Offshore Balancing Act

'The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it'

--John Hay

'In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end'
--Alexis de Tocqueville

It's believed that what brought Washingon onboard regarding a no-fly zone was the express desire of the Arab League to enact this specific deterrent. One is reminded of T. E. Lawrence's observation, 'better the Arabs do it tolerably than that we do it perfectly.'

I hope that the Powell Doctrine is getting plenty of exposure in the White House. In that doctrine, conceived in the early 1990s, a key element was that the military plan should employ decisive and overwhelming force in order to achieve a rapid result. A clear exit strategy must be thought through right from the beginning and the use of force must only be a last resort. Much has been made of this doctrine being buried in Afghanistan.In fact, a no-fly zone must come as a great relief to Mike Mullen and Robert Gates, even though the latter seemed to express reservations regarding it in earlier testimony. The US can rapidly overwhelm adversaries using superior weaponry and awareness of the battle space. A no-fly zone would be a conventional conflict in which it could finally deploy for combat the vaulted F-22. Since there is no ground deployment, the propensity for mission creep is almost entirely extinguished.

But the Powell Doctrine, like earlier strategies, asserts that if military means are employed, they are utilised for political ends. Thus we ask in Libya, what are the political ends of the no-fly zone there? Ostensibly they are for the prevention of a massacre of a population by its own government. A no-fly zone and interdiction of material travelling to Benghazi through the desert would limit the amount of hardware available to Qadaffi's forces. Destruction of aircraft would limit the theatre to two dimensions. But history has taught us that a two-dimensional theatre does not stop massacre - the often cited example is the Rwandan genocide, perpetrated mostly with machetes and knives. Consider part of the text of the UN Security Council Resolution, 1973:

“Determining that the situation in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya continues to constitute a threat to international peace and security,

“Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations,

“1.   Demands the immediate establishment of a ceasefire and a complete end to violence and all attacks against, and abuses of, civilians;

“2.   Stresses the need to intensify efforts to find a solution to the crisis which responds to the legitimate demands of the Libyan people and notes the decisions of the Secretary-General to send his Special Envoy to Libya and of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union to send its ad hoc High-Level Committee to Libya with the aim of facilitating dialogue to lead to the political reforms necessary to find a peaceful and sustainable solution;

There are obviously problems here. 

One: This Libyan conflict is internal. The reason for French and British interest is that the battle will undoubtedly generate vast numbers of refugees, and as David Cameron observed, is on the Southern tip of Europe. Hence you have a political situation that at current is under the remit of foreign policy, but will spread at a later moment to domestic politics. The Italian and Maltese authorities both turned away a boat carrying refugees as they contained Morrocans and it wasn't known if 'terrorists' had infiltrated the boat.

Two: Establishing a ceasefire will create an unworkable geostrategic moment in the country. Rebels would control Benghazi, but could be ousted by Qadaffi's forces regardless of a no-fly zone. Thus the monopoly on violence enjoyed by the rebels in Benghazi would be artificial and subject to rapid change, inherent within that a furious moment of fighting between pro- and anti-Qadaffi forces.

Three: 'Responds to the legitimate demands of the Libyan people.' The demands of the people are not homogenous. There is no unified uprising. On the one side are the disenfrancised and on the other are those who have benefitted under the Qadaffi regime. 

Four: Tyranny, or dynastic rule, does not govern by engaging in 'political reforms'.

Even the Arab League comment to the UN resolution is confusing. Sec-Gen Moussa claimed the resolution did not allow invasion, but hoped that it would create a situation in which no side could, 'go too far'. But already the Arab League (Moussa is hoping to be the next Egyptian President and thus will be keen to avoid being seen as a Western lackey) is at odds with the three permanent members of the Security Council. Asked about the role of air strikes, Moussa said that the League had, 'stressed the jamming of radar that would not allow the attacking of the civilian population'.

And then there is the spectre of colonialism and images of US aircraft pounding North African positions, with all the internet imagery that this would lead to. So would the US allow others to take the lead, leaving its peerless F-22 grounded? Qatar and UAE have expressed intent to assist in the no-fly zone but whilst UAE has F-16s, Qatar is in the middle of trials of F-35, Typhoon and Rafaele to replace its Mirage 2000-5s. Besides, these are Gulf states and in case anyone forgot or didn't want to acknowledge it, Libya is clearly situated in the Maghreb. Although Libya has ageing aircraft (see here for a detailed breakdown by Richard Basas of surface-to-air capability and aircraft available to the regime), any casualties among Gulf/Arab nations sustained in enforcing a no-fly zone would then return to haunt American. It's damned if it does as a colonial power enforcing imperialist interests; its damned if it doesn't for leaving its hegemonic weaponry on the runway whilst others take the heat.


So far, so bad. This sounds to me an awful lot like a new form of offshore balancing. Mearsheimer's term expresses the idea that America would 'reject the use of military force to reshape the politics of the region and would rely instead on local allies to contain their dangerous neighbors. As an offshore balancer, the United States would husband its own resources and intervene only as a last resort. And when it did, it would finish quickly and then move back offshore.' The relative inexpensiveness of this approach is particularly attractive in the current climate and it avoids American/MENA ground interaction. But a no-fly zone would only aggravate the Qadaffi regime and consolidate its core. Both sides in the conflict face an existential threat and that is very dangerous, having a propensity to escalate. The war for Benghazi will not be decided from the air but this US-UK-Fr led no-fly zone will show once again the eagerness of Western powers to intervene in arenas of strategic interest. People die when they rebel against tyrants, freedom is sometimes won with blood. If the aim of the no-fly zone is to create a cease-fire, there had better be an idea of what comes after that.

Afghanistan and Organizations

Fitting Square Blocks in Triangular Holes

‘The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious.’

--Marcus Aurelius

‘The deep structure of culture not only consists of how we perceive reality and truth but also how we orient ourselves toward our physical and human environment, which involves unconscious and taken-for-granted concepts of time and space’

-- Edgar Schein

The Bonn Agreement (2001) and its successor, the Afghanistan Compact (2006) have sought to make Afghanistan one of the most centralised (or to use a post-modern term, essentialised) of sovereign nations.  In the Bonn Agreement, ‘the Interim Authority shall be the repository of Afghan sovereignty’ where, ‘upon the official transfer of power, all mujahidin, Afghan armed forces and armed groups in the country shall come under the command and control of the Interim Authority’ and ‘the judicial power of Afghanistan shall be independent and shall be vested in a Supreme Court of Afghanistan.’ The Afghanistan Compact, as a successor document, was better able to identify problems that had arisen over the past five years since attempting to prosecute the 2001 Agreement - the themes were divided into security, governance, reconstruction and development, and counter-narcotics.

Notions of centralised authority, state structure and accountability by oversight are Western political ideals borne from the historically observed relationship between the ruler and the ruled. In today’s world of weak states receiving foreign aid and cheap provision of debt there lies no incentive for elites to negotiate with their publics for tax revenues or feudal subordination. By contrast, in Europe, elites traditionally had to negotiate with their publics to raise money and soldiers for interstate, total war and thus forged strong central state structures (Centeno, 2002).

Marx and Gramsci have viewed the state as a coercive structure, a concentrated and organized violence of society. In Afghanistan, however, Biddle has pointed out that, historically, the central government lacked the strength and resources to exercise local control or provide public goods in many parts of the country – instead, it ruled according to a series of bargains between the state and individual communities, exchanging relative autonomy for fealty and a modicum of order (Biddle, ‘Defining Success in Afghanistan’, Foreign Affairs). But given the willingness of NATO to prop up the Karzai regime (fraudulent elections in 2009, as noted by a colleague who was involved in monitoring) there is no traditional pay-off between the ruler and the ruled. 

Against this backdrop that attenuates the traditional state structure, much has been made of the decentralised system of government that exists in Afghanistan, especially jirgas and tribal codes such as pashtunwali (Originally viewed as fixed, now seen as mutable, open to interpretation). It has become fashionable to talk of Pashtuns and Afghans as separate entities (Robert Johnson, ‘The Pashtun Way of War?’), of the country being ‘kaleidoscopic in nature’, possessing so many varieties of groups that they defy categorisation.  David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency analyst, observes the situation succinctly:

‘There is [sic] about 40,000 villages in Afghanistan. For the last year or two we have been focusing on getting the government from a set of remote central institutions in the capital out into those 40,000-odd villages and actually creating a connectivity between the government and its population. Of course, if you are extending the reach of a government that is unpopular, you are actually making the situation worse.’

(David Kilcullen, interview with Lateline, 28 August 2009)

Imposing sovereign government on a heterogeneous society is difficult enough, but the commander of ISAF forces since McChrystal’s departure, Petraeus, has altered the tactics of his predecessor (and Petraeus is likely to depart before the end of the year, leading to further tactical changes). He has stepped up the use of aerial assault in the region: air attacks at the end of 2010 saw a 100% increase when compared to the same period in the previous year. Further, in the past few months, vacated villages now mined by the neo-Taliban are at risk of being completely destroyed by air assault. United Nations statistics for the conflict present a statistical indictment of an escalation: 2010 saw 2,777 civilians killed (‘75% by the Taliban’), an 83% rise in abductions, 105% increase in ‘targeted killings’, a 588% and 248% rise in civilian killings in Helmand and Kandahar and a 21% rise in the number of child casualties.

There is a fluctuating relationship between the U.S. Administration and Karzai (not going to get better now that NATO have killed his cousin). The former has charged the C.I.A. station chief (nicknamed ‘Spider’) in Kabul with acting as a go-between in times of crisis, as noted in the Wall Street Journal. But the C.I.A’s involvement has exacerbated attempts at transparency. The WSJ article observes that:

‘The CIA's prominent role in Afghanistan is fraught, the spy agency having clashed at times with the official diplomatic mission. That has complicated the civilian component of the U.S. military surge. In particular, the station chief's role has led to tensions with the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry. Officials said the ambassador objected last fall to the return to Kabul of the station chief, who had held the same post earlier in the war.’

The ‘reality on the ground’ has become disconnected from the political. Civilian (both civilian government and NGOs) and military activities lack harmony: this is a clearly defined problem with no obvious answer. Section 1207 of the NDAA makes up to $100 million a year available for the DoD to pass to the State Department. In 2006 the DoD passed $10 million, in 2007, $99.5 million and in 2008, the full $100 million was allocated to the State Department demonstrating how thinking is switching from military to civilian means in among military analysts. There’s still a massive disparity in resources between DoD and USDoS and  aneven bigger gap between DoD and USAID. But does allocating civilian government actors more money ameliorate the problems? The London Conference, January 28, 2010 exposed serious rifts between international actors on a strategy towards Afghanistan. This interview with Bente Scheller by atlantic-community.org is instructive:

A growing body of academic work has sought to apply Organizational Culture to the problem of this obvious dissonance between civilian and military actors engaged in ‘complex interventions.’ Organizational values identify:

‘Beliefs and ideas about what kinds of goals members of an organization should pursue and ideas about the appropriate kinds or standards of behavior organizational members should use to achieve these goals. From organizational values develop organizational norms, guidelines, or expectations that prescribe appropriate kinds of behavior by employees in particular situations and control the behavior of organizational members towards one another.’

A strong culture exists where agents respond to stimulus because of their alignment to organizational values. Conversely, there is weak culture where there is little alignment with organizational values and control must be exercised through extensive procedures and bureaucracy. The latter is evident in Afghanistan.  There are 2000 Afghan and 360 International NGOs working in the country (disproportionately, 34% operate in Kabul, of which one factor for this must be lack of human security across the country). The numerous NGOs working in the field are not components of the Peace Operation, which in Afghanistan refers to the 3 main international missions - the Coalition Forces, ISAF, and UNAMA. 

NGOs routinely coordinate their activities with other international and national actors in the field in order to share information about programmes, to avoid duplication and waste, and to pool security information to best protect the safety of aid workers and beneficiaries. However, NGOs are independent and operate in accordance with guidelines set by their own organizations, and the extent of cooperation with other organizations can vary. Some insist on their political neutrality and operational independence and actively resist 'being coordinated' by either their home governments or international organizations. Consider this job vacancy for NRC:

How can Organizational Culture make civilian/military relations more efficient? Andrea Baumann in her influential 2008 RUSI article, Clash of Organisational Cultures? argues for the establishment of a coherent narrative in reshaping the institutional landscape, rather than pushing for greater integration and harmonisation of historically unaligned actors.  Civilian agencies template their work, ‘based on the expectation of a reasonably benign environment’ and are thus forced to change this to suit, ‘the realities of a counter-insurgency campaign.’ Baumann cites ‘security’ as an obvious example of differing views of the same word. The military perceive security in kinetic terms; diplomats frame security in terms of law enforcement and public order; development experts as a matter of human security.  Echoing this idea, Kilcullen in 2009 observed that:

The next two years is really about security. It very is difficult to do much, other than the reforms we talked about. If you don't have a certain amount of security on the ground for aid workers, development professionals, NGOs and Afghan investors and so on, to get out and do a lot of reconstruction work that needs to be done, there has to be a minimum level of security.

Kilcullen frames security within a ‘kinetic’ frame. For Baumann, dissonance in language between civilians sectors and the military becomes a problem of culture preventing shared narrative. A lead department of assimilated hierarchy that positions civilian and military within a Babelian tower is for Baumann not the answer.  In complex interventions (or Phase IV operations), forging a monolithic bloc of military-civilian might is far-fetched.

Civilian government agencies and non-governmental organizations coexist, the latter required to engage in areas of concern identified in the Afghanistan Compact, particularly those of economic and social development. But external actors to government often take the best minds from the domestic population, removing them from local government initiatives and ultimately hindering the very apparatus that they intend to stimulate (for example see Ferguson, ‘Global Shadows’). If a government vehicle is deemed too weak to function properly, necessitating the introduction of an NGO (also known as a Civil Society Organisation, CSO), this NGO can pull away skilled domestic talent from local, regional or national government vehicles, rendering the NGO the only viable system through which the action can be implemented. With striking clarity the problem is witnessed in a report for the Aga Khan Development Network: it was stressed that

‘the empowerment of CSOs is one of the important indicators of a democratic society and the active existence of CSOs in the society should be counted as important for democratic expansion. The increase seen over the past six years in the establishment of CSOs in Afghanistan is a sign of its determination to create a civil society.’

This raises the spectre of a civil society lacking government. How many parallel economies are at work in Afghanistan? I count two. Ostensibly there is the Karzai government in Kabul, sovereign and operating with the monopoly on violence required for a remit to govern. Obviously the Kabul-based regime does not however, operate nationally with the monopoly on violence necessary for centralised authority. As such there exist two parallel economies:

1. Essentialising a tribal society requires the tribal leaders to cooperate. Since their frame of reference, indeed limits of their vision are the tribe and its geography, these leaders have no incentive to receive Kabul diktats. Cooperation requires incentives: usually this is money, supplied covertly. The C.I.A for example has employed a 30 000 strong Afghan militia that it pays and uses to hunt down militants (Woodward, ‘Obama’s Wars’).  The Obama Administration bemoans corruption in the Karzai administration as it simultaneously funds shadow networks in the country.

2. ‘Counter-narcotics’ was identified as a security concern in the Afghanistan Compact (for an interesting ‘solution’ to this problem see here).  Where there is a drugs trade, there is an entire shadow economy. Half the wealth generated in Helmand is from the narco-economy. Afghanistan has geostrategic value and illicit economies operate from Afghanistan into Iran; Afghanistan into Central Asia; Afghanistan into Pakistan.  Globalization as a phenomenon has two distinct and contraposed narratives: the first see globalization as a developed country phenomenon that improves security prospects among developed countries, with little effect for weak states, which are more isolated. In the second narrative, globalization facilitates flows of illicit goods, such as drugs, and transnational networks such as terrorist networks, that can threaten developed countries: weak states facilitate the flow of illicit goods and serve as bases for these networks (Chowdhury, ‘Failed States’, Security Dialogue).

This isn’t something that either civilian or military input can ameliorate. In the run up to the 2014-15 ‘handover’, a paradigm shift in international civilian-military engagement in the country is required.

More:

Prof Theo Farrell's authoritative account (innaugural lecture, podcast) on the war for Helmand, 2006-11, with Organizations perspective.

Takayuki Nishi analyses Iraq and Afghanistan through the lens of Political Science applying 
Posen’s Balance of Power theory and Kier’s Organizational Cultures.

ICOS report, interviewing 522 Afghan men across the nation to determine attitudes to reconstruction.

Joshua Foust on Aid in Afghanistan

France24: Aid Agencies as Pawns 

Beyond Stuxnet

Rise of mezzanine actors impossible to tie to states seen as major new issue for governments

The FT's excellent recent feature on Iran contains a proposed scenario for facilitating the 'infiltration' of Stuxnet into the Natanz reactor facility. Since, the authors state, the Natanz computers are not web-aligned, the virus had to be delivered in person to one of the systems operating on the intranet, probably by USB flashdrive. It's the most logical scenario but Stuxnet went on not just to infect the Natanz system, but computers worldwide, 60% of them in Iran, but many further afield, in the UK, China and the United States among many. It's estimated that 60 000 computers may now be infected. This suggests some sort of web exposure or a different mode of entry for the worm as it has obviously leaked from its intended source. Eloquent on the issue and outspoken, Ralph Langner has spoken at the recent TED conference, asserting his belief that Israel and America are behind Stuxnet. Mr Langner said that the project would have required "inside information", so detailed that "they probably knew the shoe size of the operator."

Picking up on a less well reported release, that of Germany's new cybersecurity strategy, Thomas Rid at the Kingsofwar blog. The document is interesting as a possible blueprint for government action in the future. It proposes the creation of two new bodies - a ten-man cyber defence centre and also a cyber security council as Rid terms it. Organizational Culture theorists would have a field day. Bureaucracy reigns supreme. This is followed by the proposal to create a codex that will serve as a doctrine for foreign policy. It's important for nation-states to take a lead on this issue and attempt to establish norms through which cyberwarfare can be outlawed, but how do you punish? The originators of Stuxnet have never been actually identified. If a cyberattack shut down a hospital where a political figure was being treated, killing many patients therein as a result and the attack originated from one country but the state denied all knowledge, how do you proceed?

The current issue of Survival, in tune to the prevailing current of fear, leads with cyber-threats. One article therein runs with the theme of governments outsourcing cybercrime to unnattributable third-parties. This theme is broadly enhanced and developed by the second article which links Mezzanine actors to states such as China and Iran. 'We are behind in the thinking and utilisation' seems to be the current perceived wisdom. This problem has been drifting around the sidelines for many years, for example, 'Cyber Attacks and International Law', Grove, Goodman and Lukasik', Survival (Autumn 2000), but without ever really identifying the statelessness of attacking through the World Wide Web. International Law is essentially based around notions of state interactions, cooperation and antagonism between actors bounded by geography. Al-Qaeda changed the idea of how Western military might respond to non-state actors, and this has been a struggle in itself - so-called Fourth Generation warfare being the issue of our day. At least al-Qaeda can in some manner be identified, through an ideological commitment, a brand, a visual web presence. Mezzanine cyberwarriors will not afford states the same luxury.

Purely technological, countering what have become known as Advanced Persistent Threats is featuring more heavily on the worldwide conference agenda. The "Advanced Persistent Threat" (APT) refers to advanced and normally clandestine means to gain continual, persistent intelligence on an individual, or group of individuals such as a foreign nation state government. Since software is imperfect, it exists with holes or spaces within which trojans can operate. Booz Allen have hosted a number of seminars and discussions on the subject:




It's complicated with no obvious answer. The expertise is available worldwide for the highest bidder, and states offer immunity, funding and necessary technology for these mezzanine actors. Civilian and Military 'structures' are equally as vulnerable making response a problem in itself.

West wants Oil; East wants Oil Wealth

Fighting against Tyranny, fighting for...?

'Two factors determine the price of a barrel of oil: the fundamental laws of supply and demand, and naked fear.'

--Economist, The Price of Fear

When historians distill from the1789 French Revolution its essence, they see that wonderful slogan, 'Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite.' What did the barricade desire? Freedom (from oppression), equality (instead of inequality) and unity (brotherhood instead of dischord and internecine strife). And they got it. At least, for a while. The aristocracy was dissolved. Freedom from tyranny was brought forth by the Enlightenment principles of citizenship (the social contract) and inalienable rights. Equality was produced through anarchy; everyone is equal since a state of nature begins, where 'every man is wolf to every man' (Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651). Brotherhood was a watchword because they stood forth at the barricades and died, fighting against oppression. It's fine when you're fighting against something. But you also have to understand what you're fighting for. 

The revolution in France was a beast that has shaped understanding of liberal democracies, secularism (partition of religion and state) and ideologies as disparate as fascisim and Marxism. In Britain, Edmund Burke, the philosopher and member of parliament argued against the revolution - the inattention of the revolutionaries to the relations that needed to be comprised in a modern government, especially in connexion with liberty, was matched by the inappropriateness to a sovereign regime of structuring its institutions around equality rather than around effective command. This led Thomas Paine, in arguing against Burke, to compose his famous, Rights of Man 1791. Four years after the revolution, the year long reign of terror led to the murder of between 16 000 and 40 000 'citizens'. From the ashes of Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite, France would come to see restorations of the monarchy, two subsequent revolutions, and be governed by a republic, a constitutional monarchy, and two empires (First and Second World Wars). The right to govern can be a long process.

The West has distilled from these uprisings in the Middle East and north Africa (MENA, to use industry-speak) that the protestors want democracy. Actually, the idea of demos doesn't seem to be anywhere on the protestors' banners, in their interviews or tweets or blogs. They want an end to the current tyranny that sees the presence of self-enriching elites possessing little or no accountability. They then, presumably, want the best system of government to ensure equal prosperity, based around a system of meritocracy. Don't we all? We know what we don't want, which makes the initial phase easy. When we don't know what we want, we have no real idea, no coalesced voice, of what the nature of government should look like. Hence noone should be suprised that firstly the Egyptian transitional President Safick was sacked or secondly that news of his replacement was met with confusingly mixed reactions. Some saw it as a sacking of the old guard, others as a conspiracy theory, that Safick was going to blow the whistle on elements of an army coup. The West distilled from this confusion the only thing it could do - uncertainity, lack of direction, no purpose, no figurehead, no plan. No requested system of government, noone to govern. Egyptian shares overseas have tumbled.

Iraq has an elected democracy,  which many commentators see as the proper end result. In which case the current protests in Iraq, over corruption and poor services, are a little worrying. On February 16, 3 protestors were killed in the Southern city of Kut and dozens have been killed in clashes with police in Baghdad's Tahrir Square, with a several thousand strong angry mob convening each Friday. In Fallujah, scene of the 2004 infamous American incursion there (twice, the second time as Operation Phantom Fury), protestors seemed to enjoy the monopoly on violence, burning down the Mayor's office and forcing the council to resign en masse.

So democracy is the end-game? Not at all - the end-game is a system that changes the status quo, defeats corruption and antiquated notions of patronage, replacing them with universal education and a meritocracy. Easy? It's want everyone at the bottom of the food chain wants. Afghanis would probably rise up en masse also, if the nation wasn't so decentralised, tribal and far too poverty-stricken to spend time protesting. After all, Karzai's government in Kabul must be one of the most obviously self-aggrandizing elites of any nation in the world - the media know well enough that Kabul Bank has become a loan-shop for the elites to buy property abroad (mostly Dubai) and fund business ventures.

For the West, the essence distilled from these uprisings is oil. After all, what more personal message can these faceless, abstract Middle Eastern and Maghreb protests convey than that they might be to the detriment of the Western lifestyle? The message is that we are an oil-based lifeform and employ it in every facet of our daily lives to implement our apparent right to the affluent pursuit of happiness. If you think I'm wrong about the West see what we're reading - the Economist runs a three page analysis of how 'a complex chain of cause and effect links the Arab world's turmoil to the health of the world economy'. It is also their Leader article, ('The 2011 oil shock'). The FT trumps the Economist though in the battle for Brent Crude inches, noting that the protests have moved from oil importers (Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan) to oil exporters (Libya, Oman, Bahrain) with the implication that the protests are moving to more serious locations for Western interests.

Libya represents 2% of worldwide barrels per day (1.4m of 70 million barrels per day) and its composition is suitable only for distillation in the refineries of Europe or Asia, which limits the geography of its potential for export. Stock markets are wary, but in fact, all eyes are on Saudi Arabia. North Africa produces 5% of total barrels, but the Middle East makes up 30%. Saudi pumps about 9 million per day and there's an OPEC ability to pump 4-6million extra, of which Saudi makes up 3-4 million of that, therefore suppressing any volatlity in the market caused by small restrictions. The Kingdom says it is pumping an extra 600 000 a day at the moment to offset the Libyan shock. Strange also that little attention was paid to a Feb 26 terrorist attack that closed Iraq's biggest oil refinery. The Saudi stock exchange may have taken note - the stock market fell 7% on March 1st.

America should be sitting pretty but of course it isn't - and if they sponsor intervention here, since the waves seem to spread, they could be involved in massive interventionism and a huge propensity for mission creep. Intervention in today's globalised media world means images of American military activity - that can only be bad.  Still, Obama has just given first permission for offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexic since the Deepwater Horizon tragedy and US reliance on foreign oil has been dropping for the last five years and may well drop for the next five, due to a revitalised domestic industry.

Perhaps it's about oil for the protestors, too. After all - they know oil wealth is the key to immediate economic gains. One protestor in Libya, still working at a refinery, was quoted as reasoning that, ' We don't like him. We are not here for him. We are here to protect the oil, for our people'. And for Iraq too - protests over lack of prosperity and now terrorist attacks on economic infrastructure. Perhaps this represents a change of strategy for the terrorists there - attempting to nurture and exacerbate economic, rather than political, grievances. Economic grievances are easier to isolate and they seem to provoke a more universal coagulation of dissent. Clearly the protestors don't want aid from the West, they want reduction in trade barriers and prevention of MNC parallel economies. And why shouldn't they?