Benghazi and Diplomacy's Hard Power

When Egyptian rioters stormed the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, raising
the black banners (and bizarrely enough, some were hiding
behind Guy Fawkes’s now ubiquitous visage), the news was bad enough. A
handful of well-financed cranks, advancing a deluded and hateful but crushingly
unsurprising agenda, helped ignite a crisis in a critical U.S. partner. The
Embassy’s security personnel managed to avoid harm to its staff or the exercise
of deadly force (today, it seems, Egyptian internal security has finally showed
up at the compound walls). Yet despite the presence of Egyptian security
services in the area, the rioters still stormed the walls, desecrated the flag,
and flaunted those of the country’s foes – all on nominally sovereign U.S.
territory.

In Benghazi, the stronghold of a revolution that, with aid
from America and its allies, toppled the murderous Gaddafi regime, worse fears
came to pass. Beset by militants – let no media outlet utter again the
ridiculous phrase “armed protesters” – firing automatic weapons and rocket
propelled grenades, U.S. personnel returned fire. An outmatched Libyan security
force proved basically ineffectual. One U.S. diplomat died, at least another
was wounded, and the whole consulate burnt to the ground after the mob finished
looting it.

UPDATE: As I woke
up to edit this, news broke reporting that in addition to a potential three
additional U.S. deaths, a high-level official – possibly a Consul or even U.S.
Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, died as a result of the assault there. This
new information, if it is verified, makes this all the more urgent, and the
record of warning signs below all the more troubling.

This was not, of course, the first attack on diplomats in
free Benghazi.  Militants fired rocket
propelled grenades at British
embassy vehicles, and bombed
an Egyptian diplomat’s car. America’s Benghazi legation also suffered an IED attack.
I discussed the apparent compromises with, or neglect of, Libya’s extremist
armed groups in a previous post, when they were mostly focused on razing Sufi
shrines. Today, the inability or unwillingness of the Libyan security forces to
rein in these actors cost American diplomats their lives. The last Ambassador
to die in duty was Adolph Dubs, the U.S. Ambassador in Afghanistan, killed
after a botched, hasty raid on his militant kidnappers in 1979. That same year,
three American embassies – Tripoli, Tehran, and Islamabad – all suffered
sieges. As in Tehran, there was a record of targeting foreign diplomats and
officials (including by groups such as the MEK) before the siege. Unfortunately,
the hindsight is too late.

What is to be done? The most obvious solution would be for
the governments of Libya and Egypt to perform their diplomatic obligations and
curb attacks on other countries’ diplomats. Yet compelling even a friendly
government to conduct such a task when it disrupts transitional regimes’ relationships
with violent, and powerful political actors, is a task difficult even when the
government in question is deeply dependent on American largesse.

For those few for whom hasty (and later repudiated) Embassy
press releases and tweets might tip the balance from violent assaults on American
lives and sovereign soil to less ferocious forms of truculence, there is public
diplomacy, information operations, and the “war of ideas” (which
Adam critiques magnificently). For everyone else, there’s the Marine Corps.
In addition to the Marine Security Guards at U.S. facilities, today’s Marines
maintain FAST units – Fleet Antiterrorism Security Teams and RRTs – Rapid Response
Teams – to protect American officials, citizens, and interests abroad.

Far from being historically unprecedented, the Marines and
Navy have long been the big stick that enables American diplomats to speak
softly, and for merchantmen to go about their business peaceably. In the hundreds of
military interventions from America’s founding to today, many concerned
specifically the enforcement of widely recognized sovereign privileges.
These were initially, and especially, the rights of maritime shipping, upon
which global trade and diplomatic communication depended. Depredations against
American merchantmen, murder of sailors, and piracy all earned swift and
limited punitive action. Revolutionary upheaval prompted landings in defense of
American lives and property.

When the Marine Corps hymn sings of the “shores of Tripoli,”
they really mean Derne, in Cyrenaica, where Marines, supporting a Consular
official leading an army of mercenaries, with the backing of American offshore
power, hoisted an American flag over foreign shores. The goal was not to
liberate Libya but to discourage its governments from violating America’s
maritime rights.

Similarly as important and almost universally recognized, in
both practice and law, as legitimate sovereign privileges, are the rights of diplomats.
All these rights have limits, of course. In 1984, when anti-Gaddafi protesters
surrounded the Libyan embassy, Britain sent police officers for crowd control. The
Libyan officials inside decided to open fire on the crowd, killing
WPC Yvonne Fletcher. Libya then used its diplomatic bags to smuggle the
submachine gun out of the country. Diplomatic missions and associated officials
have obligations to avoid interference with domestic affairs and especially
breaches of the peace, and host governments have responsibilities to assist
them in that task. When that becomes impossible, diplomatic missions have a
right to repel offenses with violence.

Effective diplomacy demands the safety of diplomats. When
diplomats feel they cannot leave the embassy, their professional duties suffer
for it. In 1866, when bandits attacked the American consul in Newchwang, the
USS Wachusett landed bluejackets to
apprehend them. In the late 19^th century, America landed forces in
Samoa, Argentina, and Chile, in part to protect consular officials and
properties – and these were acts where there were far more legitimate
grievances about America’s role, such as its overt backing of rival partisans
in the Chilean case. America landed also, in the early 20^th century,
to protect consular officials in Honduras, and even further aflung, in Syria
and Abyssinia. America landed troops frequently in China throughout the late 19^th
and early 20^th century, and defended legations in Korea frequently.
In more modern times, George H.W. Bush deployed military forces to defend and
evacuate U.S. diplomatic facilities in Africa, the Balkans, and Latin America.

The U.S. may not need be as audacious in its expeditions
now, particularly since in the case of Egypt and Libya, the U.S. diplomatic
presence is, however influential, nowhere near as powerful in each country’s
internal political situation as America’s legations were in say, Latin America
or the Pacific during the early 20^th century. Yet the U.S. must
remain willing to deploy the Marines as precautionary measures, and it must be
willing to defend its diplomatic personnel with lethal force. While questions
of punitive expeditions are more complicated, the use of military force in the
defense of nigh-universally recognized sovereign rights is a principle in
keeping with American interests, history, and its proper comportment under
international law and state practice.

The alternative to effectively securing American diplomats
through traditional means is not pretty. The rise of private security
contractors owe much of their current prominence in part to this fact. After
the 1983 Beirut Embassy bombing, private contractors took increasingly large
roles in providing facility security, with the Bureau of Diplomatic Security
hiring contractors in 1994 to protect State
Department personnel in Haiti. Expanding the role of the State Department
sounds well and good, but a more robust diplomatic presence requires security,
and when military forces are unavailable, private contractors fill that gap, to
frequently problematic results.

So, if and when the U.S. Department of State returns in full
force to Libya, it may again be bringing a few hundred mercenaries with it –
not to overthrow the government, but to keep its lack of will or martial
capability from threatening its ability to maintain a presence in the country.
The complement, or worse, the alternative, will likely be diplomatic missions –
and their clandestine counterparts who rely on diplomatic covers – even less
willing to leave the facility, less willing to engage with the local
population, and less effective at actually doing the job of professional
diplomacy (or intelligence collection and covert operations, as the case may
be).

It is far too early to reasonably outline any kind of punitive
measures for what has occurred now. In theory, the bulk of the work of securing
cities for diplomats will fall to host governments. Yet it is manifestly
unclear how or how soon governments such as Libya’s, (particularly given the
almost total denial of reality some Libyan spokesmen have evinced by blaming
these acts on Gaddafi bittereinders)
can adequately secure these facilities, or if they really have the will to
prioritize them.

In the past, offenses such as these – even against, say,
sailors of naval vessels – prompted a punitive expeditions against non-state
groups such as bandits or partisans, followed by the imposition of an indemnity
on the government for the U.S.’s troubles. In Libya, nothing so dramatic is
likely to occur. Yet the capability to rapidly respond to evacuate or assist
State Department officials under threat will remain essential, even if the full
expeditionary power of a Joint Task Force or MAGTF is unlikely to be unleashed.

The readiness to defend American diplomatic rights is a
cornerstone of American foreign policy. The strength of the State Department is
bolstered, not detracted, by deterring power of the limited military
detachments which accompany it and stand over the horizon to defend it. The
more that deterrent and security is weakened, the less able the State
Department can operate safely and effectively without a growing reliance on
private security or other measures.  Regardless
of what policy options should or do play out in Libya, the US Department of
State – together with its colleagues in the USMC – ought ensure that anyone
contemplating to forcibly enter our legations or partake in an open season on
our diplomats do so only with a great and well-founded fear for their lives.

Lastly, and perhaps most striking, is something Joshua Foust
reminded me of on Twitter today – since World War II, more Ambassadors have
died in the line of duty than general officers. During many years of American
history since, it has arguably even been more dangerous to be a member of the
Foreign Service than the Armed Forces. The complexity and difficulty of
protecting diplomatic personnel, as outlined above, leaves them in a deeply
vulnerable situation. Responsible for the constant maintenance and crafting of
the vast and inscrutable beast that is U.S. foreign policy, they assume serious
amounts of personal risk, knowing that by the nature of their trade they must
leave themselves exposed, and that the very nature of their profession will
inherently constrain what their country can do to save them in an hour of need.
In theory they are protected by inviolable sovereign rights and centuries of diplomatic
tradition. In reality, the options for the Marines attached to the legations
will always be circumscribed by the foreign policy considerations those they
protect serve to advance. With the enormous amount of risk State Department
civilians face, it is imperative the military components supporting the State
Department ensure they retain the capability to protect those rights if called
upon, and deter breaches of those rights so they need not be called upon in the
first place – and it is also imperative that policymakers give them an
effective mandate to support those missions. They fight so that we might not
lose men such as Ambassador Chris Stevens and Foreign Service Information
Management Officer Sean Smith, and it appears in Benghazi,  some lay down their lives to do so. 

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