A Critique of Corporate Political Risk Analysis and U.S. Foreign Policy: The Case of Libya

Even though people the world over instinctively recoiled as reports came in of Gadhafi's violent retaliation against Libyan protests on February 21, 2011, the official reaction from the US Government was muted at best. The refusal to act on an intuitive response to immediately remove the Libyan dictator's ability to wantonly kill people resisting his right to rule may have come from concerns that the mounting tumult of a change of government in a major oil-producing region of North Africa could cause even just a disruption in the supply of crude. Indeed, even the mere possibility was prompting a spike in the price of oil (and gas)--what one might call a risk premium. Even the prospect of an ensuing nasty electoral backlash from consumers having to face a possible increase in their largely non-discretionary gas expense was not lost on their elected representative in chief at the White House. 

Even five days later, after some serious press on the rising price of gasoline hitting American consumers, the most the president would do is proffer a verbal "demand" from afar that Gadhafi leave Libya.  "When a leader's only means of staying in power is to use mass violence against his own people, he has lost the legitimacy to rule and needs to do what is right for his country by leaving now," the White House said in a statement. The dictator must have been shaking in his boots.  In actuality, Gadhafi had lost his legitmacy to rule five days earlier, and by the day of the statement the American administration could have been actively involved with willing EU states in stopping him inside Libya. Given the progress of the protesters-turned rebels and the behavior of Brent crude that week, the interests of the American consumer (and Western oil companies, as well as the business sector over all) were by then firmly in line with an enforced regime change in Libya.  Oddly, the old dogma of an absolute governmental sovereignty was colluding with an inherently excessive risk-averse corporate political risk methodology to hold America back from acting as midwife to a new political awareness breaking out in the Middle East.

On the day of Gadhafi's self-vaunted shooting spree, Brent crude benchmark vaulted past $108 a barrel (settling at $105.74, a two-year high).  On the following day, it rose to $111.25. On the first day of March, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 168.32 points, or 1.38%, to finish at 12058.02, its third triple-digit decline in the past week. Oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange, already up 6% this year, jumped 2.7% to settle at $99.63 a barrel.  Brent Crude in London hit $115.42 a barrel, the highest settlement since Aug. 27, 2008.The graph below shows the change in oil, though the change looks astounding in part simply because the graph only goes to 15%; were it to go to 100 percent, the picture might seem less dramatic.

The Wall Street Journal had reported already on February 21st that the rise was "driven by increasing unrest in the Middle East." Specifically, worries that the turmoil in Libya was curtailing output of that country's oil were said to be driving the price climb. However, USA Today cites Darin Newsome, an energy analyst at DTN, as pointing to the role of speculators around the world as propelling the price of oil. "The flow of money plays an enormous role in the direction, speed and volatility of these markets." In fact, the market mechanism itself may be flawed because speculators could push commodity prices out of sync with the underlying supply of the respective commodities. Turmoil in Libya cannot be blamed for the ensuing “creation” of artificial value (such an increase, by the way, had fueled the housing bubble in the US that came in for a hard landing in 2008). In fact, the rise in world oil prices began before the final third of 2010—before the prospect of widespread popular protest in the Middle East was realized. Indeed, the climb during the last third of 2010 looks a lot like that which took place in the first third of 2009 (during a recession). It was not until well into February, 2011, that the turmoil in the Middle East appeared, according to MSNBC, “to pose limited risk to global oil supplies. Neither Tunisia nor Egypt produce oil or gas.” Such “limited risk,” besides being mitigated, cannot very well be projected back well into 2010 to explain the rise in the price of gas.

Incidentally, another interesting feature of this graph is the sustained drop in 2008, before the financial crisis in September (and the U.S. Presidential election in November!).  The “V” pattern at the end of 2008 is classic “electoral.” It suggests that the price of gas may be very attuned to the electoral interests of those in power, and therefore to government policy. My contention in this essay is that this dynamic was alive and well in Washington when Gadhafi was turning on his own people.

Sources:

Jerry DiColo and Brian Baskin, "A Stealth Comeback for $100 Crude Oil," The Wall Street Journal, February 22, 2011, pp. C1, C3.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704506004576173961240139414.html?mod=ITP_moneyandinvesting_0

Gary Strauss, "If Unrest Spreads, Gas May hit $5", USA Today, February 22, 2011, p. AI.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41739499/ns/business-personal_finance/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/business/energy-environment/24oil.html?_r=1&hp

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/business/global/23oil.html?ref=todayspaper

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41785849/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/africa/18nations.html?hp

Lessons Learned from the Arab Spring

"When a leader's only means of staying in power is to use mass violence against his own people, he has lost the legitimacy to rule and needs to do what is right for his country by leaving now." The White House issued this written statement five days after Qaddafi had turned in violence on his own people who were protesting unarmed in the street. Nearly three weeks after the first day that Qaddafi had lost legitimacy, President Obama tried to raise the pressure on the Libyan dictator further by talking about “a range of potential options, including potential military options."  Yet by then the politics of such intervention were getting more complicated by the day, according to The New York Times. The paper reported that critics were contending that the White House was too much concerned about perceptions, and that the administration was too squeamish on the military options on account of the preceding administration's invasion of Iraq based on a claim of danger to the United States from Saddam's access to WMD. Even the critics acknowledged that the best outcome militarily would be for the United States to join other nations or international organizations rather than go it alone. About a week after the president's hint of military options, the E.U. decided not to impose a No Fly Zone. A few days later, the Arab League, which, according to The Huffington Post, had already barred Libya's government from taking part in League meetings, issued a statement that Qaddafi's government had "lost its sovereignty." The League decided to establish contacts with the rebels' interim government, the National Libyan Council, and to call on the Security Council of the U.N. to impose a No Fly Zone on Libya.  In a statement, the Arab League asked the "United Nations to shoulder its responsibility ... to impose a no-fly zone over the movement of Libyan military planes and to create safe zones in the places vulnerable to airstrikes." It would not be until March 18th, nearly a month after Qaddafi had first had weapons used against the protesters, that the Security Council would act. According to The New York Times, "After days of often acrimonious debate, played out against a desperate clock, as Colonel Qaddafi’s troops advanced to within 100 miles of the rebel capital of Benghazi, Libya, the Security Council authorized member nations to take “all necessary measures” to protect civilians, diplomatic code words calling for military action." Within days, according to The New York Times, "American and European forces began a broad campaign of strikes against the government of . . . Qaddafi, unleashing warplanes and missiles in the first round of the largest international military intervention in the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq."

Analysis:

It is tempting to focus on weighing the pros and cons of the military engagement, including how it came to be decided (It took too long), whether the genuine motive was oil or human rights (I suspect oil), and whether we were being consistent, given abuses against protesters going on in Bahrain and Yemen at the time (We were not, and this points back to the motive being to stop or reverse the gas price increase caused by speculators overstating the supply-impact of political instability (see my essay criticizing corporate political risk analysis and its self-fulfilling prophesy).  To be sure, I weave these matters in my analysis, even if merely implicitly in some of their aspects. However, I prefer to bring out dynamics that might otherwise be overlooked by tracking events on the ground. I approach the Libyan case as a learning opportunity that can be placed in a larger framework oriented to the long-term. Hoping for a progression in the way the human race organizes itself, I look at ways in which international organizations can be reformed and principled leadership involved to protect and defend citizens' human right to life against encroachments by their own governments. As a backdrop to my argument, I submit that the matter of whether or not to engage in a military intervention can be thought of in terms of a window of opportunity with respect to human rights. After discussing this matter, I turn to the matters of international organization reform and principled leadership geared to human rights. While this essay is long, I beg the reader's indulgence in my attempt to proffer a substantive treatment of the subject. My aim is not limited to agreement; I hope my thoughts and reasoning, and even the values I presume therein, stimulate (or provoke) the reader to greater thought and proposals than I can muster.

"This is a window of opportunity for the United States," Zahi Mogherbi, an adviser to the Libyan rebels' interim government, had said weeks before the Security Council's vote. The most basic shift that had occurred in the three weeks between Obama's two statements was from a government turning on its own people to a military divided between being loyal to Qaddafi and supporting of the rebels.  Even though the eventual international fire power is not without merit in protecting Libyan civilians, I contend that it is far easier to justify external military intervention against a government that has turned on its own unarmed people because such a basic betrayal involves a complete loss of legitimacy to rule, as the Obama administration noted in its statement five days after Qaddafi's decision to kill protesters.  By the time the conflict had become one between armed rebels and the military loyal to Qaddafi--that is, what the West was calling a civil war--the window to boldly declare with military force that the Libyan government would not be allowed to turn on its own (unarmed) people--had passed. The protesters had been replaced by rebels. Even if successful external military intervention was still possible, the human rights justification had weakened because a government is on firmer ground in fighting armed rebels. As the saying goes, it takes two to tango. To be sure, Qaddafi's forces were killing unarmed civilians "without mercy," according to the tyrant himself; the human rights element had not dissolved even if it was extant with contests taking place on the field of military battle.  Even so, just five days after the government of Qaddafi had turned on the people it was to protect, the claim that Qaddafi had lost the right to rule was being overlaid by the observation that Libya was entering a civil war with two armed camps. As the saying goes, it takes two to tango (though dancing alone or in a group seems to be the rule in techno music nightclubs). The transition from a human rights violation to the more ordinary civil war can occur in days in a fast-moving situation on the ground.  Referring to the window that was rapidly closing for military intervention, Zahi Mogherbi observed of the U.S. Government, "They are not taking it or they are taking their time."

Even if military action being delayed a month so diplomatic channels could result in a U.N. resolution could ultimately facilitate or bring about Qaddafi's downfall (hence such action is worthy of support), President Obama missed the window of opportunity in which he could have claimed to be stopping Qaddafi from violently turning on his own people rather than from winning a civil war by going after civilians and rebels in rebel areas. Talking to reporters on March 19th, the first day of the U.S. involvement in the action, Obama said, "we can’t stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people that there will be no mercy.” But the president did stand idly by, for roughly a month since Qaddafi's violence on February 21st.

Both the idiosyncratic and bureaucratic features of the diplomatic route that the U.S. and E.U. choose to take point to the need for a new international mechanism if the world wants to protect and defend--in real rather than diplomatic time--the human right of civilians to life when their own respective governments are acting to sever that right. Absent such an expedited mechanism, principled leadership by individual rulers with significant military force are obligated by a universal duty of conscience to fill the gap rather than wait on diplomats to make deals. The basis of such leadership would not be a self-serving desire to be the world's police or to protect some vital resource such as oil; rather, the operative principle would be what David Hume calls the sentiment of moral disapprobation, which all non-sociopath human beings feel at the sight of unjust harm.  I begin with the institutional reform argument, after which I discuss the naturalistic basis of principled leadership.

Governments siding with rebels against a ruler the other rulers don't like is far more familiar in international diplomacy, and thus readily routinized, than is standing on principle with teeth. It is thus no wonder that the politics became more complicated by the day as Obama consulted with allies before the Security Council's vote.  In short, the American president had missed the window when a non-routine idiosycratic decision to stop Qaddafi's violence against the protesters could have been taken in the realm of human rights rather than stopping a civil war. Obama rather quickly faced institutional and diplomatic hurdles involving other countries and international organizations. It could have been predicted, for example, that Hilary Clinton's statement that the matter must be decided by the U.N. would meet with Russia's apparent refusal to go along with even a no fly zone--that is to say, with paralysis until a deal could be made. Such is the nature of routine international relations: both the U.S. and Russia evinced the rigidity and absolutism (my way or the highway) of international diplomacy that eventuates the need for one government to pay off another. In the case involving Libya, the rise in oil prices was undoubtly in the mix motivating a deal; such an inducement, and indeed economic incentives in general, cannot necessarily be relied on to close such deals. Therefore, even if it is successful in particular cases, international diplomacy leading to a Security Council affirmative (i.e., non-vetoed) vote cannot be relied upon even for eventual action. it is certainly not set up to act on the expedited basis that is required to arrest human rights violations in real time. In short, the world needs another mechanism.

Lest it be thought that the Arab League could be consistently relied on to de-recognize a member government's right to sovereignty, the League's decision against Qaddafi in particular was informed by the particular circumstances at the time.  According to The Huffington Post, "Amr el-Shobaki, an Egyptian political analyst, said the decision reflects the upheaval in the Arab world, which also includes serious unrest in Bahrain and Yemen as well as rumblings of anti-government dissent in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq. . . . El-Shobaki also said Gadhafi has few real friends among Arab leaders – he has publicly clashed with and insulted many of them, including at Arab League summits." Rather than showing itself as a check on governmental abuse in the Middle East that the world could rely on, the League evinced concern for its members' internal political stability and dislike for a particular ruler. To the extent that the Arab League's request was requisite for the Security Council's vote oking military intervention, not to mention it just being debated, the entire chain of international diplomacy in this case can be seen as highly particular to this case, and therefore not necessarily to be triggered the next time a dictator turns against his or her people.

Therefore, lest mankind be left to the trepidations of indecision at the expense of arresting human rights violations in real time and to the self-interests of rulers as governments around the world and their international organizations hinge on the contingencies particular to the cases, I contend that either a permanent mechanism that involves a transfer of some governmental sovereignty beyond the nation state be designed and instituted, and, in the meantime, that some courageous ruler establishes the precedent of principled leadership to stop an abusive ruler in the act (or at least to divert his attention). While principled leadership would be an advance, it would only be of temporary utility, as leadership is not as long-standing as are institutions. With an accompanying transfer of sufficient governmental sovereignty (while designing a check to prevent abuse), an international institution can act in a timely manner befitting the timeline of human rights violations.

Going through the U.N. as it was initially designed cannot be relied up to stop or mitigate the violation of human rights by rulers unless some governmental sovereignty is transferred to the Security Council (e.g., no vetos). As discussed above, the existence of vetos translates into the need for governments to be essentially paid off, and such deals and the economic clusters conducive to them cannot be relied upon on a consistent basis because they are unique to the parties of the deals and the particular geo-political and economic context (as well as the particular villain). The combination of the vetos in the Security Council and the sheer diversity of opinion that one can expect in body representing over two hundred countries around the world--specifically, the diverse views on the nature and extent of national sovereignty--make it virtually impossible for the U.N. to proffer effective responses with teeth in real time. In dealing with Qaddafi, it took the Security Council about a month, and who knows but the governments themselves what China and Russia got in exchange for their abstentions.

As an alternative or co-reform, NATO could be reformed in its governance such that an expedited procedure could be devised to assess and possibly respond to a human rights violation by a ruler inside or out of NATO. While weighing the options on Libya, President Obama indicated that bureaucrats at NATO headquarters were weighing the options of the alliance attempting a joint military involvement, but NATO decisions take place in the allies' respective capitols rather than by bureaucrats at NATO.  This arrangement of power in the alliance inexorably makes for slow decision-making, even when a window of opportunity is brief. Because the diversity of opinion is likely to be less among NATO members than at the UN Security Council because NATO is on a smaller scale, that alliance is the more suitable agent to gear any military response to a government "gone rogue."  For this to be possible, some governmental sovereignty must shift to the alliance so a council or office holder standing for the entire alliance can make a timely decision. Just as an external military intervention itself implies that national sovereignty (e.g., of Libya) is not absolute, the same qualification must needs be applied to NATO for it to serve as a viable stand-in for the world in "just saying no" to continued governmental betrayal.

Given the staying power of the absolutist interpretation of national sovereignty, principled leadership might be the best the world could hope in the meantime. For example, the U.S. President or E.U. leaders could boldly make a stand against a government turning against its own people and intervene unilaterally or in a joint U.S./E.U. mission. Each of these unions is empire-scale, and thus would carry a lot of weight in standing on principle not just by saying that a ruler is no long legitimate, but also actively stopping him or her in real time. To be sure, to the rest of the world there would be more credibility involved when such an intervention is not limited to one region or two unions. In the Libyan case, the U.S. was indecisive from the outset and the E.U. was too divided and state rights' oriented.

Governors of countries can discern the need to act quickly to respond in real time before a window closes from when an issue should be turned over to diplomatic channels. I suspect that the people of the world have come to the conclusion that the doctrine of the absolute right of national sovereignty is antiquated because it is incompatible not only with there being boundaries to legitimate rule, but also with the defense of human rights from across a political border. That is to say, the absolutism is incompatible with the interconnected world's growing demand that human rights be respected even by those in power.  Hence it should be no surprise that the world was dismayed by the shuffling by the Obama administration and the leaders of the E.U. while a dictator was on his own people.  Had the E.U. (or some of its state governments) and/or the U.S. exercised force based on principled leadership before the window of opportunity had closed, the world would have crossed a threshold through the establishment of a new precedent. Governments abusing their own citizens will have been put on notice rather than enabled like alcoholics by ineptitude and indecision until a possible Security Council resolution could be passed. A coalition of the willing is likely to naturally form in little time after a principled leader has taken a stand in action and not just word. Such a leader would not be delayed from endless debate on his or her country's best strategic interest; rather, he or she would act on principle.

Although nearly a month after Qaddafi first turned on his compatriot protesters, Sarkozy expressed a principled basis for the external military intervention that had begun that day (albeit having waited for the Security Council's action a few days before). Referring to the "murderous madness" of a regime that has "forfeited all its legitimacy," Sarkozy justified the involvement of his airforce fighters as he spoke "in the name of the universal conscience that will not endorse such crimes." A universal conscience is rooted in human nature; such a basis is not conditional on a U.N. resolution. From his state capitol in the fractured E.U., Sarkozy made a principled declaration that resounded like a shot heard round the world--carried almost instantaneously as though by reflex by a mass of humanity "tweeting" through the ether. He asserted that it is our duty to respond to the anguished appeal of civilians.

What Sarkozy neglected to say, however, was that the appeals had begun roughly a month earlier when Qaddafi's henchmen began shooting down funeral mouners in the streets of Tripoli. To be sure, Libyan protesters-turned-rebels who would have been subject to Qaddafi's "no mercy" were surely saying, "better late than never," as they stood on the dictator's ruined tanks after the first bombing campaign of the international coalition. Even so, a bystander could certainly be pardoned for surmising that the duty to respond without standing idly by had been triggered in America and Europe by a desire to lower gas prices or even to keep them from going still higher than they had in the previous two or three weeks--a consumer-driven political response, in other words. A fundamental moral duty, meaning an obligation to act, that comes from "the universal conscience" of human beings, does not 'click in" as soon as political self-interest chimes in. The window for such a duty as the primary and genuine motive closes as time and selfish considerations are allowed to intercede and the immediacy of the felt-conscience fades. To grasp this point, it is necessary to discuss the nature of the duty's basis in human nature.

 The duty, being as universal as is conscience (i.e., excluding socio-paths and Yankee fans), is sourced in a naturally-felt psychological sentiment of misapprobation, which David Hume argued constitutes moral judgement itself. This sentiment is naturally felt in watching or learning of unjust harm, such as from a governor of a country turning against his own unarmed people by wantonly having them killed simply for protesting. Of course, while still active in the case of civilians, this feeling/principle is mitigated when it is armed rebels who are being killed--hence the window of opportunity for a human rights-based principled leadership. It is natural for any human being to be filled with utter disgust at the squalid sight of innocent civilians being shot by government troops. So it is also natural for a person to want to step in and stop the atrocious harm at once. The natural propensity of compassion manifesting in instantaneous word and deed is also evinced in a person who pulls a rapist off a young woman on a city street while people passing watch while quietly conferring with each other on what, if anything, they can or should do before they continue on with their plans. Such bystanders, unfortunately all too common in the world, are mere epigones in the human race; they are hardly natural leaders even if they have gained the power of political office by having woven words of saccarine silk. The person taking it upon himself to pull the rapist off the defenseless victim, on the other hand, is a natural leader in touch with his own humanity; he is thus able to act with humanity. He is not presuming to be his own police force for the city; rather, such a person is instantiating the highest that humanity has to offer: caritas naturalis, seu benevolentia universalis (natural higher human love raised high rather than remaining low in lust for power, money, or sex; that is, love as universal benevolence).

In conclusion, were the world not so focused on Qaddafi during his escapades, we might have used the ferociousness of his violence against civilians to evaluate not only the way other rulers reacted (or failed to react), but also what institutional reforms could have expedited the process befitting the nature of human rights violations and how principled leadership could override political expediency and bureaucratic meandering, even if only in theory yet. To be sure, principled leadership is contingent and short-lived, given the nature of leadership itself. For this reason, even in the event of such leadership manifesting and establishing a precedent, the world would be well advised to continue to work toward an international institutional mechanism that has some real teeth in protecting unarmed citizens from their own rulers. Even in the excitment over the Security Council's sanctioning of "all necessary means" to protect Libyan civilians, the world would be wise to ask: how could the process have been better from the standpoint of defending human rights? The key to the institutional reform, the world would realize, is the same as the rationale for removing a sitting governor: the qualification of national sovereignty from the absolutism advocated by Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, respectively. For these two thinkers, only God's law can restrain the power of a human sovereign, and then most probably in the ruler's afterlife. According to Hobbes, for example, the human sovereign--the Leviathan, or king of the proud--has the exclusive right within his kingdom to interpret divine law (even such authority was thought by Hobbes necessary to avert civil war in the contentious seventeenth century in Britain). In any case, political theory in the twenty-first century need not be held hostage by an antiquated theory devised in and for a very different context and distant time. Technology alone has made the world much more interdependent, and thus in need of stronger international agency, albeit with adequate checks and balances to prevent abuse of the added authority.

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/world/middleeast/08policy.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Jim Michaels, "Is Libyan 'Window of Opportunity' Closing?," USA Today, March 10, 2011, p. 6A.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/12/arab-league-asks-un-for-libya-no-fly-zone_n_834975.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/africa/18nations.html?hp

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/03/19/france.libya.meeting/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/africa/20libya.html?hp

Libya and the World in 2011: A Higher Calling

On February 21, 2011, Libyan military aircraft fired live ammunition at crowds of anti-government protesters in Tripoli. "What we are witnessing today is unimaginable," said Adel Mohamed Saleh, an activist in the capital. "Warplanes and helicopters are indiscriminately bombing one area after another. There are many, many dead." Arabiya television put the number killed on that day alone at 160. Gadhafi's son had vowed on television the day before that his father and security forces would fight "until the last bullet." I suspect that few people were surprised to find that Gadhafi would mount a sustained vituperative effort against the pro-democracy movement that was sweeping through the Middle East. "These really seem to be last, desperate acts. If you're bombing your own capital, it's really hard to see how you can survive, " said Julien Barnes-Dacey, Control Risks' Middle East analyst. "But I think Gaddafi is going to put up a fight ... in Libya more than any other country in the region, there is the prospect of serious violence and outright conflict," he said. As the world received reports of the massacre, a latent question not being asked was whether the world (or even a coalition therein in case of a holdout like China) has the right or an obligation to intervene militarily to stop the offending regime against its own defenseless people. I contend that there is such a right and moral obligation--meaning that national sovereignty does not extend to crimes against humanity. Sadly, at the time of the Libyan protests and Gaddafi's retaliation, the world's government offiicals were still largely impotent and disorganized.

Even if not sufficiently for his regime to collapse, Gadhafi's obstinancy was being undercut right out from beneath him. As the the military was escalating its attack on unarmed citizens inside Libya, something else--something rather astonishing--was happening. Rather than putting up a united front to the world against the opposition, the government showed itself to consist of men whose participation in Gadhafi's government was not unconditional. Could it be that the Nuremburg verdicts against the Nazis in 1948--the ruling that blind obedience is not excuse for even government offiicals and employees being held accountable--was finally being heard?  That is to say, might it be that in addition to conscience, the emerging judicial enforcement at the International Criminal Court was having a slight (but significant) impact even as crimes against humanity were being committed?Libya's former ambassador to the Arab League in Cairo, Abdel-Moneim al-Houni, who a day earlier resigned from his post to side with protesters, issued a statement demanding Gadhafi "be put on trial along with his aides, security and military commanders over the mass killings in Libya." Were the former ambassador's warning having a real impact in real-time on government offiicals, this would evince real progress for the human race. Specifically, the realization by oificials while they are in power that they might be held accountable for their role in harming their own people could, with the help of conscience, mitigate how far a regime can go in "punishing" its people for their natural proclivity to protest injustice.  There is some evidence that government officials who might have held tough a decade earlier were having second thoughts and, crucially, acting on them.

For example, as the Libyan military was trouncing on marching mourners, Justice minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil reportedly resigned from his post to protest the "excessive use of force against unarmed protesters." Also, at least two Libyan air force pilots defected to Malta rather than shoot on defenseless citizens. Lastly, Libyan diplomats abroad explicitly backed off supporting the country's dictator. For example, a Libyan diplomat in China, Hussein el-Sadek el-Mesrati, told Al-Jazeera, "I resigned from representing the government of Mussolini and Hitler." Even more astonishing, Libya's ambassadors at the United Nations called for Gadhafi to step down as the country's ruler. Deputy Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi said that if Gadhafi does not relinquish power, "the Libyan people will get rid of him." The staff of Libya's mission to the United Nations declared allegiance to the people of Libya, instead of to Gadhafi, a spokesman said on the day on which Libyan jet fighters turned on the citizens they were to protect. Traditionally, it has been thought that governments are the members of international bodies such as the UN.  That it might actually be the people of a country who are represented in a confederation would be revolutionary (this is typically thought to be in part the case in a federal government, rather than in an alliance or strictly international organization). Ambassadors representing a regime conditionally goes along with al-Houni's statement even on the day when bullets sprayed on the Libyan people from the air, "Gadhafi's regime is now in the trash of history because he betrayed his nation and his people." In other words, Gadhafi's regime had already lost its legitimacy, and thus its right to represent the people abroad (and at home). 

To be sure, autocratic regimes are not necessarily populated by people of concience or even foresight (e.g., concerning possible prosecution at the ICC or even domestically). When Gandhi was asked how non-violent non-cooperation could ever hope to work against an invading and occupying Nazi force, he acknowledged that many would be harmed for the sake of truth, but ultimately the dictators are already destined to the trash-bin of history. Progress comes by painfully slow steps in this world of flawed humanity.  One novelist on the American Civil War observed, if we are angels, then surely we are killer angels. Was it some cruel joke? one might ask God.  Why?  Yet if the pro-democracy movement in the Middle East could teach us--meaning all of us--anything, it might be that we, acting together, can push the boulder a bit further up the hill. We need no longer accept the existence of regimes that betray their people, and in February of 2011 the world realized its efficacy in making this so. It is as if in one voice we finally exclaimed, "No, we will not go softly into the night. We will stand up and they will back down!"

As the people in the Middle East were pushing up against the dead weight of history, the rest of us were with them--indeed, being transfixed and humbled by them as they marched against dazed tyrants who had not yet realized that their day had already passed quietly into the night to be replaced by the first light of another dawn. Perhaps, just perhaps, there is a progression in the eternal recurrence of night and day.

Source:

"Gadhafi: 'I'm in Tripoli, not Venezuela," February 22, 2011. NBCNews.com.

On the Cruelty of Gadhafi's Libyan Troops from a Nietzschean Perspective

Gadhafi, or any tyrant who violates the human rights of citizens, can be reckoned as weak rather than strong from a Nietzschean standpoint. Such an analysis could embolden (i.e. awaken) protesters around the world who remain under the subterfuge of a ruler's enforcement of his or her assumed dominance.

USA Today reports that “(t)roops loyal to Moammar Gadhafi may be torturing and executing rebel prisoners.”[1] This is according to human rights workers and physicians near the front lines. Such treatment would constitute war crimes under the Geneva Convention. Physicians said the bullet wounds on one man's body weren't meant to kill, but to torture. "When you put a gun to his head, that's execution," said Mohammed Hussain, the head of intensive care at a hospital near the front lines. "When you shoot him here and here and here, that's something else. That's torture. They want him to feel the pain."[2] This last remark struck me as particularly revealing.

What sort of mentality derives a feeling of pleasure from perceiving another person in pain? To what extent is it the other person feeling the pain that is pleasurable to the person watching? Alternatively, the inflicting of the pain could be pleasurable. The inflicting pleasure for the inflictor might involve the pleasure of having power, as in having control of another person against the other person’s will. Such a will to power is a principal motivator, according to Nietzsche. He avers that human beings are primarily motivated to feel the pleasure that comes with exercising power. Yet such pleasure is in the exercise of one’s strength rather than in cruelty itself.  It is the weak, who, in being driven to dominate beyond their innate strength, delight in cruelty as a means to enforce their domination. In other words, the weak who have an irresistible urge to dominate have to instill (or inflict) their dominance because they are not strong and thus naturally to be respected as powers.

Therefore, the troops loyal to Gadhafi were displaying their condition of weakness rather than their strength by devoting time and energy to being cruel.  With the strong, damage is incidental to the charge rather than intended; the strong relish their experience of strength in conquering and therefore they are not interested in cruelty.  That is to say, harm is a byproduct of the vanquishing by the strong, as the latter conquer out of their overflowing confidence of strength. This can perhaps be thought of in terms of stepping outside in the cold after building up a sweat from exercise—the excess heat radiates outward from one’s body such that one does not even feel the cold air. What is the cold to me?  Similarly, what are the parasites to me who fall by the wayside as I take the village?  Any intent to be cruel to a parasite would be a waste or diversion from the strong vanquisher’s self-confident feeling of power that naturally issues out in his or her strength. Only weakness with a relentless instinct to dominate would be oriented to cruelty as a means, for the feeling of pleasure of strength is not available or realizable.

For example, "Col. Gadhafi's militias are brutal," said Mustafa El Gheriany, media liaison for the Transitional National Committee according to USA Today. "They did that probably on purpose to scare our young men, to show them that they are not taking prisoners.”[3] This motivation would be an alternative to simply wanting to inflict pain or to see another person feel it. Even so, the use of cruelty as a means is ultimately to impose one’s dominance, which means that the person’s strength is not sufficient. In other words, the person using cruelty to send a message has an urge to feel more pleasure from power than his or her weakness can proffer in itself.

Essentially then, human rights advocates point to the tactics whereby the weak who suffer from a hypertrophic drive to dominate seek to enforce, or take, beyond their native pith. This investigation can lead to the following questions. Why is it that certain persons of weak constitutions seek to dominate nonetheless, rather than simply to be content with whatever pleasure naturally issues from the power in the strength they do have? Furthermore, is dictatorship as a form of government a weak form in that autocrats do not simply lead, but are almost invariably oriented to efforts to enforce their dominance by intentionally inflicting pain on protesters?  It would be ironic were unarmed protesters in the streets stronger than the rulers whose dominance is being questioned or repudiated.  Indeed, such repudiation strikes at the core of the effort of the weak to dominate; hence such violence as was evinced by Gadhafi should be no surprise.

To the weak who are driven to dominate, the refusal of others to acknowledge the imposition or enforcement of their claim must be utterly intolerable. “How dare they!” the weak dominator is apt to exclaim even though the strong naturally rebuff the pretentions of the weak.  In fact, Nietzsche thought it remarkable that the weak are able to hoodwink the strong into taking the autocratic enforcement mechanisms seriously.  In the case of the mass protests, enough fortitude among enough unarmed protesters could simply overflow the boundaries invented by the tyrants. Were the people itself mobilized, the autocrat might realize that were the entire populous killed, he would have no one to dominate!  There would be no feeling of pleasure in exercising power over a dead city. The strength in the people as a whole lies in simply being able to say no, yet this strength is typically hid from the strong by the weak who benefit from the subterfuge.

1. Greg Campbell, “Libyan Doctors Suspect Brutal War Crimes,” USA Today, April 12, 2011, p. 6A.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

On Nietzsche applied to business, see: On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management, available at Amazon.