Human Rights and National Security: Go vs Chess

The U.S., NATO, the UN, and members of the Arab league are ensconced Libya, the first conflict since the start of the “Jasmine Revolution” of 2011. In the United States, the debate about U.S. involvement has been intense (as it should be). While some have debated the Constitutionality of the move, Obama’s actions have been consistent with the War Powers Resolution and the actions of his predecessors. A more interesting debate, in my opinion, is the debate about whether this action, which has been justified on humanitarian grounds, is in the interest of the National Security of the United States.

In my last analysis, I argued that U.S. President Barack Obama inherited a foreign policy that has now outlived its usefulness, and he has struggled to change direction quickly enough.

[Read US Foreign Policy: Washington Faces a Revolutionary World]

The old foreign policy, developed during the Cold War and adapted for the “War on Terror” was based on chess, positioning powerful pieces deep into “enemy” territory, eliminating of blocking powerful threats, and keeping the enemy in “check.” What most Americans didn’t understand, however, is that while we were maneuvering deeper into the Middle East, the populous was playing a different game, the East-Asian game of Go. In Go, a game that utilizes tactics mastered by the Chinese Warrior Sun Tzu, each player attempts to surround the opponent’s pieces with their own. Areas of strength, deep within enemy lines, can easily be surrounded by a strategic opponent, costing the player the game. In this way, American foreign policy in the last 30+ years was alienating, or angering, the people of the Middle East and North Africa. Thus, the further the U.S. pushed into the Middle East, the more surrounded by opponents the U.S. had become. The U.S. launched military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, supported dictators who offered economic and political stability, and each American administration tended to ignore politically-inconvenient oppression.

With the fall of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt, America’s chess pieces are now surrounded, and Obama’s old allies in the region are now liabilities.

VIDEO: Go vs. Chess in Modern Warfare

In the response to the crisis in Libya, the question became whether or not going to war (even if it is only an air war), which risks being lumped in with other U.S. “imperialist” military intervention, would promote national security. Gaddafi is arguably a more dangerous “chess piece” if he is cornered and wounded. Libya isn’t strategically important, in the traditional sense of the concept. The Obama administration was divided, and Salon’s Heather Michon summed up the division like this:

The emerging storyline is that (female) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and National Security Advisor Samantha Power stampeded over the (male) heavy-hitters like Defense Secretary Robert Gates and National Security Adviser Thomas E. Donilon to convince Barack Obama to take military action in Libya.

In other words, the human rights activists in the administration, the Go players, saw the need to get involved militarily to prevent wholesale slaughter, while the established representatives of traditional national security models, the chess players of the administration, opposed the move.

The Go team saw something that the chess team had missed; that Libya was the continuation of a pro-democracy movement in the Middle East and North Africa, and this populist movement was the best hope of securing national security in a post-dictator region. Supporting democracy would win the hearts and minds of the people, and the people are in the position to take over. Clinton, Rice, and Power also recognized that this fire of revolution was unlikely to stop soon. When Tunisia was falling, most so-called-analysts argued that Egypt was a stable government, unlikely to fall. Even in Bahrain, most experts initially downplayed the likelihood of widespread revolution. Al Jazeera, which was more optimistic than most publications about the likelihood of protests there, wrote this on February 12:

Although most analysts do not see any immediate risk of revolt after popular uprisings toppled the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt, the small island nation is considered the most vulnerable to unrest among Gulf Arab countries.

Since then we’ve seen protests in other Gulf Nations, most notably Yemen and Saudi Arabia. One look at The Guardian’s interactive timeline is enough to convince most non-believers: this revolution is a hot flame, and it will take down anyone who underestimates it. The human rights activists in the Obama administration recognized that this revolutionary fervor, if suppressed, would smolder. If this happened, the U.S. would be blamed for stepping into placed like Iraq for imperialist reasons, but staying out of places like Libya when innocent lives were on the line. In the end, Barack Obama agreed.

General Petraeus figured out that in Iraq and Afghanistan national security could be safeguarded if the standard of living of foreign people improved. As long as insurgents and U.S. armed forces were busy destroying infrastructure and inflicting collateral damage, no progress would be made. What was important factor in turning the tide there would be how effectively the United States could “win the hearts and minds” of the residents by providing the civilians security, economic and political power, and the capitol needed to jump-start infrastructure improvements. In other words, Petraeus decided to fight for human rights in order to fight a war. Where the U.S. has been successful in improving living conditions, they have also been effective in winning the war. Where they have failed the first goal, they have failed the second.

In the Middle East and North Africa, the world has the ability to reset the status quo, and win the hearts and minds, by supporting these revolutions. Clinton gets this. As I also discussed in my previous article, she sees an uncensored internet, a contemporary “Radio Free Europe,” as a primary tool for giving people a voice and breaking the hold that repressive regimes have on their people. She understands that you can win a chess match and lose a Go game, and she understood that Gaddafi wasn’t bombing a rebellion, he was bombing a movement.

Moving forward, the Obama administration is likely to struggle in applying this kind of thinking to places like Yemen and Bahrain, or even Saudi Arabia. These governments have been propped up by the West (actually, by the entire world) for a long time because they offer access to oil and an ally against the rise of radical Islam, two factors that are essential for the stability of the planet. The trick then becomes how the West can support democracy without turning on long-time allies and ruining diplomatic credibility and trust. Also, intervention is probably not what every country needs, and how to best support the pro-democracy movement, in each country, is already a hard question to answer. In the end, the U.S. will likely pursue a foreign policy that balances these considerations so that the United States emerges stronger. We shouldn’t be surprised that governments pursue selfish policies, as that is what they are designed to do. Still, Obama may be remembered for leading an important transitional administration, one that increasingly considers human rights as a matter of national security. He’ll be remembered for trying to change the game from chess to Go, but in the end he’ll be judged on whether or not he can win both games at once.