Demosophia

Strategic Diplomacy

Ordinary "soft" diplomacy is the sort of thing friends do with one another, when they eschew mentioning a recent divorce, or a family tragedy. It's not the way to run a world, where "social sanctions" are worth next to nothing. Strategic diplomacy involves some realistic threat inducement, and making the threat real by carrying it out once in awhile actually reduces or eliminates the need for action in all but the worst cases. That's what happened recently with Libya. Steven Den Beste has a roundup of the attempts, by Bush political opponents, to deny credit for the Gadaffi capitulation. It just won't wash, because it simply doesn't make sense.

Key graf:

The idea that this was somehow a triumph of diplomacy and soft power pressure (e.g. sanctions), as is variously claimed by China, Russia, France, and Solana at the EU doesn't stand up to the light of day. Why was it the British (and indirectly the Americans) that Libya contacted, not China or Russia or France or the EU or the UN? Why did Qaddafi begin his diplomacy last March, and not earlier or later? And why the final agreement now, rather than last August or next August?

They really have no choice but to try to spin it this way, but it doesn't convince any who are willing to look at it with an open mind. And you can detect just a hint of a feeling that somehow this is cheating. They were the ones advocating diplomacy while we seemed to be violent brutes looking for someone to crush; it hardly seems fair that we were the ones to pull off such a major diplomatic achievement and not them.

Based on reports, it looks as if Qaddafi first made contact with the British just after the Americans and British abandoned attempts to deal with the UN and made the decision to attack Iraq without formal UNSC authorization. In other words, Qaddafi called London once it became clear that the UN was not capable of preventing America from going to war. That's when negotiations began.

Was it coincidence that the negotiations were concluded only days after Saddam was captured? Probably not. Likely there were a few final sticking points, and when Saddam was found, and was so totally disgraced by his condition, circumstances and lack of resistance, Qaddafi felt a chill wind blowing down his spine and gave in.

This is important, not because we must give credit where it's due, but because we need to recognize and internalize the principle. Saddam was able to play a rope-a-dope strategy with the UN for 12 years because he knew that the UN regarded the use of force only as an extraordinary cost, rather than a tool. And that made their "or else" ultimatums something of a joke. Gadaffi was more fortunate than Saddam, in the sense that he was provided with an object lesson. And as Den Beste observes, he did not even bother with the fiction of making a deal with the UN, which couldn't even maintain a diplomatic mission within Iraq after Saddam had been removed. The UN is no longer more than a bit player in the drama. (Hat tip: Instapundit)

Posted by Demosophist at December 22, 2003 11:49 AM | TrackBack