West would be better with the devil it knows, surmises Gamal Nkrumah For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight... He catches the wise in their craftiness -- First Corinthians 3:19 The reader can substitute "the wisdom of this world" for "the wisdom of the West" and "the wise" for "the Western powers". The West, and Washington in particular, has no alternative but to adopt a hands-off approach -- while keeping fingers crossed -- in Libya. Resisting the temptation to meddle is a traditionally difficult political exercise in Western capitals. Not for the first time Senator John McCain muddled the roles of professor of constitutional law and moral guide to the nation when he paid an impromptu visit to Benghazi this week. The problem is that I, for one, was not entirely sure which "nation" he had in mind -- his, or the North African one. Gaddafi's nightmare is that McCain's savage judgement will be proven right -- and that the Fateh Revolution inaugurated by Gaddafi himself in September 1969 will be ditched at the worst possible moment. Swivel-eyed and beetle-browed, McCain pronounced the Benghazi upstarts as no substitute for the old days of the Libyan monarchy, nor as the precursor to militant Islamist governance. There was no sign of Al-Qaeda, he contended nonchalantly. By most of the Libyan people's standards McCain is a freakish hawk. The main unifier among Gaddafi's foes is a sense of persecution. What McCain cannot comprehend is that those Libyans who aim at ousting Gaddafi have a sense of purpose, except for toppling the dictator. This is a myopic strategy that does not necessarily fit in with the West's agenda. Oil is the main objective, of course, but beyond that, there's little consensus among Western powers for Libya's future. The country is no land of milk and honey, and the competing tribal groups are a hornets' nest for any foreign occupier. Western leaders have failed to put all the pieces into place for the tremendous political transformation they supposedly have in mind. And history suggests that there is no magic formula for reconstructing a failed state. However, here is the heart of the current concern. The anti-Gaddafi forces are not united by any particular ideology and they do not have a specific plan of action. They are pawns perfectly positioned to facilitate the downward spiral of Libya into a failed state. In Libya, however, events often defy the doom-mongers. Crucial to the sense of optimism among Gaddafi aficionados has been the sneaking feeling that the West is not terribly serious about unseating Gaddafi. The Libyan leader is certainly no more powerful than the late Saddam Hussein. Stubbornly failing to comply with predictions, Gaddafi's qualified stance in favour of a political resolution of the Libyan crisis is not self-contradictory -- it is defensible. Nor is it to be dismissed out of hand as a desperate attempt of a despairing political wretch. But it has left almost all his foes -- Western and domestic -- dissatisfied. Libya desperately needs a political settlement. Gaddafi has welcomed the Turkish and the South African/African Union peace initiatives but his adversaries in Benghazi flatly rejected both offers. On the face of it, prospects of such reconciliatory moves seem far-fetched and remote. That is a development wholly welcomed in the West. They have no qualms about splitting Libya in two. This kind of gratuitous and overstated demonisation of Gaddafi is exactly the wrong approach by the West to the Libyan conundrum. The Western predilection to blame the Libyan leader for all Libya's ills is a futile exercise that does not serve the interests of the Libyan people nor, ironically does it serve the interests of Western powers. Though the details of the anti-Gaddafi objections deserve debate, the underlying logic of the Gaddafi strategy is irrefutable. The West by contrast has little to offer that grips the imagination of Libyans. Gaddafi's gravest fault is that he has long sought to be all things to all men and women, friends and foes alike. Yet there is very little evidence that Libya is becoming more stable because of the West's military intervention. On the contrary, the fighting is intensifying, casualties among both the Gaddafi and anti-Gaddafi forces are mounting and the Gaddafi regime is actually becoming more confident and defiant. Civilian casualties are also fast rising especially in disputed cities such as Misrata, Libya's third largest urban conurbation. The fact remains that, stomach it or not, Gaddafi and the West do have a common interest in fighting Al-Qaeda and other militant Islamist political groups in Libya, North Africa and the Saharan and Sahelian belts of Africa. Security cooperation between Tripoli and Western powers is vital as both have been watching developments in the region with apprehension. The West is being sucked into a brutish civil war and pretending to be engrossed in a fantastical state-building exercise in Libya that has so far proved impractical in countries as far afield as Afghanistan and Haiti. Only the internal evolution of Libyan civil society without interference from the West can provide any practical long-term guarantees of democracy and good government in Libya. The imposition of new sanctions against Gaddafi's Libya means the prospects for a serious regional initiative on containing the growing power and influence of political Islam and militant Islamism are for the time being ruled out. Militant Islamists believe that the West's growing weakness in the region has left them holding all the strategic cards. So Gaddafi would like the West to put its political weight behind plans that stabilise a Libya that could accommodate Gaddafi politically in a way that gives no political space to the militant Islamists, or Al-Qaeda. Whether that is feasible remains to be seen. The other argument against further embroilment in the Libyan predicament is that Western credibility is at stake. Pulling out of Libya is the only logical conclusion to the Western entanglement in the war-torn North African nation. Gaddafi would prefer to see the West refocus its mission in Libya, and the region, much more tightly on fighting Al-Qaeda and militant Islamists. Deposing the Libyan leader is hardly the best strategy to contain the militant Islamist threat. The West has no moral obligation to construct a decent democracy in Libya, or in any other non-Western nation for that matter, and should dispense with such blatant posturing before it is too late. It was preposterous and cowardly of the National Transitional Council (NTC) headquartered in Benghazi to embrace NATO as their ticket to power in their war against Gaddafi. Human rights in Libya will not drop magically from the sky courtesy of Western warplanes, arms and ammunition. NATO's no-fly zone is a double-edged sword and Western bombardment of Gaddafi forces was not the catastrophic blow to the Gaddafi regime that the NTC had initially hoped for. Just as the false pretext of WMDs in Iraq led to a disaster there, so the false pretext of Gaddafi bombing civilians led to the current disaster in Libya. The West is obliged to acknowledge shifts in the global balance of power in favour of the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China -- two of whom are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. The BRIC nations will not tolerate the ongoing Western bombardment of civilian targets in Libya. The West has since made clear that its real goal in instituting the no-fly zone was the political demise of Gaddafi. But, even accepting this blatant twisting of the UN resolution, are Western powers up to the task? So perhaps it is time to rephrase the question. Is the NTC capable of picking up the pieces in a post-Gaddafi failed state? There are growing and eerily similar tendencies between scenarios in Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi's Libya. In both cases, the West invaded on false pretexts to seize resources and destroyed a strong state apparatus in the process, creating failed states. Such a future is arriving faster than most realise. This observation leads in two possible directions. The United States has become the country to emulate, but can the tribal elders backing the NTC ape American senators when their own constituents are predominantly tent dwellers? It is inconceivable even with an NTC façade that in the near future Libya will become one of the US's special allies among the nascent North African democracies. Gaddafi insisted that he will open up the Libyan economy at its -- read his -- own speed. Underneath lie two radically differing conceptions of globalisation that have historically made a Libyan-Western partnership less likely even as trade and commercial exchanges between Libya and the West soared. Libya, like many other Arab countries, is undergoing a solemn moment of deep introspection. There is no place in such political pensiveness for Western interference, even if it is ostensibly well-meaning. Western-style multi-party democracy necessitates a considerable degree of sustained social cohesion. It is a recipe for fruitless conflict in a tribal society. The West cannot enforce political pluralism on the Libyan people. Saudi Arabia is a patchwork of tribal fiefdoms much like Libya, but the NTC's legitimacy is a far cry from the venerable Saudi royalty. Contrary to what Western propaganda and the international media propagate, the blame game continues inside Libya over who is responsible for the worst atrocities in the Libyan civil war. Not all Libyans blame Gaddafi and his henchmen. Until Gaddafi goes, so the argument goes, the West cannot risk withdrawal from Libyan airspace altogether. Libya will descend into an accelerated spiral of disaster. The West needs to stop baiting Gaddafi. Western powers must learn to let the NTC stand or fall on its own.
