European Politics Thread

I am not sure if it was the wrong decision. If the West had interfered in the building of new governments in those regions, it would have been seen as them trying to control those countries (which is part of the reason Afghanistan can never be peaceful on a constant basis, because there will always be "freedom fighters"). By allowing them to develop on their own, the failure to built stable states is on them. And if Libya now asks for help, then it will be a military pact made by two equals (more or less) instead of the West telling the stupid middle east how to run their affairs.

There is letting them lead and then there is abandoning them. Likewise, helping them isn't the same thing as controlling them.

You forget, the Libyans loved the West for what they did. They were open to help (and thank god they still are). The help I am alluding to is also not some flashy program, but just getting the NTC people together to help them plan. Getting the militias together and help THEM either go back to civillian life or to help them amalgamate their forces. Constant, under the radar engagement on the basics of setting up a state and establishing a monopoly of force. It was the failure to achieve the latter that ensured the current situation.

Allowing for a free for all both publically and privately ensured things wouldn't go smoothly and ensured the anarchy that has given the smugglers so much freedom.

It is my hope that Europe has learned from that and is helping them now, as they form a unity government. Libya can still be a success, but only if Europe and the US doesn't keep its head in the sand.

Hell "The West" shouldn't be doing it alone anyway, sure we'd lead but a UN mandate and a bit of oversight from outside of "The West" would probably help a fair bit.

We can state build without creating a puppet that is hated locally, we've done it in a number of places, the thing is we need to be effective, have local participation, and not be doing it to a population who never asked for our help.

Exactly. I am all for helping out, but it should be at places where the help is appreciated by the majority of the population, or the result will always be questioned.

Which is exactly what Libya IS.

It was mostly France and the US that pushed for the intervention - and the US intervening irked Moscow to no end when they saw one of the few neutral countries on the Mediterranean sea risking to fall under US influence. So now, in Syria, they are actively opposing freedom fighters, because they don't want to let the US pull the same thing twice.

Yeah in Libya where we are liked and people would appreciate our help.

Yeah no, it was France and the UK, the US had to be dragged kicking and screaming into it.

edited 19th Jan '16 12:21:51 PM by Silasw

Yes, and again thats not relevant as to the success or failure of intervention.

edited 19th Jan '16 12:21:33 PM by FFShinra

Western military presence in Libya might be appreciated at first, but there is no telling how long this enthusiasm would last. Quite a lot of Afghans were not unhappy when the Talibans were disposed, and the French military intervention in Mali was also very popular, however in both cases (more so in Afghanistan) we are now commited for an unforsseable period of time.

Oh if we do it we'll be committed for decades, that's how long state building takes, we shouldn't pretend otherwise.

In Afghanistan the problems we've had have been in part due to a lack of international oversight, the fact that we didn't engage the local populations s much as we did local groups, the fact that we tried to do it far to quickly and state build during stabilisation.

We never rooted out corruption in Afghanistan, we just put whoever would agree with us into power, that was a bad call.

edited 19th Jan '16 12:47:19 PM by Silasw

Take Germany as an example .

Germany took 4-8 years at most (1953 was the last time the British authorities got involved in domestic issues when they destroyed a conspiracy of former Nazis to take over the FDP party).

So we should get engage in another long-term deployment when we haven't even finished the other ones?

edited 19th Jan '16 1:12:02 PM by Zarastro

US troops still haven't left Germany, so I wouldn't say it was done quickly. The early stuff ended relatively quickly due to Germany already being in large part a functioning state, but culturally we were on control for a long time.

And honestly we can manage multiple, we're still not done in Bosnia yet, plus Afghanistan is already almost a dommed mission, because we've done it so badly and made so many mistakes.

edited 19th Jan '16 1:44:37 PM by Silasw

Plus nobody's really ever pacified Afghanistan.

Well, Afghanistan is a little bit different because there we were also the attackers...as far as I understand it, the German troops had, at least initially, an easier time than the American or the UK ones because they mostly came in to provide protection and were not really involved in throwing bombs.

I also would say that Germany was really luck to have Adenauer to lead it to being a flourishing state.

The US troops are now in Germany because Germany allows them to use it as a launch base. The time of the allies having a say in Germany officially ended with the Reunification, which also resulted in a number of army bases of the allies getting abandoned.

edited 19th Jan '16 1:48:15 PM by Swanpride

Those troops however are/were not stationed there to keep the government in control (something that however needed to be done by the Soviet Union in the GDR) but to secure Western Europe against the Warsaw Pact. Sure the Allies probably also liked the fact that it also could keep the Germans in check if the need should arise, but again except for the purpose of defending Western Europe against an outside threat, nothing else was expected from them. Not to mention that West (and East Germany) at least for the first years covered most of the expenses for the foreign troops and received no foreign money after a few years, whereas in Afghanistan we are still paying for our soldiers, and even for some Afghan soldiers in addition to the monetary aid for the government. After the federal elections of 1953, when extremist parties lost a lot of votes and the Adenauer adminastration gained more stability, the Allies pretty much clapped themselves on the shoulder, called it a job well done and left the domestic politics to the Germans.

A lot of things came together. Adenauer was one factor of course, but the quick economic recovery was incredibly important for the legitimacy of the revived democracy. As many German historians have recently noted, the Germans were quite scecptical because they remembered Weimar, but as soon as the Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) kicked in, surveys reported that scepticism towards democracy decreased significantly.

Of course it was always difficult to get a working economy in Afghanistan, but I daresay there was/is also a lack of competent Afghan politicians. Karsai was not the man Afghanistan needed.

edited 19th Jan '16 1:55:16 PM by Zarastro

Yeah I mean reunification is obviously the point where we stopped having any control, but that's more then 8 years and Germany was an easy case, so even if you take the 8 years point that's a grounding point and one of the easiest cases of state building. Other situations are going to take a hell of a lot longer.

The man Afghanistan needed was killed on the 10th of September 2001 by AQ, I'd suspect deliberately because they knew we'd be coming for Afghanistan and trying to build a state.

edited 19th Jan '16 1:59:56 PM by Silasw

Who do you mean?

Anyway my point is that the West should seriously consider the long-term implications of a military deployment in Libya. So far we have failed to in nation-building wherever we went in the Arab world and our track record in Africa leaves also much to be desired. There are many risks that ought to be considered e.g. with Libya, for example the economic situation has arguably decreased since Qadaffi was dethroned, when economic reasons was one of the reasons why people revolted against him. Since the West doesn't have the resources to invest heavily in Libya and the oil price is also unlikely to increase in the near future, things could get even worse and than our presence would make for a good scapegoat. We have already enough commitments, we shouldn't jump at another decade-long deployment. Some diplomatic and limited financial assistance is fine, but sending thousands of soldiers to Libya is too much of a risk.

edited 19th Jan '16 2:06:50 PM by Zarastro

Ahmad Shah Massoud.

I disagree with Silas on that point though.

Ah yes, I remember him. I think what some people doubt about him is whether or not he would have been able to get the support of the Afghan people, instead of only the loyalty of his Northern alliance. Than again Karsai did such a bad job at getting the people behind his government, that he could have done hardly worse.

Yeah Shinra got it. Though he may well be right that I'm over hyping the man. Still a former vice president, leader of the northern alliance, hero from the war against the Soviets and someone who actively worked with the west during the Sovie invasion, he'd have been a hell of a lot better then what we got.

Oh and I got the date of death wrong, it was the 9th of September 2001.

But back to the point, yes we need to know what we're getting into in Libya, but I think we can do it. As for our history, we've never tried to state build in the Arab World, we didn't try in Iraq, not realy, the US wanted out in 80-90 days initially, state building wasn't ever the plan and that's a big part of why we made such a mess.

edited 19th Jan '16 2:11:49 PM by Silasw

True but we also failed elsewhere. Trying to reform a deeply corrupt and inefficient country is difficult, as we see with Kosovo, even without noteworthy armed resistance and frankly I am not convinced that we can do it in Libya. Especially because the economic outlook of those countries who depend heavily on oil is very bad for the next few years.

well....

Does any European country even have the ability for a long term military operation without the US? Or the resources to sustain it? Or the manpower?

U.K. and France both do. They've got power projection and sustainability, t wouldn't be easy without some US logistical support and unless something funny happened we'd always use US logistical support, but we don't have to.

What do you mean by long term anyway? Long term peace keeping is relatively easy, it's stuff like a long term long disastance air campaign that's difficult. Libya is relatively in our neighbourhood, has easy access for our navies, can be covered by air from Italy and Malta and can be supplied with logistics easily enough.

edited 20th Jan '16 9:26:10 AM by Silasw