The Solarium

I could not help notice last night that Russia and China abstained from the UN Security Council vote on the intervention in Libya. 

Why would Russia and China abstain? This is precisely the kind of non-intervention moment that has defined their UN diplomatic strategy for decades. I'm sure that deeper analysis will reveal manifold reasons having to do with complex calculations of power, internal political struggles and ideology, but there may be a more straightforward rationale: Moscow and Beijing might just want to keep the United States distracted and divided. Saddling Washington and its French and British partners with another failed state in the Islamic world is just the kind of gift that will keep on giving.

It's none too soon, from the Russian and Chinese perspective. American success in surfing the revolutions in the Middle East has been quite good, considering the nations involved and the rapid timeline of events. Egypt and Tunisia were extraordinary successes, which, though they still need considerable consolidation, have to be of concern to the two leading illiberal regimes in international affairs. Principled people power is a real threat to these undemocratic ruling powers. More so, they may have calculated, than taking the slight hit on the critical principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of nations.

Therefore, breaking the momentum of people power by enabling the interventionists in the West to wrest the profile of America's regional engagement back to the military dimension has real value to our rising great powers. But make no mistake, American engagement in Libya runs the risk of running afoul, yet again, of General Powell's Pottery Barn dictum: you break it, you bought it. 

The other abstentions were India, Brazil and Germany. This group has a different calculation. For this group, I suspect their core interest lies in keeping America and Europe focused on what is more important--addressing bigger global challenges that have much greater impact on their long-term security and prosperity than the outcome of a civil war in Libya. 

And without these five nations on board, if/when the situation in Libya escalates beyond the capacities of our European partners, America is set to buy yet another pre-broken nation.  

That's not to say that the United States should therefore give succor to Col. Ghadaffi, his regime and other regional governments where the people do not have a meaningful say in their governing principles or in who runs their government. The news that the passage of the no-fly zone has triggered a cease-fire from the Libyan Government is good, but the endgame is extraordinarily opaque. 

I'd rather work with our partners to contain Ghadaffi and provide humanitarian support to the Libyan people while we work hard to consolidate the gains made by the popular revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. Egypt is the largest Arab country by population and it has no oil. Demonstrating that America cares for the long-term prosperity, security and political development of Egypt would go a long way to transforming our profile in the Arab world. 

At the end of the day, Egypt is much more important to America's long-term interests than Libya, despite its oil. We will not get this moment back; this is a unique opportunity to convince the vast silent majority of people in the Arab world that the U.S. is a force for shared prosperity and security. That we have limited capacity to manage simultaneous crises should be well-understood by now. We took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan to invade Iraq and are paying for that mistake in blood, treasure and long-term progress. Let's not make a similar mistake again.