by CHARLES GLASS
The Libyan dictator is resisting the popular forces ranged against him in ways that his counterparts in Tunisia and Egypt did not. In Tunis and Cairo, Zine Abedine Ben-Ali and Hosni Mubarak were the faces of military regimes. Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is not the face: he is the regime. The Egyptian and Tunisian army chiefs calculated that sacrificing their nominal commanders-in-chief would preserve their own positions without jeopardising the interests of their American benefactors. Playing the role of saviours of the nation, after years in which the officer class enriched itself and ordinary soldiers were made to repress dissent, the armies in Tunisia and Egypt emerged as arbiters of whatever order will follow the post-dictator era.
…
The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, recently reminded a Congressional subcommittee that ‘a no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defences.’ It means a war, which Gates seems uncharacteristically opposed to waging. His caution was echoed by the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, who said: ‘The no-fly zone is not like putting traffic lights. It is an attack with bombs, missiles and weapons.’ Germany abstained from Resolution 1973. Britain and France, which was selling more weapons to Gaddafi than any country apart from Russia until the insurrection began, are the main partisans of enforcing a no-fly zone. As American influence in the region appears to falter, because of its indecision at first in Tunisia and Egypt, its prevarication over Bahrain and Yemen, as well as its costly, losing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it seems that the old imperial powers are seeking to restore the position they held before the Americans undermined them at Suez in 1956.
Hillary Clinton has called on Arab states, particularly Libya’s neighbours Egypt and Tunisia, to invade rather than let outsiders in. Egypt, however, seems less than willing. Its foreign ministry spokeswoman, Meha Bakhoum, answered Clinton with untypical bluntness: ‘Egypt will not be among those Arab states. We will not be involved in any military intervention. No intervention period.’
London Review of Books for more