Last Updated: Mar 21, 2011
Listening to the US president Barack Obama and his European colleagues setting out the limits of their military engagement in Libya, it's worth remembering the famous warning by Prussian General Helmut von Moltke that "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy".
As US cruise missiles destroyed Libyan air defence batteries and French fighters took out four tanks attacking the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, Mr Obama told the world that he had no choice but to launch "limited" military action to prevent Colonel Muammar Qaddafi realising his brutal intentions. But Mr Obama's key message was aimed at Americans: "We will not - I repeat - we will not deploy any US troops on the ground." The New York Times reports that Mr Obama had also insisted to his aides that US military involvement must be over within "days, not weeks".
Following a summit in Paris of the nations involved in the military campaign authorised by last week's UN Security Council resolution 1973, the French president Nicolas Sarkozy insisted that "regime change" was not the goal of the air campaign, and that "the door of international diplomacy" would open to Col Qaddafi once he ended his attacks on rebels and their supporters.
Western leaders have made no secret that they want Col Qaddafi out, with Mr Obama, Mr Sarkozy and the British prime minister David Cameron all having declared unambiguously that the Libyan strongman had lost his legitimacy. But their military campaign was adopted as an emergency response to the intolerable probability that without foreign intervention, Col Qaddafi could sack the rebel capital of Benghazi and exact vicious reprisals on an epic scale.
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Optimists in western corridors of power hope that the "shock and awe" effect of their air campaign prompts the regime's collapse amid mass defections. But optimism is the opiate of the interventionists, and western leaders would do well to prepare for some nastier contingencies. It's almost inevitable that mistakes by coalition pilots result in civilian casualties - a scenario Col Qaddafi will work hard to engineer by the placement of his military resources, and whose probability was underscored on Saturday when rebel fighters in Benghazi appeared to have downed a fighter jet piloted by one of their own.
More importantly, even when in an aggressive fashion, air power rarely succeeds on its own in dislodging an enemy. UNSC Resolution 1973 allows the use of force only to protect civilians, however, and not to provide air support to a rebel military advance. The Security Council has also forbidden governments from arming the rebel forces, as Egypt's military is reported to be doing already, albeit discreetly.
The resolution, instead, ties the protection of civilians to the demand for a cease-fire (by all sides) and a negotiated political solution. That gives Col Gaddafi's regime considerable wiggle room. Although Tripoli initially announced its acceptance of the ceasefire, it never stopped its advances on rebel strongholds. Still, a truce remains an option at any time, as Mr Sarkozy himself conceded, "opening the door" to resumed diplomacy that could become increasingly messy.
Col Qaddafi continues to command a degree of popular support, and is relying on the passion of his supporters, infused by the foreign intervention with national fervour, to even up the odds by starting to hand out weapons, hoping to fight the battle on terms that negate the effectiveness of a western intervention confined to bombing heavy weaponry from the air.
The use of air power to destroy armour and artillery on the ground does even up the odds that had recently seen the rebels forced onto the back foot, and leaves the regime's forces vulnerable in the east, where most of the regular army has joined the rebel side. The rebels also have a numerical advantage in Benghazi and other eastern cities. But the fight could become increasingly bloody at close quarters in the days ahead, as Col Qaddafi makes the most of the reluctance of his foreign adversaries to commit ground forces. Next page
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Related Searches Lebanon: stuck at the starting gate A stable Yemen is not a pie-in-the-sky proposition A false choice between Iran and the US for Arab states Related Topics Libya Libya unrest var id ='The National Conversation'; if(id!='News'){ if(document.getElementById(id)!=null){ document.getElementById(id).setAttribute("class", "current"); document.getElementById(id).setAttribute("className", "current"); if (navigator.appName == "Microsoft Internet Explorer") { document.getElementById(id).className='current'; }else { document.getElementById(id).setAttribute("class", "current"); } } }else { if(document.getElementById(id)!=null){ //document.getElementById(id).className='current first-child'; document.getElementById(id).setAttribute("class", "current first-child"); document.getElementById(id).setAttribute("className", "current first-child"); if (navigator.appName == "Microsoft Internet Explorer") { document.getElementById(id).className='current first-child'; }else { document.getElementById(id).setAttribute("class", "current first-child"); } } } var dcs_articleName = "Qaddafi knows how to spoil the coalition's good intentions"; var dcs_classifications = "/thenational/Subjects/Libya unrest"; b4681054ec3de210VgnVCM100000e56411acRCRD The National Conversation Summary
The enemy usually has some ideas of his own about how a war will be fought if his opponents are not armed with a cogent strategy
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