Lessons of Libya
<p>Muammar Qaddaffi, Libya&#8217;s dictator and long-time terrorist<br />
sugar-daddy, has agreed to dismantle his WMD programs and allow<br />
international inspections.  The NYT&#8217;s December 20th article <a href='http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/20/opinion/20SAT1.html'>Lessons<br />
of Libya</a>, covering this development, is unintentionally<br />
hilarious.</p>
<p>An honest account would probably have read something like this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When Qaddafi saw the Hussein capture pictures they must have scared<br />
him silly.  Realizing that the U.S. is no longer in the mood to take<br />
shit from tin-pot tyrants in khaffiyehs, and that the U.S. military<br />
could blow its way into Tripoli and give him a free dental exam in<br />
less time than it would take for an utterly impotent U.N. to pass the<br />
resolution condemning American action, he crawled to the Brits<br />
whimpering &ldquo;Don&#8217;t let your big brother hurt me,<br />
<em>pleeeassseee&#8230;</em>&rdquo;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Instead, we&#8217;re treated to a bunch of waffle: &#8220;To an extent<br />
that cannot be precisely measured&#8221; and &#8220;yesterday&#8217;s<br />
announcement also demonstrates the value of diplomacy and United<br />
Nations sanctions&#8221;. I suspect the NYT will deny as long as it<br />
can the real lesson of Libya, which is the same as the lessons of Iraq<br />
and Afghanistan and, for that matter, Yugoslavia.  And that is this:<br />
the disarmament of rogue states has never once been accomplished by<br />
the U.N. or by diplomacy or &lsquo;international opinion&rsquo;, but<br />
is now being driven simply and solely by the fear of American military<br />
power and the will to use it.</p>
<p>We are in what Karl Marx would have called a world-historical<br />
moment &mdash; the first time that American hyperpuissance has<br />
defanged a dictator <em>without actual war</em>.  All the rules will<br />
be different from now on, and Qaddafi (wily survivor that he is) has<br />
figured them out well ahead of the Western chattering classes.  The<br />
most important rule is this: <em>do not make the U.S. fear what<br />
you might become, or it will break you.</em></p>
<p>Indeed, it seems very likely to me that future historians will date<br />
the beginning of the 21st-century Pax Americana from Qaddafi&#8217;s<br />
crawfishing. The U.S. is not merely maintaining its lead in economic<br />
vigor and military heft over any conceivable opposing coalition, that<br />
lead is actually increasing. Demographic trends (notably the fact that<br />
Europeans and Japanese are not breeding at replacement levels) suggest<br />
that U.S.&#8217;s relative power, in both &lsquo;hard&rsquo; and<br />
&lsquo;soft&rsquo; terms, will continue to increase through at least<br />
2050.</p>
<p>The most visible indicator of this change, aside from the collapse<br />
of awful governments in any number of Third-World pestholes, will be<br />
the marginalization of the U.N.  That organization, which has never<br />
had hard power, will now lose its soft power as well.  It might have<br />
been different &mdash; but France and the other nations who aimed to<br />
set the U.N. up as a geopolitical counterforce to the U.S. overplayed<br />
their hand in the run-up to the liberation of Iraq.  For that effort,<br />
the capture of Saddam and Qaddafi&#8217;s surrender in the face of an<br />
American-led New World Order are fatal blows. The U.N. may survive as<br />
an umbrella for international aid agencies and a few technical<br />
standards groups, but in the future it will constrain American<br />
behavior less, not more.</p>
<p>The ripple effects on Middle Eastern, European, and U.S. domestic<br />
politics will be significant.  Even <cite>Arab News</cite> is<br />
beginning to come around to the realization that the U.S. did the Arab<br />
world a favor by deposing Saddam Hussein, and his capture<br />
significantly betters the odds that the reconstruction of Iraq will<br />
succeed.  Since U.S. power has actually accomplished the peaceful<br />
disarmament of a rogue state, making political hay in Europe from a<br />
case against U.S. unilateralism is going to become steadily more<br />
difficult.  And in the U.S., the antiwar opposition is increasingly<br />
marginal and demoralized as the war goes well and George Bush&#8217;s<br />
re-election now looks like a near certainty.</p>
<p>To borrow Churchill&#8217;s phrase, this is not the end of the War on Terror.<br />
But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.</p>
