Security

U.S., UK, France: Libya War Will End When Gadhafi Goes

You’d think that an op-ed from three world leaders titled “Libya’s Pathway to Peace” would spell out how the western bombing campaign against Moammar Gadhafi will end. Instead, it lays out a demand, and expands the war in the process. “So long as [Gadhafi] is in power,” writes President Obama and his French and British […]


You'd think that an op-ed from three world leaders titled "Libya's Pathway to Peace" would spell out how the western bombing campaign against Moammar Gadhafi will end. Instead, it lays out a demand, and expands the war in the process.

"So long as [Gadhafi] is in power," writes President Obama and his French and British counterparts Nicholas Sarkozy and David Cameron, "NATO must maintain its operations so that civilians remain protected and the pressure on the regime builds." That's kind of a way to end the war: Gadhafi can surrender. Why didn't anyone think of that?

For the first time, NATO leaders have tethered the war to Gadhafi's departure, a line that U.S. generals have been loath to cross. And they still don't explain how the bombing campaign, now in its fourth week, will lead to his downfall.

During the first phase of the war, U.S. defense officials kept any talk of regime change far from any military discussion. Gen. Carter Ham, who oversaw the war before it switched to NATO command, told reporters, "I could see accomplishing the military mission which has been assigned to me and the current leader would remain the current leader." His boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, elaborated to Congress that while it was U.S. *policy *for Gadhafi to go, getting rid of him "is not part of the military mission" and would "likely be achieved over time through political and economic measures and by his own people."

Senators beat up on Gates for the disconnect between the Libya war's political and military objectives. But that responsibility more properly rests on Obama's shoulders. And in his op-ed, Obama doesn't resolve the disparity. In fact, he, Sarkozy and Cameron embrace it.

Their mission, they write, remains "not to remove Qaddafi by force. But it is impossible to imagine a future for Libya with Qaddafi in power."

That means the war will continue without a path to what's now its explicit objective. Reuters reports that U.S. and allied intelligence thinks the Libyan rebels are in "hopeless disarray." Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron have opened the door to an even deeper involvement in Libya -- to bail out the rebels on the ground. Obama rejected that in his March 28 speech on Libya, but that just heightens the tensions in his strategy.

Even before the allies reach that point, their internal differences are on display. France wants U.S. warplanes to take out loyalist targets on the ground alongside French and British jets. The U.S. doesn't want to return to that mission, even as its pilots still enforce the no-fly zone.

Gadhafi may conclude that a stalemate isn't in his favor and quit. Or he may conclude that a stalemate is more likely to crack up the international coalition against him. After all, that op-ed isn't co-signed by the 25 other NATO leaders. And NATO's had to respond to French and British criticism of its alleged halfheartedness on Libya already.

One of Gates' last acts in office is to warn Obama that any further military spending cuts he seeks have to be guided by decisions about reducing U.S. military commitments. Otherwise, they'll just leave an overtaxed military underresourced. Obama's expansion of the scope of the Libya war speaks to the defense secretary's point.

Photo: Flickr/U.S. Africa Command

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