and French and members of the Arab League would be taking a leading role in implementing the no-fly zone. “I also want to be clear about what we will not be doing,” he said. “The United States is not going to deploy ground troops into Libya. And we are not going to use force to go beyond a well-defined goal—specifically, the protection of civilians in Libya.”15 Yet the actual use of force over the next ten days proved to be more multipronged than the president’s cautious formulation of the limited purpose of the intervention appeared to imply.
As reports from the theater of operations revealed that the United States had committed some of its more advanced military assets to the mission, Secretary of Defense Gates, who had been a reluctant convert to the no-fly zone operation, let alone a more direct military intervention, was asked on Meet the Press: “Is Libya in our vital interest as a country?” Gates carefully replied, “No, I don’t think it is a vital interest for the United States, but we clearly have interests there, and it’s a part of the region which is a vital interest for the United States.” Sounding puzzled, Meet the Press host David Gregory responded: “I think a lot of people would hear that and say, well, that’s quite striking. Not in our vital interest, and yet we’re committing military resources to it.”16
Gates’s somewhat ambiguous remarks did reflect the thinking in the White House, which the president the very next night sought to clarify in a comprehensive report to the nation of what the United States was doing in Libya and why: Gaddafi, in reaction to the world’s condemnation of his brutal suppression of dissent, had escalated his attacks against the Libyan people; innocents were targeted for killing, hospitals and ambulances were attacked; journalists were arrested and sexually assaulted; supplies of water and food were cut to communities Gaddafi threatened to wipe out as rats, military jets and helicopters had been unleashed to destroy apartment buildings and mosques and to strafe people in the streets, and Gaddafi’s troops were massing for a drive into the rebel stronghold in the eastern city of Benghazi. “We knew that if we waited,” said Obama, “Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world. It was not in our national interest to let that happen [emphasis added]. I refused to let that happen.” Accordingly,
we struck regime forces approaching Benghazi to save that city and the people within it. We hit Qaddafi’s troops in neighboring Ajdabiya, allowing the opposition to drive them out. We hit Qaddafi’s air defenses, which paved the way for a no-fly zone. We targeted tanks and military assets that had been choking off towns and cities, and we cut off much of their source of supply. And tonight [nine days into the military operation], I can report we have stopped Qaddafi’s deadly advance.17
By doing so, the president claimed, he remained faithful to the pledge he made at the outset of the crisis, that “America’s role would be limited; that we would not put ground troops into Libya; that we would focus our unique capabilities on the front end of the operation and that we would transfer responsibility to our allies and partners. … In that effort, the United States will play a supporting role.” This supporting role would include the provision of intelligence, logistical support, search and rescue assistance, jamming the regime’s communications. But with the NATO-led coalition taking over the operations, the U.S. direct participation would be “reduced significantly.” 18
The objective of the military operation would also stay limited to protecting Libyan citizens from being slaughtered. Obama would not, as some were suggesting, broaden it to bring down Gaddafi and usher in a new government. Of course, Libya and the world would be better off with Gaddafi out of power, the president affirmed, and he had embraced that goal and would actively pursue it through nonmilitary means. But
broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake. …
If we tried to overthrow Qaddafi by force, our coalition would splinter. We would likely have to put U.S. troops on the ground to accomplish that mission, or risk killing many civilians from the air. The dangers faced by our men and women in uniform would be far greater. So would the costs of our share of the responsibility for what comes next.
To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq … But regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. That is something we cannot afford in Libya. 19
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Secretary of Defense Gates stuck to this script. The intervention was shifting into its second phase, the NATO-led effort called Operation Unified Protector in which
the U.S. military will provide the capabilities that others cannot provide, either in kind or in scale, such as electronic warfare, aerial refueling, lift, search and rescue, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance support. Accordingly, we will … significantly ramp down our commitment of other military capabilities and resources.
The NATO-led military mission … is a limited one. … There will be no American boots on the ground in Libya.
Deposing the Qaddafi regime, as welcome as that eventuality would be, is not part of the military mission.20
Pressed by the senators on the regime-change issue, Gates had a difficult time distinguishing the political goals from the military objectives. “In my view,” said Gates, “the removal of Colonel Qaddafi will likely be achieved over time through political and economic measures by his own people. However, this NATO-led operation can degrade Qaddafi’s military capability to the point where he and those around him will be forced into a very different set of choices and behaviors in the future.”21 Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, under intense questioning, clouded the distinction even more: “Clearly, the policy of the President is one of—to see Qaddafi out, to see regime change in that regard. And I think that can be accomplished through the limited military mission that we have and—in execution—and then the additional—the other tools, if you will, that we have to pressure him over time.”22 But as the NATO attacks escalated to include strikes on Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli and air support operations for the rebel forces battling loyalist forces across the country, U.S. military assets committed to the conflict (target information provided by Predator drones, for example) escalated—blurring in fact the already-murky lines in rhetoric between population protection and regime-change missions.
The extent and objectives of the U.S. military operation in Libya embroiled the Obama administration in a debate with critics over whether its actions were consistent with the War Powers Resolution Congress passed in 1973. The resolution’s purported purpose was to ensure that the executive branch would never again, as it allegedly did in the Vietnam War, override the legislative branch’s constitutionally provided authority to decide when the country will go to war. Although, like its predecessors, the Obama administration did not consider itself constitutionally bound to adhere to the terms of the resolution, it did claim to be acting in the spirit of the resolution by providing Congress with updated statements and testimony on the Libyan intervention. However, in refusing to implement the resolution’s requirement that in order to engage in hostilities for more than sixty days, there had to be congressional authorization to do so, the administration did not challenge the legality of that requirement per se; it only challenged the resolution’s applicability to the Libyan case, arguing the United States was not engaged in “hostilities.”
As put by the White House press secretary Jay Carney, the “U.S. operations do not involve a number of elements traditionally associated with hostilities, including sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces.” There was “not a single U.S. ground troop” in Libya and “no U.S. casualties … or any significant chance of escalation into a conflict characterized by such factors.” Our conclusion, reiterated Carney, reading from a statement prepared by the administration’s lawyers, “[is that] these constrained and limited operations do not amount to hostilities under the War Powers Resolution” and that this “[is] consistent with … interpretations put forward by administrations of both political parties dating back to the statute’s 1973 enactment.”23 Notably, the president himself, while vigorously defending the proposition that the Libyan intervention was a just and prudent resort to military force, not a high-risk military operation, refrained from giving voice to these strained legalisms.
Another issue for the administration was whether NATO and/or the countries participating in the operation against Gaddafi’s forces should provide arms to the rebels to permit them to better defend themselves than they could by depending entirely on the weapons of the anti-Gaddafi militias and what they could obtain by breaking into the regime’s arsenals. The White House, still wary of having NATO become party to a full-blown Libyan civil war and insisting on fidelity to the UN-mandated arms embargo, was opposed to supplying weapons, but as various members of the coalition nevertheless began to provide the rebels with military equipment, the United States became an enabler of these efforts too.
It took another six months (April through September 2011) for the disorganized rebel forces, aided by NATO air strikes, to essentially overcome the weakened and demoralized forces still loyal to Gaddafi. The ragged denouement came on October 20 with the rebels’ capture and killing of Gaddafi. Having fled Tripoli, Gaddafi had been hiding out in Sirtre near his birthplace. A car carrying Gaddafi in a convoy of vehicles targeted from a Predator drone base in Las Vegas, Nevada, was disabled by NATO air strikes; and Gaddafi, having holed up in a roadside drainage pipe, was dragged out and beaten by the rebels (in a bloody scene broadcast around the world) before they killed him. “Today, we can definitely say that the Qaddafi regime has come to an end,” proclaimed President Obama, hailing it as proof that “the rule of an iron first inevitably comes to an end.” Obama claimed to be under no illusion, however, that the transition to democracy in Libya would be anything but long and difficult.24
Obama’s worry about difficulties ahead in Libya was validated when on September 11, 2012 (the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States), heavily armed jihadists stormed the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, setting it afire and murdering Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other State Department officials. Whether that particular shocking event could have been prevented or not (a question generating intense debate in the United States), it was a cruel reminder of the reality that toppling a tyrant may lead, at least initially, to a period not of democracy but of anarchy, which in Libya was being exploited by groups who hate the United States even more than Gaddafi did. Some of these provided safe haven for al-Qaeda fighters and contributed recruits and arms for al-Qaeda and other radical Islamist rebels battling the French-backed forces propping up the central government in neighboring Mali.
The scene in Libya increasingly featured conflicts among rival militias—hundreds of them—often battling each other to secure control their own claimed swath of territory and refusing to be integrated into the country’s regular armed forces. Some of the militias were even trying to take over Tripoli and were engaged not only in skirmishes against the government’s forces but also against enemy ethnic groups with similar aspirations. But various of the militant groups were also infused with globalist jihadist aims; and the Obama administration, since the attack on the U.S consulate in Benghazi, had shifted into a damage-control, no longer really a nation-building, mode. Thus in response to the escalation of violence in Libya in July 2014, the State Department, instead of demanding a military reinforcement of the embassy in Tripoli, suspended the embassy’s operation and relocated about 150 of its personnel in Tunisia—symptomatic of the larger shift in grand strategy as the region’s political spring turned dangerously stormy.
Syria
The Obama administration, no less than the regime of Bashar al-Assad, doubted that the democratization fever migrating via the media and cybernetworks would also destabilize the Syrian polity. Memories of how Assad’s father brutally suppressed protests in the 1990s, the fear of Bashar’s own vicious security apparatus, plus the regime’s stratagem of co-opting members of the country’s elite class who might otherwise oppose it, appeared to have marginalized the disaffected citizens, rendering them impotent for anything like the uprising that drove Mubarak from power in Egypt. Syria was “immune” from such infections, Assad declared. Moreover, in recent years the U.S. administrations had gone relatively easy on Syria when it came to applying sanctions on the regime as provided for in congressional human rights and antiterrorism legislation. U.S. diplomats regarded Assad as a possible moderating force in the next phase of the Arab-Israeli peace process—this despite Syria’s partnership with Iran in supporting Hezbollah and Hamas.
When Assad, fearful that a contagious virus of popular protest was now also beginning to penetrate the Syrian body politic, ordered the merciless suppression of demonstrations for reform, the Obama administration, having just endorsed the uprising in Egypt as an expression of universal rights, could no longer remain aloof. And by August 2011, with entreaties from Washington and graduated applications of economic sanctions not having dissuaded al-Assad to change course, President Obama once again, as with Mubarak and Gaddafi, made the dictator himself the issue:
The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way. His calls for dialogue and reform have rung hollow while he is imprisoning, torturing, and slaughtering his own people. We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way. He has not led. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.25
In Egypt, when it became evident that the president of the United States was demanding it, Mubarak did step aside. And in Libya, when Gaddafi refused to accede to Obama’s insistence that he leave, the United States joined its NATO allies in militarily supporting the insurrection that captured and killed him. The ability of the United States to push Assad out of power, however, would be severely constrained. The regime’s 330,000 troop army, equipped with Russian weapons, was reputed to be disciplined and loyal to Assad. The country’s surface-to-air missiles were highly co-located with concentrations of population, so knocking them out in order to establish no-fly zones would produce even more civilian casualties. While granting that direct U.S. military intervention was not an option, Secretary of Defense Panetta, Secretary of State Clinton, and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Martin Dempsey argued within the administration for providing the rebels with material support and training, perhaps with the assistance of the Turks, who were already doing so. But President Obama listened to other advisers who pointed out the Syrian opposition was split along sectarian lines, even more than in Libya. Moreover, administration strategists worried that the provision of major arms to opposition groups could get into the wrong hands—possibly al-Qaeda—and/or could generate a civil war that could well turn into a proxy war pitting those backed by the United States against allies of Iran backed by Russia.26
Even so, President Obama did not rule out any U.S. military operation whatsoever against Syria—“a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized,” he warned in August 2012. “That would change my equation.”27 For the Israelis, though—seeing their own national security threatened by advanced weapons of any sort getting into the hands of their enemies—the red line for Syria was not as self-limiting. Thus on January 29 and 30, 2013, the Israeli air force struck and destroyed a research center near Damascus and a convoy of weapons in Syria the Israelis claimed were being shipped to Hezbollah.28 The perspective from the White House was one of satisfaction that the Israelis would give the Assad regime a bloody nose as they saw fit, but also one of concern that Assad would point to the attacks from Israel in an attempt to weaken the rebellion against his rule by branding it a U.S.-Zionist scheme.
Obama began his second term troubled by the deteriorating situation in Syria more than by any other foreign policy issue. No doctrine, no grand strategy provided him (or his critics) with guidance on whether and how to commit U.S. material and human resources in an attempt to stop the carnage. Yet action—or inaction in response to the Syrian crisis—would have profound implications for the future of U.S. power, in the sense of the United States being able to influence others in the pursuit of a less violent and more just world order.
Sooner than expected, however, that need to decide whether or not the United States should use force against the Assad regime was pushed to the top of Obama’s agenda by a series of credible allegations in the spring and summer of 2013 that Syrian forces had been using chemical weapons—quite likely the nerve agent sarin—against rebel fighting units and enclaves, killing and injuring civilians in the process. The Syrian government responded to these charges by claiming the opposition forces were the ones using chemical weapons. These initial allegations, although about relatively small incidents, prompted the United Nations in conjunction with the World Health Organization and the official Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to investigate whether chemical weapons had been used; but the UN mandate did not permit it to investigate deeply enough to determine what chemical agents had been used or who had used them. The cacophony of official and journalistic reports that ensued from the field did not yet constitute the “strong evidence” President Obama required in order to conclude that the red line he had laid down had been crossed.
The strong evidence required by the president did surface on August 21, 2013, in the form of reports of attacks with chemical weapons in the Damascus suburbs in which more than 1,000 people were victims. After a week of verifying investigations by international and national agencies, Obama concluded—and said so publicly in a PBS interview—that the Assad regime had indeed used chemical weapons on unarmed civilians. When asked if there was to be a military response, he said he had not yet made a decision to take military action against Syria, but his answer sparked widespread speculation, which the White House made no effort to quash, that he was about to do so. The administration was taken aback, however, by the vote in the British Parliament on August 29, acceded to by Prime Minister David Cameron, against giving support to military action in Syria. Nevertheless, and in the face of intense pro and con statements by members of Congress, Secretary of State John Kerry announced on August 30 that discussions on military action were underway.
Scheduled to address the nation (and world) on August 31, Obama in a moment-of-truth prior consultation with his immediate advisers (but without the presence of either Secretary of State Kerry and Secretary of Defense Hagel) decided on a highly controversial course for dealing with the situation. As stated in this unique address, he had determined it was in the U.S. national interest to take military action against military targets in Syria—which he did not specify, but would come from U.S. military assets positioned in the region. “The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has informed me that we are prepared to strike whenever we choose.” And then, foreshadowing what he was to say next, he revealed that Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Dempsey had informed him that “our capacity to execute this mission is not time-sensitive, it will be effective tomorrow, or next week, or one month from now.” The president evidently needed that flexibility, for he had also decided to seek “authorization for the use of force from the American people’s representatives in Congress”—which might take some time to obtain.29
Was this sudden deference to Congress a clever political maneuver, critics asked, to escape the ultimate burden and responsibility of actually ordering the use of force against the Assad regime? What if Congress fails to pass the resolution the president is requesting? What if Congress votes against any employment of U.S. forces in this situation? Brushing these contingencies aside, Obama asserted unequivocally, “I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization.”
But then something happened on the way to the congressional forum. President Putin, picking up on an offhand speculative comment by Secretary of State Kerry, offered to explore the possibility of getting Assad to agree to dismantle his chemical weapons in return for the Americans dropping their threat to use force against his regime. “It’s too early to tell whether this offer will succeed,” Obama granted in reporting to the nation on September 10 what was happening, but “I have, therefore, asked the leaders of Congress to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force while we pursue this diplomatic path. … Meanwhile, I’ve ordered our military to maintain their current posture to keep the pressure on Assad, and to be in a position to respond if diplomacy fails.”30
Within three days, the Russians announced that the Syrian Arab Republic had agreed to accede to the Chemical Weapons Convention and to start immediately to destroy the Syrian chemical weapons. And on September 14, the U.S. Department of State issued a statement describing the “framework” U.S. and Russian negotiators had hammered out for the elimination of the Syrian chemical weapons, which they were jointly asking the United Nations Security Council to convert into a binding resolution. 31
Security Council Resolution 2118, passed unanimously on September 27, 2013, required the “expeditious destruction of the Syrian Arab Republic’s chemical weapons program and stringent verification thereof” and stipulated that the Syrian government or any party in Syria “shall not use, develop, produce, acquire, stockpile, retain, or transfer chemical weapons.” It further mandated that Syria should provide the inspecting personnel of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)—the enforcement agency of the Chemical Weapons Convention—“immediate and unfettered access to and the right to inspect … any and all sites … that the OPCW has grounds to believe to be of importance for the purpose of its mandate.”32
The United States, the United Kingdom, and France pushed for a clause in Resolution 2118 that would authorize member states to take military action against the Syrian government’s armed forces in the event of Syria’s noncompliance. Russia opposed this, but did accept the statement that the Security Council, “in the event of non-compliance with this resolution, including the unauthorized transfer of chemical weapons, or any use of chemical weapons by anyone in the Syrian Arab Republic” would “impose measures under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter.”33 The Security Council was mandated to convene in such a case, but the use of force would require a subsequent resolution at the time.
In their press conferences Russian officials reassured the Syrians that the world body had fully endorsed the quid pro quo of no chemical weapons in Syria in exchange for no U.S. use of military force against the Assad government. The Americans, however, including President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry, insisted that they had not taken the option of military action off the table; that it was the credibility and readiness of the U.S. threat to take such action that brought about Syria’s contrite agreement to junk its chemical weapons; and that Assad should stay forewarned that any failure on his part to comply with his obligations under Resolution 2118 would activate the U.S. capability and will to smash Syria’s military forces.
As President Obama lit the Christmas tree on December 6, 2013, the reports coming in from the international inspectorate attested to Assad’s apparent compliance in doing away with his chemical weapons. But had things moved any closer to the recurrent hope for peace on earth, goodwill toward men and women? Unfortunately, not yet in Syria, where Assad loyalists—and the rebels (increasingly infiltrated by al-Qaeda)—were continuing to kill and maim innocent civilians and the government’s forces were reportedly gaining ground and reconsolidating control. Obama could experience a measure of satisfaction, however, that agile engagement diplomacy, albeit in this case relying on sticks more than carrots, had restrained America from again stumbling into another war in which U.S. interests, other than preventing massive atrocities, were not at all clearly defined.
Six months later, UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon reported to the Security Council that Syria would not be completing its eradication of its chemical arms by June 30, 2014 as mandated by Resolution 2118, and to which Assad had agreed. Roughly 8 percent of Syria’s stockpile of lethal chemical weapons still remained in the country, only five of 18 production facilities had been closed, and 11 of its 12 storage facilities were still in existence. Secretary General Ban also revealed that a fact-finding mission was underway to verify allegations that Assad’s military had used poisonous chlorine gas against civilians.34
Most disturbing were reports that indiscriminate attacks on noncombatants—by all sides in the civil war—had not abated. The persisting problem of differentiating the good guys among the rebels from the bad guys (many of whom were affiliated with al-Qaeda), however, had not discouraged critics of Obama’s noninterventionist policy from demanding military aid to some of the rebels sufficient to turn the tide, possibly via their Jordanian and Saudi allies. Yet despite rumored agitation from within his administration (particularly on the part of National Security Adviser Susan Rice and UN Ambassador Samantha Power) for tangible moves to match his responsibility-to-protect rhetoric, the president was keeping his options close to his vest. In his address to the graduating class of 2014 at West Point, however, he did announce stepped-up “efforts to support Syria’s neighbors—Jordan and Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq—as they host refugees, and confront terrorists working across Syrian borders” and that he would “work with Congress to ramp up support for those in the Syrian opposition who offer the best alternative to terrorists and a brutal dictator.” Meanwhile, without specifying what he had in mind, he vowed to “push for a political resolution to this crisis.”35 But for the time being, he gave no indication of being ready to revive the threat of a military strike against Assad’s military assets, let alone to put American troops in the middle of the civil war.
In the White House there was a growing awareness that however noble America’s intentions to protect people around the world from tyrannical psychopaths, U.S. intervention—like al-Qaeda or the Islamic State—could well mean freeing up others with no less brutal tendencies to contest for power. “No more Libyas,” “no more Egypts,” now joined “no more Iraqs” as watchwords in the Oval Office. This deepening skepticism about having enough foreknowledge, let alone power, to justify U.S. efforts to shape the politics of other people profoundly affected how Obama dealt with demands to employ military force, even to save the lives of the thousands who had become a prime candidates for “responsibility to protect” intervention.