But it is a failure: a failure to act long before the situation became so desperate. Whatever happens now will cause loss of life to the very people the UN resolution 1973 was aimed to protect. It exposes the inability of the UN and the great powers to act to prevent the suffering and loss of life in, for example, Cambodia in the 1970s, Rwanda in the 1990s and now in Libya.
Their paralysis is partly due to their pursuing two incompatible aims at once. They want oil and trade, in this case to sell arms, but at the same time they genuinely are horrified at how some governments treat their own people. A cartoon in The Irish Times, showing Gaddafi receiving a call from one of these presumably western leaders who says, if you dont stop using all those guns and planes we sold you we might not sell you any more, nicely sums up the dilemma.
We watch the terrible drama. Young people in the Arab countries from Morocco to Yemen want change but they have approached it differently country by country. Gene Sharp, a retired political scientist in the US, thinks the Egyptians had a master plan but others did not and that is why they face such uncertainties. A life time of teaching political science led him to write From Dictatorship to Democracy, a study of what brings liberation.
He feels, things are not looking good in Libya the Libyans are not acting according to my writings. This attitude they are not doing what I told them to do sounds presumptuous but Sharp has worked out various conclusions from years of observance. He rejects the word non-violence as sloppy. It means anything you want it to mean. What he wants in its place is non-violent action. It is not sitting on ones hands. It is a carefully planned non-violent struggle.
We are faced with a most painful few weeks as young Arab people struggle with or without plans. Some will make some gains. Others will be robustly resisted. The world does not yield easily to change as Robert Kennedy said many years ago. In 1956 the Hungarians arose and in 1968 the Czechs. Both were crushed. Finally it was the Poles and the whole Soviet empire shook and crumbled. Is it likely the Arabs will achieve freedom more quickly? And when they do whose turn will it be then?
Post published in: Opinions