The Power and the Money

Department of Things That Will Obviously End Well

Many years ago, in what seems like another life, I wrote a case about Blackwater. When I began researching the case in 2008, not long after my time in Afghanistan, the company was at the peak of its ambitions. It’s training ground in Moyock, North Carolina, was very impressive — and it still is — but the amazing part of Erik Prince’s vision was that he wanted the company to manufacture, deploy and operate a panoply of advanced hardware. These included the Grizzly APC (interior pictured), an armed frigate (see page 53), armed reconnaissance blimps, and a small private air force.

There is a rationale behind the idea of privatizing some military functions. Much of what is called “combat service support” has a civilian equivalent. In theory,  a private company could maintain a large reserve support capacity and rent it out to various clients, including the military, for less than it would cost any of those clients to maintain such capacity internally. In practice, it’s less clear that outsourcing logistical and support functions generates savings or improves readiness, but that’s an issue for another day.

The issue for today is that Russian Federation appears to be deploying private organizations to take and hold Syrian territory in return for oil and mining concessions. (The link is to the New York Times.) This is bad on about a hundred different levels. The small problems have to do with the problems of outsourcing core military functions to private organizations. The big ones have to do with the incentives.  

Not only do these contracts encourage Russian companies to go buccaneering, they encourage Moscow to broaden the war as much as possible. They also encourage Moscow to pressure Damascus into fighting to the bitter end and give corrupt Russian officials incentives dump public resources into subsidizing ostensibly private military operations. The officials don’t even have to be corrupt in a Venezuelan bribe-taking sense; all you need is an open-door between public service and lucrative private posts in the companies that stand to benefit.

Private military forces are, sadly, a thing. Erik Prince is running a small private air force for the UAE in Libya. But I’m not sure that I’ve heard of mercenaries paid with contingency fees financed out of the spoils of war. That seems new. I am sure that there must be a giant hole in my logic and this experiment with profit-driven pacification will end well.

Was the Libyan intervention a failure?

 At Vox, Shadi Hamid argues no. He rightfully says that in order to evaluate the success of the intervention, we need to evaluate the Libya that is against the Libya that would have been without NATO airpower. He argues, pace Barack Obama, that “had we not intervened, it’s likely that Libya would be Syria. ... and so there would be more death, more disruption, more destruction.” 

Do we know that, however? It is also possible that the government would have invaded Benghazi, killed tens of thousands of people in reprisals and round-ups, and then re-established its authority. 

If you believe that a prolonged civil war was inevitable, then the intervention was not a failure. If you believe that the government could have re-established order, then the intervention succeeded only if the subsequent chaos led to fewer deaths than a government victory. 

Was it realistic to believe that the Libyan dictatorship could have (unlike its Syrian counterpart) re-established order and survived, or was the country doomed to fall into chaos once the rebels chased government forces out of eastern Libya in February 2001?

The cost of revolution

  According to Friday’s New York Times, western companies now consider Libya open for business. That seems to be as propitious a time as any to add up the costs of the Libyan Revolution. I’m sure someone has done a more complete and detailed workup, but I haven’t seen it yet. So here’s a back-of-the-envelope, first-draft tally of costs.

Lives lost: The NTC claimed 30,000 dead as of September. Cooler heads suggest something like 12,000 fighters dead and maybe half that number of civilians. (This is assuming that most of the people currently listed as “missing” won’t be showing up, which strikes me as reasonable.) Either way, for a country with just under 7 million people, that’s a lot. It’s proportionately like the U.S. losing nearly a million people in six months, although there is a caveat to that comparison which I will mention below. Injured, harder to say, but probably comparable to the number of dead.

Refugees, let’s see. You have the people displaced because their homes have been destroyed, or because fighting raged through their town. The best current estimate seems to be from the IDMC, which puts the number around 240,000. That is not a small number.

Then you have the people forced out at gunpoint. There have been sporadic reports of clan-based ethnic cleansing, especially down in Berber country, where Qaddafi liked taking Berber lands away and giving them to pro-government Arab clans. The town of Tawergha seems to have been cleansed of at least 10,000 inhabitants. That one is getting lots of press because it’s right next to Misrata, where heavy fighting went on for months. But it’s a safe bet that more of this sort of thing has been happening further away from the cameras. At a rough guess, somewhere between 3 and 5 percent of the country’s population is currently homeless. Some of those will be coming home over the next few months, but there’s a large number who may never be able to go back.

Those are the internal refugees. (Internal displaced persons, or IDPs, in the lingo.) There are also at least a couple of thousand Libyans currently refugees in neighboring countries, mostly real or suspected Qaddafi loyalists who have fled to Algeria, Chad, and Niger.

Then there’s a much larger number of Africans who were guest-workers in Libya but who have fled now. That latter figure is really blurry, but it’s certainly tens of thousands. These guys were a significant source of hard currency for their home countries; that’s cut off now, as they probably won’t be welcome in the new Libya for some time to come. The collateral damage to the economies of Chad and Niger will be small but noticeable.

Infrastructure: the oil infrastructure took some damage but nothing lasting — repairs are already underway, and should be mostly complete within a year or so. And the fighting in Tripoli ended fast enough that damage was minimal. But several good-sized towns and two city have been heavily damaged. Misrata, home to over 300,000 people, was the scene of intense fighting for four months, and was hit with thousands of shells and hundreds of rocket attacks; Sirte, a smaller town of about 75,000, just finished several weeks of siege. The reconstruction bill will certainly be in the billions. (Our original estimate was higher, but my co-blogger and I went back and forth on this by e-mail, and we concluded that it will be less than $5 billion — probably in the range of a couple of billion, give or take.) Here is some satellite imagery of Misrata that gives a sense of the damage. The U.N. after-action report can be found here.

The above, of course, is why the comparison of a million American deaths doesn’t quite work: casualties and physical damage don’t scale linearly. A six-month conflict that killed a million Americans would almost certainly entail proportionately far more physical damage than the Libyan Revolution.

Exports: pretty much all Libya exports is oil. And plenty of it — around $40 billion a year in export earnings. They’ve just lost more than half a year of production, and will see reduced production for another year or so until all the damage is fixed. So we’re looking at maybe $30 billion in lost earnings. In the short to medium term it’s a hell of a hit — Libya’s GDP in 2010 was just $96 billion.

This is mildly worrisome for two reasons. One, Libya’s oil revenues have disappeared at exactly the time when the country needs a hit of hard currency — for reconstruction, for displaced persons, for medical treatments, for all the costs of war. And two, Libya is about to start its postwar transition to... something. Historically, revolutions tend to be followed by a period of disillusionment and disappointment.

Libya, however, is fortunate in two ways. First, the oil is still there, and will eventually be pumped, so we’re really talking about a present value issue — getting a dollar of oil X years from now instead of today. That may sound obvious, but it isn’t: Venezuelan heavy oil production took a permanent hit when production shut down for the 2002 strike. A similar thing would happen to Albertan in situ heavy oil production were it suddenly shut down (for the same reasons as in Venezuela) as it would in the tight oil formations of North Dakota and Texas (for quite different reasons). In that sense, then, Libya is lucky that its oil can effectively be “banked” by leaving it in the ground.

Second, the Transitional National Council now has access to Libya’s official foreign reserves. The Obama administration identified at least $37 billion in Libya government assets held with in the United States, and European officials found another $30 billion. We know the most about the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), which holds about $65 billion in assets. Its new head, Rafik Nayed, is facing a hell of a job in tracking them all down. About $5.3 billion appears to be invested in Africa, and according to Mr. Nayed, “We still don’t know where much of this money has gone.” Fortunately, another $19.2 billion appears to have been invested in cash, and at least $4.0 billion in blue-chip European stocks, such UniCredit (inasmuch as any European bank can be called “blue-chip” these days), Eni, and Siemens. Liquidating or borrowing against the LIA’s assets is not as easy as it sounds — Mr. Layed “won’t make any investment moves until a new board is in place” — but neither is marketing oil revenues. (Two months ago, EconoMonitor published a brief speculation about the future of the LIA: one of their worries was that it might be looted by different factions inside Libya. That is certainly a real fear, but it would also apply to oil revenues — or, for that matter, a continuation of the Colonel’s regime.)

But anyway: something over 15,000 dead, roughly the same number injured, a couple of hundred thousand people displaced for at least 90 days, a smaller but still large number displaced permanently, a couple of billion in property damage, and over half a year of oil exports.

Comments and corrections welcome.

Department of Obvious: Syria is not Libya

 This has become a fairly handy idiot test.

Short version: intervening in Syria would be much, much harder and more expensive than intervening in Libya. This was true back in March, and it’s still true today.
 
(1) The uprising in Syria has never remotely approached the success of the uprising in Libya. Syria has seen a bunch of large, sustained protests and demonstrations. That’s great! But Libya saw the effective secession of almost half the country. By the middle of March, the rebels controlled the country’s second largest city. About a fifth of the country’s area and maybe a third of its population had passed completely out of government control. Major government military units had gone over to the rebel’s side. Nothing like that has happened in Syria.

(2) Syria has an actual, functioning air force. This is in sharp contrast to Libya, which did not. Syria actually has late-ish model planes, pilots who know how to fly them, and some semblance of a professional administrative and logistical infrastructure to support them. No, the Syrians couldn’t stand up to a sustained war with NATO — but they exist, and would have to be dealt with.

(3) Syria has an actual, functioning air defense system. Again a sharp contrast to Libya. As with the air force, it could be dealt with — but it would take time, and would likely cost casualties.

(4) Syria’s in a much, much more delicate and complicated location. Just look at a map. Taking Gaddafi out was relatively easy — Egypt and Tunisia just had their revolutions, and nobody cares much about Chad. But Syria? Israel, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon. What a nightmare. Do I need to spell out why this makes everything much harder and more fraught?

(5) Assad is much less diplomatically isolated than Gaddafi. By 2010, the Brother Leader had managed to alienate or annoy pretty much everyone. Even the Arab League openly despised him. His nominal “friends” in the Mediterranean — most notably Berlusconi’s government in Italy — turned out to be fair-weather indeed. Russia restricted itself to tut-tuts from a distance. Only in Sub-Saharan Africa did he have any real allies left, and the plain sad fact is that Niger and Senegal just don’t count for much when you’ve got the United States, United Kingdom, and French Republic all lined up against you. With bombs.

Assad, on the other hand, is a respected member of the international club. He’s a dictator, but he’s not a flake. He’s a reasonable neighbor. (Well, unless you’re Lebanese. More accurately, a Lebanese of a certain political flavor.) The Arab League is never going to pass a resolution approving force against him. And the Russians are likely to veto anything in the Security Council — they’re much closer to him than they ever were to Gaddafi. They’ve had a small naval base at the Syrian port of Tartus since the 1970s, and they’ve sold weapons to the Syrians since forever.

In fact, the Russians were just closing a deal to sell Syria a bunch of Yakhont antiship missiles when the uprising started. The Yakhont is basically a bigger, dumber Exocet; a supersonic cruise missile designed to kill large ships from far away. Israel vigorously protested the deal, for fear Syria would pass a couple along to Hezbollah. (Hezbollah blew a massive hole in an Israeli corvette a few years back using a crappy little Chinese C-802, and my co-blogger will eventually post something about his research on the brewing conflict over Israel’s new offshore gas fields,  so it’s a quite reasonable fear.) Remember how in Libya, we had capital ships hanging around just offshore from Tripoli, and the Charles de Gaulle parked conveniently just a bit further out? That wouldn’t happen in Syria; even the faint possibility of shore launched cruise missiles would make any sane admiral pull his ships well back over the horizon.
 
Oh, and he’s got the Iranians on side, at least for the moment. I think the Iranians would switch sides in a flash, if they thought it was in their interest — but until they reach that point, they’re backing him firmly. (They just replaced their ambassador to Damascus with a hardliner with ties to the Revolutionary Guards.)

(6) Assad is much less physically isolated than Gaddafi. Libya looks like a solid block of territory, but in fact it’s like Canada — a long, thin populated strip and a vast empty hinterland. 90% of the population lives within 100 km of the coast. The civil war cut that strip in two, east and west. Gaddafi had an open path to the south, but as supply lines they were meaningless; an 800 km drive across desert, and then you’re in Niger. (A country whose major resources are under French control.) With NATO controlling the seas, virtually everything in Gaddafi’s territory had to come in or out through Tunisia, most of it on a single coastal road. The moment the rebels cut that road was the moment when everything changed for good.

There’s nothing like this in Syria, which has well-developed land links to all its neighbors except Israel. And most of Syria’s coast is actually Lebanon. Nobody’s going to blockade Lebanon. As with the air defenses, this is a solvable issue — but it makes everything much, much more difficult and expensive.

So, to summarize:

• Military intervention in Syria would be incredibly expensive and difficult, would have to overcome serious diplomatic obstacles, and would likely involve significant losses and casualties. This has always been true, and will probably continue to be true for some time to come. Therefore, it is very unlikely to happen.
• Because military intervention is unlikely, any uprising against Assad will have to succeed or fail without it, as did the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. I judge this unlikely, but that’s an issue for another post.
• If someone says “our intervention in Libya prevented us from intervening in Syria,” then you may immediately begin heavily discounting, or completely ignoring, anything else they have to say on the topic. (This goes double if they suggest that the reason is “Syria has no oil.”) If someone suggests that we should intervene in Syria, same-same.

I wish the Syrian people good luck in getting rid of the loathsome Assad regime. But the plain fact is, they’ll have to do it without direct military help from us.

Endgame in Tripolitania

 Ten weeks ago, I wrote this:

In military terms, Qaddafi should be doing okay. He’s still in charge of most of Libya’s territory, including its capital, and most of its population. He’s still got a much bigger army than the rebels. He has open supply lines through friendly neutral countries (Algeria, Chad) — which means that, although he’s formally under embargo, he can almost certainly import weapons, men, ammunition, replacement parts, and pretty much anything else he needs.

But he’s not doing okay. He’s losing. This is a war on three fronts — the east, the western mountains, and Misurata in between — and he’s been losing ground on all of them. Generals and ministers have been defecting. Foreign countries have been lining up to recognize the rebels. In Soviet terms, the correlation of forces has shifted against him — and is, at this writing, continuing to do so...

Qaddafi is losing ground for a variety of reasons. His military is a bunch of unhappy draftees; morale is low. (Civilian morale is no better.) NATO is preventing him from using his air, armor, or heavy artillery, while also degrading his 4C. He has every reason to be paranoid about a coup, which means he must restrict power and personal interaction to a small trusted circle, which cuts down on his (already degraded) ability to process information and respond effectively.

Here’s my take on this: things are likely to get worse for him, because the more ground he loses, the more likely he is to lose more ground. He’s probably still able to launch counterattacks at the tactical level, so he may well be able to roll back the rebels in one or more areas. But he won’t easily be able to build on those victories, because they won’t change the underlying diplomatic, economic, or internal-political dynamics. To accomplish that, he’d have to win a major, crushing victory — retake Misurata, say, or wipe the Berbers off the map. That’s unlikely to happen. Meanwhile, rebel victories in the field do change the correlation of forces — they further depress Loyalist morale, make Qaddafi’s remaining foreign allies less enthusiastic about standing up for him, make major desertions more likely, and thus make Qaddafi ever more paranoid and isolated. Simply put, he’s trying to climb a slope that’s steadily getting steeper.
 
Back in April, I said I gave Qaddafi “more than a month, but less than a year.” I’ll narrow that a little now — as of this posting, he’s got more than two weeks, but less than six months. Too vague? Okay, I’ll live dangerously: August, plus or minus a month.

I said “August, plus or minus a month.” We’re now exactly halfway through August. So what has happened?

Well, after six weeks of relative stalemate, things have suddenly started to move.  (Above is a map that may help follow along; click to enlarge.) In the last few days we’ve seen the following:

— Rebels captured the high ground south of Misrata, putting the whole town out of artillery range and cutting the main route between Tripoli (the capital) and the big concentration of Loyalist forces fighting in the east. Gaddafi is now connected to his main field army only by a roundabout route, several hundred miles long, through some truly awful desert.

— Then the rebels captured Gharyan, which sits across the main north-south highway running from Tripoli down into Libya’s interior.

— Then, in a sudden surprise move, the rebels attacked the towns of az-Zawiyah and Surman, which lie on the coast 30-40 km west of Tripoli. Az-Zawiyah is actually a small city of a couple of hundred thousand people, and house-to-house fighting is continuing around the city center — but the key point is, they’ve cut the main coastal road from Tripoli west to Tunis. Thus, in the space of a week, the rebels have very nearly severed the capital from the rest of the country. 

—  The town of Tiji, Gaddafi’s strongest remaining base adjacent to the rebel-held Nafusa Mountains, fell to the rebels early this morning. If the rebels hold on to  Surman, taking Tiji means they’ve now put all Gaddafi’s forces in the northwest corner of Libya into a pocket, cut off from resupply or reinforcement.

—  And Qaddafi’s former Minister of the Interior just arrived in Cairo, with nine family members, on “a tourist visit.” 

Suddenly things seem to be moving very fast. It’s possible that Qaddafi could still launch a counterstrike, of course. But he won’t easily be able to undo the results of the past few days; for instance, even if he retakes the coastal towns, the rebels can still destroy highway bridges and overpasses, keeping the capital’s main supply route cut for days or weeks.

One peculiarity of this whole thing is that the eastern front — where the main concentration of government forces faces the main rebel army — has been almost static. The rebels have spent the last few weeks very slowly fighting their way into the town of Brega. Brega sits at the edge of a massive concentration of Libya’s oil infrastructure — pipelines, refineries, an export terminal. So it’s possible that the rebels have been deliberately going slow in order to minimize the risk of damaging large amounts of complex and expensive equipment, hoping that it will fall into their hands intact.  Whether this will work out or not remains to be seen.

Another interesting point: the rebel offensive seems to have been remarkably well coordinated, with major offensives in three widely separated fronts. As far as can be told (this is not certain) NATO forces seem to have been working quite effectively with the rebels, providing air cover and helping bring down Loyalist strongpoints. Someone fairly competent is running this show, it seems. It would be nice to know more.

None of this means that Qaddafi is finished — though at this point I’d be willing to bet money on it — and of course, none of it tells us anything about what will happen after he’s gone. That’s going to be a difficult, gnarly and complicated time, with a wide range of possible outcomes. 

Back in April I wrote that I opposed the NATO intervention. I still think it was a bad idea at the time, on both US-national-interest and humanitarian grounds. Let’s put that discussion aside for another post, though. I opposed the intervention, but given that it happened ... I think we’re doing okay. (For broad values of “we.” The Libyan people, the United States, NATO, most interested parties.) Here’s hoping it’s all over soon.

Another Libya post

 Various people have noticed that this Libya thing has been dragging on for a while now, and various explanations are being trotted out. But not by me! I was against intervention in the first place, but now that it’s happened I think it’s going reasonably well.  

What’s “reasonably well”? Isn’t Qaddafi still in power? Well, yes he is. But he’s also continuing to lose ground on every front. I already wrote about the “correlation of forces” notion; nothing has changed in the three weeks or so since then. If I stare very closely, it does look like the speed of disintegration may be slowing, which would be bad — but he’s still not winning any battles, morale in Tripoli is still low, and defections are continuing. A while back, I predicted that he’d be gone “by August, give or take a month” — in other words, between July 1 and September 30. I’ll stand pat on that.

Meanwhile, four quick thoughts.

(1) Most of the action seems to be taking place in the western mountains and around Misrata. The eastern front, out by Benghazi, has been relatively quiet. That seems a bit odd, given that Benghazi is the rebel capital and, presumably, the largest concentration of forces are located there. Thinking out loud: if the war ends after a string of victories in the west and central fronts, without anything much having happened in the east, you’d expect that to affect the postwar balance of forces in the country.

(2) France has resorted not just to arming the rebels, but arming them via large, random weapon dumps out of planes. This suggests some things, both bad and good. Bad: the French aren’t coordinating with Tunisia or the various rebel groups in the west. Good: the French chain of command (including, but not limited to, President Sarkozy) is getting anxious. Libya is a much bigger deal in France than in the U.S., and Sarkozy has an election coming up next year. (An election he’s currently favored to lose in a landslide, I should add. But ten months is a long time.) I don’t see Sarko caring to start his campaign without having resolved Libya — somehow. So while I’m ready to be wrong about September 30, I will be astonished if Qaddafi is still clinging to power by next February — the point at which the French presidential campaign really takes off.

(3) The fact that the Libyan rebels are willing to tolerate and work together with large numbers of armed Berbers strikes me as cause for cautious optimism. (Qaddafi spent 40 years demonizing the Berbers as dim, treacherous primitives who are Not Really Libyan.) Of course, the Berbers seem to be doing more than their share of the fighting. 

(4) Two big question marks: Egypt and Tunisia. Egypt is a poor country, and its military is no great shakes, but they’re so big that even a very modest intervention could have disproportionate effect. Tunisia is much smaller — but even Tunisia has half again the population of Libya, and they’re right next to the most intense theater of fighting. I have the strong impression that both countries are being very very cautious and moderate in their responses because they’re both internally unstable at the moment, having just come through their own revolutions. Still, it’s interesting that nobody in either country cares to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels.

Let’s see how it looks in August.

Miscellaneous Saturday links

 Comin’ atcha from the Westside ... Medical Center in the very-creepily-named Plantation, Florida:

Department of Denominators: Really, the graph needs one, like, say, real tax revenue. I expect better.

Department of Thanks: “I want to express my sincere gratitude for your thoughtful discussion of the issues,” wrote Colonel Qaddafi in a letter to Congress. “We are confident that history will see the wisdom of your country in debating these issues. We are counting on the United States Congress to its continued investigation of military activities of NATO and its allies to confirm what we believe is a clear violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973.”

Department of Trouble: Doug Muir made the good point that there must be reasons for the Anglo-French defense posture, since both countries spend significant amounts on their militaries. I would like to see this discussed seriously, for the simple reason that I do not discount the possibility that there is no plan, and NATO defense budgets are set simply out of a combination of momentum and interest group politics. Moreover, what’s the counterfactual? What would an alternate European defense posture look like?

Department of Panaceas: We’ll see if ending gerrymandering has an effect on California’s political woes. I doubt that it will, but I would also like to be wrong.

Department of Crime: There is less of it, and nobody really knows why.

Department of Bahrain: Things are very bad.

August and everything after

 Last post, I went out on a limb and said I thought Qaddafi would be gone by “August, plus or minus a month.” We’ll know soon enough if I’m right! Meanwhile: what then?

A couple of thoughts on post-Qaddafi Libya (PQL).

One, the dismount is going to be tricky. Much depends on how Qaddafi leaves the building. If he flees like Ben Ali, that’s one thing. If he’s taken out by a coup, that’s another. If it ends with rebel columns rolling into Tripoli ... that’s actually pretty unlikely. So, flee or coup.

Say it’s a coup. Then what? Qaddafi’s inner circle are still around. Say they can be sidelined. (How? Could get messy.) You’ve still got a functioning state government in Tripoli. And that’s great — nobody wants a Somalia on Europe’s doorstep. But whoever ends up running it, that state government is not going to be eager to hand over power to a bunch of scruffy rebels in Benghazi. (Never mind a bunch of Berbers. Ugh, Berbers.) On the other hand, the National Transition Council (NTC) — the guys in Benghazi — are reasonably going to ask why they should acknowledge the authority of a bunch of guys in Tripoli who, until last Tuesday, were loyal apparatchiks of the Supreme Leader. So, watch for some sort of National Reconciliation Council, possibly brokered by friendly foreign powers.

Two, legitimacy. PQL is likely to be a troubled place in various ways. Qaddafi did a pretty good job of crushing civil society. The country is divided by regions and tribes. Nobody has any meaningful experience with civil liberties or democratic institutions. Everyone’s going to be armed. A significant amount of nation-building type assistance is going to be required, and frankly it’s none too soon to start.

Meanwhile, who’ll have legitimacy? The NTC can advance a plausible claim if they’ve reached a clear point of military dominance — control over most of the country’s territory and population, Loyalists clearly falling backwards. They’re nowhere near that point today. Otherwise, legitimacy will have to come from, sigh, democratic elections. I sigh because those are likely to be... problematic. Libya’s a country that has never had anything remotely approaching a fair and clean election. And being in political opposition, in Libya, has not historically been a great career choice. So everyone is likely to enter this thinking winner-take-all, so our side must not be allowed to lose! Things could work out, but...

Three, God only knows what PQL’s foreign relations are going to look like. People are saying “pro-Western,” but what does that even mean? Late-period Qaddafi — since 2004 or so — may have deployed a lot of nasty rhetoric, but in actual fact Libya has been a mildly pro-Western neutral country for the last few years. Qaddafi had closed down his nuclear program and given up his obnoxious habit of interfering in neighboring countries. He paid off the Lockerbie fine (which it’s still not very clear he was actually responsible for), normalized economic relations with everyone, allowed foreign investment in his oil industry, and had pretty much given up on anything but token support for the Palestinians. By 2010 he had signed tax and extradition treaties with most of the major members of the E.U. Yeah, Qaddafi could still deliver multi-hour spittle-flecked speeches at the U.N. about imperialist aggression, but Libya was about as “anti-Western” as Iceland.

Anyway, PQL is going to be everyone’s friend at first. That won’t last. It’s a rough neighborhood.

Four, the Berbers. They’re the ones doing most of the fighting in the Western Mountains, down below Tripoli. Qaddafi has been dumping on them for forty years nonstop, so pretty much every Libyan under 60 has been indoctrinated with anti-Berber prejudice. I don’t think that’s going to magically disappear after Qaddafi leaves the building.

I do wonder how much aid is being offered to the Berbers, and of what sort.  If we arm the Berbers, it puts a lot more pressure on Qaddafi, which is great. But then the new government will have to deal with the fact that the Berbers have heavy machine guns and artillery stashed away in caves or wherever. (Because they’re not going to just hand them over once the shooting stops.) If the new government is wise enough to clasp the Berbers to their bosom, offer them some sort of limited autonomy, and buy off a majority of their elites with oil revenue, that might not be a problem. But if they reflexively fall into the groove of viewing the Berbers as dimwitted, treacherous primitives, there could be some trouble.

As a guy who’s broadly sympathetic to oppressed ethnic minorities, I’m inclined to view arming the Berbers as a good thing. Today, they’ll use them to fight; tomorrow, why should they have to rely upon the kindness of a post-Qaddafi government? A cold-hearted realist, however, might suggest that having a heavily armed minority that (1) has serious historical grievances, that is also (2) causing problems for a (presumably) friendly and more or less pro-Western government in a none-too-stable post-conflict country, while also (3) sitting adjacent to a major oil exporting region and astride a major pipeline — might be, from that cold-hearted realist’s view, suboptimal. I have no idea which side the Obama administration is coming down on; I merely note that it’s not a simple question.

Thoughts?

The Correlation of Forces

 Doug Muir here.

Back in the day, the Soviet Union used to have a concept called “the correlation of forces.” Briefly, this was a metric made up of everything that determined relative power: military might, economic power, public opinion, internal divisions, political allegiance, and diplomatic relations.

I say “a metric,” but that’s a bit misleading. One reason the whole “correlation of forces” thing never quite caught on outside the USSR and its satellites was because it wasn’t a metric; you couldn’t easily break it down into a number or a set of easily manipulated facts. You could count tanks, planes and men with guns and produce cool-looking charts to (a) define and measure a threat, and/or (b) ask for a budget increase. But the correlation of forces couldn’t be quantified so easily. So it remained, in Western eyes, a bit airy-fairy; and after the fall of the USSR, it got more or less left by the wayside. (Here’s how far the phrase has fallen: it does not have a wikipedia page.)

That’s a pity, because it’s a useful concept. Consider, for instance, the current conflict in Libya. In military terms, Qaddafi should be doing okay. He’s still in charge of most of Libya’s territory, including its capital, and most of its population. He’s still got a much bigger army than the rebels. He has open supply lines through friendly neutral countries (Algeria, Chad) — which means that, although he’s formally under embargo, he can almost certainly import weapons, men, ammunition, replacement parts, and pretty much anything else he needs.

But he’s not doing okay. He’s losing. This is a war on three fronts — the east, the western mountains, and Misurata in between — and he’s been losing ground on all of them. Generals and ministers have been defecting. Foreign countries have been lining up to recognize the rebels. In Soviet terms, the correlation of forces has shifted against him — and is, at this writing, continuing to do so.

One way in which the correlation of forces is useful is that it illuminates positive feedback loops in a way that simple gun-counting doesn’t. If we have a battle, and I win, there’s not necessarily a positive feedback for me beyond whatever I gain from winning the battle itself. In other words, just beating Lee at Gettysburg, by itself, doesn’t help your cause very much. Sure, you’ve killed x number of men (tanks, planes) and presumably gained a better position on the board. But unless you’ve wiped out a major chunk of the enemy’s forces, decapitated his leadership, or laid his homeland open to invasion and devastation, you haven’t actually done much.

But if you think in correlation-of-forces terms — ah, that’s different. A lost battle can lead to bad economic consequences (the Confederate currency crashed after Gettysburg, and never recovered). It can lead to bad diplomatic consequences, to the surfacing of internal divisions, to the collapse of internal morale or the defection of unreliable minor allies. And these secondary effects can, themselves, affect the military balance of forces. In fact, a lost battle may itself be the result of economic or diplomatic problems — and may then cause more problems, which can lead to losing more battles.

I’m oversimplifying, of course. But it does provide a useful way of looking at what’s happening in Libya. Qaddafi is losing ground for a variety of reasons. His military is a bunch of unhappy draftees; morale is low. (Civilian morale is no better.) NATO is preventing him from using his air, armor, or heavy artillery, while also degrading his 4C. He has every reason to be paranoid about a coup, which means he must restrict power and personal interaction to a small trusted circle, which cuts down on his (already degraded) ability to process information and respond effectively.

Here’s my take on this: things are likely to get worse for him, because the more ground he loses, the more likely he is to lose more ground. He’s probably still able to launch counterattacks at the tactical level, so he may well be able to roll back the rebels in one or more areas. But he won’t easily be able to build on those victories, because they won’t change the underlying diplomatic, economic, or internal-political dynamics. To accomplish that, he’d have to win a major, crushing victory — retake Misurata, say, or wipe the Berbers off the map. That’s unlikely to happen. Meanwhile, rebel victories in the field do change the correlation of forces — they further depress Loyalist morale, make Qaddafi’s remaining foreign allies less enthusiastic about standing up for him, make major desertions more likely, and thus make Qaddafi ever more paranoid and isolated. Simply put, he’s trying to climb a slope that’s steadily getting steeper.
 
Back in April, I said I gave Qaddafi “more than a month, but less than a year.” I’ll narrow that a little now — as of this posting, he’s got more than two weeks, but less than six months. Too vague? Okay, I’ll live dangerously: August, plus or minus a month. If you disagree, feel free to make your own predictions in the comments.

The Romans to the rescue?

 Anglo-French forces have begun making helicopter strikes from carriers in support of rebel operations. They join the Anglo-French air sorties (which now outnumber U.S. sorties by a growing margin) and the Anglo-French  ships that have been shelling shore targets in support of the rebels in Misurata. (War nerds should click the second link.) William Hague, meanwhile, was in Benghazi two days ago.

It is an excellent level of support. (Everyone should read this comment by Doug Muir, and this post by Alex Harrowell, at which point somebody should answer the queries they raise.) But four days ago one country put them all to shame, a most unexpected country: Italy. Yes, Italy. Home of the oil company that seriously thought it could reclaim its oil from Gaddafi. Home of one of the Colonel’s biggest friends. Land of the supremely bizarre “Friendship Treaty” between the Italian Republic and the Grand Arab Libyan Popular Socialist Jamahiriya. Italy!

Ever since Gaddafi demonstrated that he could hit rebel oil production, the rebel government has been hard up for cash. (The one tanker that they got out has finally been purchased by a refinery in Hawaii.) Legal confusion in the United States has held up the rebels’ ability to access Gaddafi’s assets, or use them as collateral for loans. (The recent sale of rebel oil to Hawaii is an indication that this fog may be lifting.) So how is the rebel government going to get the foreign exchange that it needs?

Enter Italy. Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, said Rome would, through Eni and UniCredit SpA, “provide the [rebel] council for the needs of the Libyan people with a huge quantity of fuel and a huge amount of money.” He added: “We are talking about billions of euros that is not money of the regime. This is money of the people of Libya. [These] important frozen assets can represent a very valid guarantee for this transfer of money to the Libyan people.”

In the absence of NATO forces capable of hitting irregular government troops far inland, then the only way to get resources to the rebels is to let them borrow against government assets. British training is all well and good, but the rebels need air support, and right now they do not have it outside a narrow coastal band. So ... Italy just won huge credit by offering cash. Stratfor likes to insist that the Anglo-French effort is all about securing petroleum contracts at Italian expense: if so, Rome just blew a hole in that idea. The rebels should look at Eni et al pretty favorably ... and the decision to channel the lending through Eni only reinforces that.

On the other hand, Britain seems to be training the rebels on the ground. Serious rebel training would obviate the worries about the oil fields, by allowing the rebels to coordinate with foreign air forces operating at high altitudes. (To be frank, getting the rebels into some sort of recognizeable — and hard to copy — uniform would help.) That will also be quite thanked.

In short, the postwar question will be: does concrete Italian financial support outweigh concrete Anglo-French military support? I suspect that given the legal mess, the former will prevail. But then again, I never did believe the idea that Cameron’s and Sarkozy’s decisions had been driven by a desire to have their national companies (particularly BP) seize formerly-Italian production contracts. That said, Rome seems to have found an easy (and almost costless) way to insure that its interests will survive the conflict.

It would be nice if the U.S. would move as quickly in unfreezing Libyan assets. It was a heroic effect to clear the Hawaiians to import rebel crude, but there is more to do. Britain and France, it is time to start serious lawfare.

Libyan civil war oil update

 There have several important developments in the Libyan civil war, not least the temporary incursion into Tunisia and NATO’s decision to begin attacking Libyan state institutions. (The death of one of Gaddafi’s sons is a result.) These are important, but developments regarding the country’s oil industry are even more so. And so, this update.

Last weekend, government forces damanged rebel-controlled oil fields. How is not certain. Tripoli claims that British warplanes did the damage, but that seems unlikely to say the least. Wahid Bughaigis, the rebel oil minister, said that the damaged equipment included a generator, an oil tank, and several small diesel tanks to fuel the generators. The rebels say they will need at least a month to repair the damage.

The problem is that the rebels do not control the refineries or gasfields. They therefore need to import fuel, and that’s expensive. The Qatari government (working with Vitol, an oil trader) helped the rebels market one million barrels (for an above-market $129 million in revenue). The MT Equator tanker, carrying 550,000 barrels of that oil, arrived in Singapore for refueling on April 28, before steaming on to China. (China is being quite helpful where it counts.) $129 million, however, is not a lot in terms of rebel needs. Bougaighis said: “To put things in perspective, one cargo of gasoline of 25,000 metric tons costs us $75 million, so you don’t go far with $129 million.”

I suspect that he is wrong about that: 25,000 metric tons is around 7.9 million gallons, and I doubt they’re paying $9.44 per gallon. But I am sure that the rebels are facing energy problems. Benghazi used to get its electricity from natural gas supplied out of Brega. Brega, however, is in government hands. As a result, the rebels have cut electricity production in Benghazi by 25 percent to conserve fuel. Of course, in a country without anything resembling a smart grid, electricity cuts mean rotating outtages running as long as 3½ hours. Bughaigis: “We didn’t have this problem when the gas was supplied to the plants, but now we have to supply it (diesel) by sea and get it from the road.”

For what it’s worth, the U.S. cleared up (as best as it could) the remaining uncertainty about the ability of Americans to buy Libyan oil. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) declared that said transactions involving Qatar Petroleum or Vitol are permitted provided the entity in Libya is under the control of the rebel-backed leadership. Anyone dealing with Libyan oil purchases must supply a report to OFAC detailing the arrangements within 30 days. The practical significance of this is limited, however, since the Europeans opened the door to rebel oil sales some time ago.

In the Department of Obvious: Vienna-based OMV, which produces some 10% of its total oil and gas production from Libya (33,000 boe a day), is seeing its profits go down. Production at the Shateira oil field shut down at the end of February due to violent clashes between government and rebel forces. Libya provided 20 percent of the crude used by OMV refineries, but it has been able to buy crude from Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan and the Black Sea region to make up for the slack. OMV will have to upgrade the refinery in Burghausen, Germany, to process non-Libyan crude, but it should be able to do that.

Department of Not so Obvious: Eni’s production is down 9%, but profits are up 15% on high prices. Since April, Eni production in Libya has been about 50,000 to 55,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, down from 280,000. (Libya accounted for about 10 percent of Eni's overall cash flow.) Eni said since April the company has been producing 50,000 to 55,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day in Libya for local electricity production, all coming from its Wafa facility. No Eni facilities in Libya have been damaged and are currently on “hot standby” ready to produce again once the situation stabilizes.

And finally, Department of WTF: Eni appears to have sent a tanker to western Libya to try to pick up oil from its production facilities. The Aqua got within a few kilometres of the Libyan port of Mellitah before turning away between April 20 and 21. (The booking from Mellitah to Venice probably cost over $500,000, including a risk premium to venture into Libyan waters.) It was there to load up 600,000 barrels of oil. The Libyan government, obviously, refused to let the Eni ship fill up. “They didn't want the crude to go, because they wouldn't have gotten any money for it,” said an industry source, adding, “They could use it to refine into gasoline.” I can understand why NATO would be happy to let the Italians give it the old college try (“Go get your oil! Just make sure that Tripoli knows it won’t get any money for it, 90% tax rate be damned.”) I am less sure as to why Eni thought it could possibly get its oil.

So there you have it. Nothing here changes the assessment that the rebels will win, but the government ability to strike at the fields is unexpected.

Europe goes to war

 Libya update: So far, both Doug Muir and I appear to be correct. The war has devolved into a stalemate, but casualties are only racking up in Misrata, where the New York Times estimates between 313 and 1,000 deaths thus far. That is a tragedy, but far less than it could have been.

Calls to send ground forces are growing, but the United States so far shows no signs of seeing any political pressures, domestic or foreign, to send American troops. The E.U. has signed off on a 61-page “concept of operations” to send roughly 1,000 troops to coordinate humanitarian relief, most likely in Misrata.

According to the Guardian, Eufor Libya “would be authorised to fight if they or their humanitarian wards were threatened.” The Guardian reports that the current on-call European battlegroup is mostly made up of German troops, but it turns out to be predominantly Dutch, although the Germans are involved. The other battlegroup is from the Nordic countries; predominantly Swedish. French units, in particular, are not involved. Inside a European Union that appears to be straining over economic adjustment and immigration, the politics of this will be problematic. (I for one would like Doug Muir’s insights here. After all, so far we’re both right!)

A French parliamentarian, Axel Poniatowski, has correctly pointed out that in order to be more effective, NATO will need to put spotters on the ground. Reports that the Europeans are running short of precision-guided munitions only make that more pressing; moreover, the Europeans may have to deploy helicopters, which means ground crews.

And that means a need to creatively interpret the U.N. resolution or go back and get a new one. France and Britain seem to disagree on this point.

This is an intervention that should be easy. The rub is that the Europeans really have let their military capacities deteriorate to a rather remarkable extent. Moreover, coalition warfare is extremely difficult; more so, when the allies do not agree. So far, the six bad results have been avoided, including the 7th possibility of prolonged attrition warfare. Conditions in rebel-held territory seem good, and the oil industry is getting organized. But the jury is still out.

On-ground-blogging from Libya

 Ryan Calder, a Berkeley Ph.D. student in sociology, is in Benghazi right now. He is keeping a blog, called Revolutionology, about his experiences in rebel territory. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the situation in eastern Libya, or the civil war.

Scariest quote, so far: “This is what a twenty-first-century ragtag volunteer army looks like. These guys are all heart, not much coordination, and no training whatsoever.”

Bad contingency #3 comes into sight

 How did Libyan troops manage to advance on Brega so rapidly? I am not surprised that the opposition fell apart; I am surprised that NATO airstrikes failed to disrupt regime movements. This looks like bad contingency (3): “rebel tactical incompetence leads to operational disaster.” Here is the best story that I have been able to find.  

People who have not served in a military force (or a similar large organization) can underestimate the importance of simple discipline. It will take a long time to train the rebels. If Allied airpower cannot keep the Libyan army from advancing even without communication and coordination with the ground, then the rebellion is doomed. That seems to be the problem: since the rebels have nothing resembling an organization, there is no way to distinguish between the Libyan military (given their new tactics) and the rebels. If the rebels were an actual military force, even a badly-trained force, this would not be a problem.

I have to admit to being surprised at how quickly the rebels have abandoned Ras Lanuf and Brega. The Libyan military is showing more cleverness than I expected.

For what it is worth, I would strongly caution against arming the rebels. Does anyone know of a source for Libyan information from someone with command experience? This is a time when a real warblog by somebody who knew of what they spoke would provide real value.

Around the Arab revolutions

 Usually an “around the Revolution” entry on this blog refers to left-wing Bolivarian governments on this continent. Here, though, it refers to Libya, Bahrain, Egypt, and Yemen. It will be brief: these are just observations; I have a bad head cold and a boatload of work. (See Laffer blogging.)

In Libya, it is surprising how quickly government forces withdrew from the east in the face of Allied airstrikes. The rebels still seem like a mob, by all accounts. The rapid withdrawal seems like a sign that discipline inside government forces is cracking, but that does not necessarily mean that the regime is about to fall. Gaddafi has a lot of support in Sirte; if his army holds together enough to crack Misurata (which will not be easy with Allied planes overhead) and hold Sirte, then he will probably hold on for a while. On the other hand, my prediction that oil would soon start flowing again seems to have been correct. The rebels now control export facilities with a capacity of 827,000 bpd, and it appears as though Qatar is willing to help with marketing. Oil markets reacted as you would expect. Ironically, it looks as though Chinese and Indian oil companies may in fact help, by being willing to purchase rebel oil without fear of what might happen to their interests in Gaddafi-held territory. That is the exact opposite of what observers expected when the violence first erupted.

I would very much like to go to Benghazi to see how Agoco is faring.

In Bahrain, 11 members of Wifaq have resigned from parliament, which is not a good sign. The party seemed to be willing to compromise in its conditions for talks with the government: all they want now is the release of 250 detainees. the idea of Kuwaiti-brokered talks now seems off the table. Reports are vague about the presence of GCC troops. There are reports that the Saudis are running checkpoints, but those should be taken with a grain of salt. Saudi troops wear the old U.S. three-color DCU pattern (on the right below), whereas Bahraini defense forces wear British-style camoflague patterns (on the left). Unless you are familiar with the uniforms, it is not easy to tell them apart.

The unrest is not good for the economy. The Grand Prix has been cancelled, as have other events. The 2008 race contributed $600 million to the economy, or 2.9% of GDP. Combine that with the proliferation of cancelled events and collapse of tourism, and Bahrain has a problem. The central bank has leaned on local banks to go easy on businesses affected by the slowdown. (It also insists that the financial industry is stable, but it would.) More importantly, on March 10 the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) announced a $10 billion fund for housing and infrastructure. Bahrain intends to use the money to build 50,000 new homes at a cost of $5.3 billion over the next five years.

The goal is, of course, political. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, there are currently 46,000 people on the waiting list for government-subsidized housing. One grievance is that newly-naturalized Sunnis from places like Syria and Pakistan are alleged to get priority; true or not, the government hopes that speeding up the pace of modern housing construction will ease the political conflict. (The government is almost certainly wrong, of course.)

In addition to the housing program, the government is planning a 1% levy on salaries to fund an unemployment insurance scheme, plus a tax on employers for each expat they employ, to finance training for locals. In 2009, the government gave expats the freedom to change jobs, with the aim of raising the cost of employing them versus native Bahrainis.

Unsurprisingly, the political effect of the change was the reverse, adding to Shia grievances. For what it is worth, the markets have perceived a big increase in the risk of Bahraini sovereign debt, but they have perceived that for most of the Middle East and North Africa, including Egypt and Morocco. The interior minister, Rashid bin Abdullah bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, has said that his ministry will “speed up plans” to hire 20,000 new employees, and the King has ordered various ministries to increase employment.

For what it is worth, I do not think that the initiatives are going to work. Bahrain needs to address Shia political grievances. My colleague, Victor Menaldo, has a paper showing that Arab monarchies have been surprisingly resilient to political shocks: very worth reading. It’s implication is that Bahrain will make it through, but it isn’t clear that Bahrain fits the model.

So what about Egypt? Well, here I am going to turn the floor over to Victor (and his colleague, Mike Albertus) once more, from their op-ed in USA Today: “Research that we’ve conducted on the relationship between revolutions and democracy demonstrates that less than a majority of revolutions end in democracy. Surprisingly, however, we also find that the democracies that tend to survive the test of time are those born in revolution.”

Finally, Yemen. All I have to say here are that the reports are terrifying. Abandoned ammunition dumps is not a good sign.

War versus non-war

 Americans have a problem with the word “war.” In the dictionary, war is an armed conflict between organized groups for political objectives. In the U.S., however, the word took has the connotation of absolute war, an interstate conflict aimed at the unconditional surrender of the other side.

To some extent this has always been true. Three of our five declared wars — the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, and the Spanish-American War — weren’t aimed at unconditional surrender, but they were aimed at the territorial dismemberment of our opponent. Moreover, in all three cases, the declaration of war rapidly led to an escalation of American aims. The War of 1812 immediately became a war to drive Britain out of North America. The Mexican-American War started over Texas and ended in an American occupation — and were it not for Nicholas Trist the southern boundary of the United States would be several hundred miles further south. The Spanish-American War started with a very 21st-century “authorization to use force,” but Congress declared war after Spain declared it on us ... and soon enough the U.S. was in possession of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

What does this have to do with Libya? Well, Libya is a massive food importer. In a total war, even a casualty-averse total war, his enemies could starve him out. But we are not fighting a total war, and we obviously should not be fighting a total war. Since Libya imports about 75% of its food needs, this means that the U.N. is soon going to have to organize relief efforts at the same time that NATO is blockading his ports.

It will get stranger.

How it could all go wrong in Libya

 I seem to have been a bit sanguine about Gaddafi’s resources in my last post. The IMF reports that Gaddafi is sitting on a 143.8-tonne $6.4-billion pot of gold. If correct, that’s a lot of ready cash. 

If the war goes on much longer, and I suspect that it will, there are at least six bad contingencies:

1. Gaddafi leaves. Absolute chaos ensues;
2. Gaddafi massacres people in his territory in some bold and ugly way that the Western media can’t ignore;
3. Rebel tactical incompetence leads to operational disaster;
4. The rebels start to fall apart in their territory. Chaos ensues;
5. Rebels massacre civilians;
6. The Syrian government shells a rebellious town into rubble, killing tens of thousands and doing exactly what we intervened to prevent Gaddafi from doing.

In a perfect world, the U.S. and U.K. and France would have contingency plans for all of these events. I’m pretty sure, in fact, that all three governments do have a strategy: stay out and stonewall political pressures to respond. Contingency #6? Nothing to be done, impossible to intervene. Contingency #1? Pottery barn, not. Contingency #2? Already trying. Contingency #5? See no evil. Contingency #4? Time to declare failure; just like we did in Somalia.

The strategy is stay out; the tactic will be to stonewall.

The question, however, is whether “stonewall” is a strong enough political tactic to implement the desired strategy? Can we disengage if things begin to go wrong?

Why the Libyan rebels will (probably) win

 The Libyan civil war is set to be a prolonged one. Others have mentioned the rebels’ astonishing lack of discipline and training, and what thus far seems like their inability to establish even a chain of command. That can be rectified, however, if they can gain enough resources. In Libya, of course, resources mean oil. So what do the rebels control?

 

First, they have the Tobruk oil terminal firmly in hand. They took possession of the Zueitina terminal on Monday, bit whether they can hold that depends on events in neary Ajdabiya. The two terminals have an export capacity of 63,000 and 214,000 barrels per day (bpd), respectively, for a total potential export capacity of 277,000 bpd. The terminals are fed by the Sarir and Misla fields, which according to Agoco are producing about 95,000 bpd, down from 400,000 bpd.

Why is production so low? Agoco was not dependent on foreign expertise. The loss of contractors in the general flight when the civil war broke didn’t help, but it didn’t cause the decline. Rather, the problem is legal uncertainty. With sanctions biting, it wasn’t clear that any of the majors could purchase Libyan oil without opening themselves up to massive liabilities. In fact, that is usually the problem in rebellions and civil wars. When the legal situation is clear, oil companies are willing and able to operate in the most disordered situations—when it is not, they won’t touch anything with a ten-foot pole. Agoco’s management may have announced that it was on the side of the rebels, but that means nothing to the majors in the absence of Western policy. As a result, oil is sitting in terminals without tankers, and production is down since there’s no storage capacity.

This looks like it is about to change. In what may be the most significant development of the civil war since the Western airstrikes began, the rebels just declared the formation of a new “Libyan Oil Company,” and “the designation of the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya.”  

This is really important. It means that a rebel government, recognized by France, now has an oil company and a central bank. The sanctions imposed by the United States (and in a weaker messier form by the Europeans, something that I complained about to a reporter last week) apply only to the Libyan national oil company and central bank. In the Treasury’s words: “Should National Oil Corporation subsidiaries or facilities come under different ownership and control, Treasury may consider authorizing dealings with such entities.”

The sanctions imposed on the central bank of Libya are similarly flexible: “All property and interests in property that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of any United States person, including any overseas branch, of the Government of Libya, its agencies, instrumentalities, and controlled entities, and the Central Bank of Libya, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in.”

Libyan lifting costs are around $3 per barrel. At $105 per barrel, access to the two eastern fields could mean an annual income of $10.3 billion for the rebels. Now, that’s not likely—those Opex figures are misleading. (Libya earned $32 billion in 2010.) Still, even a quarter of that can buy a lot of merce ... er, private military training and uniforms and equipment to turn the rebels into a real army. Add some access to British and French special forces (to call in airstrikes) and they could win this thing.

They won’t win quickly. But with Gaddafi running on cash reserves, it looks as though they will win. At least as long as China and India and elsewhere stay on side.

People who talk about Bahrain are frustrating me

 It isn’t just Matt Yglesias, but he went ahead again and stated that the United States needs to do more about Bahrain:

If the point of intervening in Libya is to establish a precedent that dictators can’t massacre people to remain in power then the Obama administration needs to toughen its line on Bahrain and Yemen in order to make that work. If the point of intervening in Libya is to have a “demonstration effect” that bolsters the forces of liberalization in the Arab world, then the Obama administration needs to toughen its line on Bahrain and Yemen. ...

The fact that we’re [intervening in Libya] only serves to strengthen the case that we need to be taking the modest easy steps available to us to advance the same goals elsewhere in the region.

What “modest easy steps”?? Cutting military assistance? Sanctioning Bahraini banks? Those are neither modest nor easy, and worse yet, I am at a loss as to why they would work. (Further complicating the Western position is the fact that the GCC is backing the U.N. on Libya.) I am also at a loss as to why we should consider Bahrain’s oppression as being something on the same scale as the Stalinesque massacre that was bearing down on the Libyan rebels. The U.S., right now, is very explicit about our anger at the Bahrainis and Saudis. 

I would like to have somebody lay out the “modest easy steps” that the U.S. government should be taking with regards to the situation in Bahrain. Seriously, I want somebody to convince me that such options exist! But just calling for some sort of magical pixie dust, or demanding even harsher U.S. rhetoric with no thought as to the consequences, that is just dumb.

Two traps in thinking about international relations in the 21st century

 Commentators often, I think, fall into two serious (and diametrically opposed) traps when discussing international politics.

The first is to assume that everything is different now that we’re in the 21st century. Globalization, democratiza-tion, international institutions, new norms, and the internets have all combined to create a brave new world where none of the old verities apply. I talked a lot about this back when people were all agog over the putative “Twitter revolutions,” but it applies to more conventional analysis. Take this from a month ago: 

“The U.S. should call for an urgent, immediate Security Council meeting and push for a strong resolution condeming Libya’s use of violence and authorizing targeted sanctions against the regime. Such steps could stand a chance of rever-sing the course of a rapidly deteriorating situation. An effective international response could not only save many Libyan lives, it might also send a powerful warning to other Arab leaders who might contemplate following suit against their own protest movements.”

A Security Council resolution is indeed a powerful thing. And that is what happened. But when it did not work, the same author produced an very odd follow-up a few days ago, when Libyan government forces were at the outskirts of  Benghazi:

“The administration should move quickly and aggressively to recognize the provisional Libyan government, release the frozen Libyan assets to that provisional government, and allow the flow of weapons to them. It should push for ever tighter targeted sanctions against Qaddafi, and continue to mobilize international consensus against his regime to make sure that he remains an absolute pariah without access to international institutions, revenues, or support. It could jam Qaddafi’s communications and provide intelligence, and more. The debate should move away from an exclusive focus on military action.”

Huh? Come again? What besides military action is supposed to dissuade the Colonel from slaughtering his opponents, conducting house-to-house raids, mass arrests, show trials, and the rest of the panoply of modern totalitarianism? Perhaps “crazy” is the wrong word, given that we are talking about the Colonel, but Gaddafi would be crazy not to bring out the full Stalin should he win, and I am at a loss as to why people think that our brave new globalized world of international institutions would change the logic of authoritarianism.

Of course, the second mistake is to assume things are just like the 19th century. In this view, the spread of democratic ideals is irrelevant, international institutions are mere epiphenomena, and norms only have meaning when backed up by force. Technology changes power balances, of course, but ideology does not, with the possible exception of nationalism. This is the mistake that Stratfor seems to make in its more head-scratching analyses. States are the only actors that matter, states are in a zero-sum game, international opinion does not exist, communication technology only matters in military terms, and political norms are meaningless once you move outside states. The problem with that view is that it contradicts our everyday experience of watching international politics happen. (It is also not entirely consistent with more concrete data.)

I tend more towards the second error, myself. That might be more common among Americans, since our approach to foreign relations has changed less than elsewhere, and international institutions and norms have less of a daily effect on our lives, but both extremes (everything is different now versus nothing has changed) are, I think, good things to avoid.

No-drive zone and the Libyan civil war

 This is going to be ugly, but ground troops will not be needed. (With a caveat.) We can conduct enough sorties to impose a real no-drive zone between rebel-held territories and the west. The problem is that it looks as though Gaddafi’s forces have already moved into Benghazi. The rebels will have to root them out, and that could be ugly. (Preliminary reports look pretty ugly, but maybe not as much as it could have been.)

Minimally-trained infantry should be able to outflank government forces outside the cities, but the rebels seem to be worse than minimally-trained. Maybe this is my own experience talking, but they seem like mobs with guns, rather than a serious fighting force. The West could send in advisors, which would, of course, be serious mission creep. If it happens, I’d bet on the British doing it, not the United States.

The truth is, neither side the Libyan civil war appears to be particularly competent. (This should not be surprising.) In the words of a former RAF officer (and personal friend): “I think holding onto small cities was a mistake, the rebels have bogged themselves down there and waited for the fight to come. Ideally, defence should have been based on the ‘restricted block methodology’ (ie: Stalingrad) freeing up manpower to build SUV mobile platoons heading for Tripoli and locking the government in. Not rocket science, infantry 101 which concerns me about the skills of the regular Libyan NCO/Officers.” This graduate of Fort Benning, for what little that is worth (and truly, it is not worth much at all; the only times I have been in a combat zone have been as a civilian) concurs. Andrew Exum also concurs. (Oh man did his post bring back memories of digging. And getting tear-gassed. But I digress.) 

Historically, Libyan troops have performed very poorly at the operational and tactical level. From Arabs at War: “Junior officers exhibited little initiative, creativity, flexibility, or adaptability ... They rarely thought to manuever in battle, could not make combined-arms operations work properly, and regularly failed to scout or adequately secure their positions ... Information did not flow evenly across the Libyan hierarchy either verically or horizontally, with the result that few had the requisite information to adequately perform their assigned missions.” Strangely, maintenance was a serious problem, while logistics performed amazingly: the country maintained an armored division in Chad, a thousand miles away.

In this war, the logistical advantage is gone: the U.N. forces are going to make sure of that. In the east, you are going to have ugly ugly irregular fighting until the last of the Gaddafi forces are gone. In the west, though, it depends.

One smart policy would be to promise financial rewards to defecting Libyan forces, including foreign-born militia. With economic sanctions on, Gaddafi is down to paying to his troops from his cash reserves. He can’t export oil or gas, he can’t access his foreign assets. Libya is also an importer of gasoline (this is not unusual for oil producing countries). The rebels knew this, and hijacked vessels headed to Gaddafi-held territory, but now NATO navies are enforcing a blockade. Moreover, the Ras Lanouf refinery is damaged and on fire.

Another smart policy would be to call off the International Criminal Court and offer a blanket amnesty. I am sure that Venezuela would be happy to take the Colonel. (Once upon a time, I would have thought Saudi Arabia, and that might still be a possibility, even with the recent collapse in U.S.-Saudi relations.)

In short, the U.N. coalition is going to dismantle Gaddafi’s air defenses and enforce a no-drive zone. The rebels will root out government forces in the east in awful fighting to which the press will probably not pay much attention. Then we are going to get a waiting game. Even with sanctions, Gaddafi can hold out for a long time, especially if his troops think that the alternative is death. Thus, bribes ... but somehow I do not think that is going to happen. In short, we could have a long waiting game, unless

The wild card would be Gaddafi attacks on civilian populations in the west. If that happens, all bets are off. Perversely, that means a rebellion in the areas he currently holds would be worse for the U.N.’s ability to stay out than a long stalemate.

But here’s the good thing: the United States is not in the lead. Yes, we are providing right now most of the firepower. But politically, we are not in the lead. If this turns into a repeat of the containment of Iraq, the onus is not on us, and the decisions are not on us. If we draw back, the Europeans (honestly, the Anglo-French coalition) and the Arab countries will have to decide whether to keep on.

And you know what? As a nationalist American, I like that. I like being the biggest kid but not the alpha dog. The French moved out in front, the Arabs made the call, the U.N. granted the authorization, and we’re in it because we’re big and burly and feel solidarity. (Nobody reading this will understand this save for the few who went to grade school with me: we’re Jimmy, not Brandon.) And this, this is new, and this is good.

Egypt and airstrikes in Libya

 The problem is that the Egyptian air force is probably not up to the mission. Here are some (decade-old) quotes from U.S. officers on the quality of Egyptian air force training:

• “They know where to turn, and where to pretend to fire munitions, and who is going to win.”
• “They fly our planes and use our tactics, but you would never know it.”
• “Egyptian exercises are totally canned: they aren’t for training, they’re for show.”

In addition, the experience with Egyptian forces in Gulf War 1 was not very good. Egyptian maintenance was terrible: depot-level maintenance still needs to be performed in the United States. Worse yet, there occasions of Egyptian units effectively fabricating engagements when they in fact met no resistance. Finally, compartmentalization in the Egyptian military was awful; rarely was there any one single officer with full operational knowledge.

It is possible that things have improved, but it isn’t how I would bet. From a 2004 report: “More generally, the Egyptian air force cannot compete with the Israeli air force in overall battle management, the exploitation of modern sensors and targeting systems, electronic warfare, beyond-visual-range warfare, and in using precision strike and attack munitions. It also focuses more on numbers than sustainability, and has limited ability to sustain high sortie rates.” Admittedly, Libya is not Israel, but the chances are very high that Egyptians strikes would not be effective. Moreover, the Egyptian military has developed a commercial empire, with an entrenched officer class: historically, these are not things that are conducive to military effectiveness.

In short, if the U.N. is going to use airpower to stop the Libyan advance on the rebels, that airpower has to come from Western armed forces.