When the going gets rough
While the Libya “contact group” is discussing funding for the rebels, NATO is defending itself from charges of not being sufficiently aggressive and the African Union is proposing a ceasefire, Gaddafi’s forces are trying to take Misrata, the third largest city in Libya.
The rebels have made it clear they won’t accept any deal that keeps Gaddafi in power, but the UN, Arab League, and EU are scheduled to meet anyway with the African Union, which has proposed just that, tomorrow in Cairo.
NATO Foreign Ministers meet Thursday and Friday in Berlin. It will be a difficult meeting for Secretary of State Clinton, who needs to encourage NATO allies to do more even as Defense Secretary Gates resists augmenting U.S. military efforts.
In short: things are going badly for the rebels and the international community, well for Gaddafi.
This does not mean he wins, however. At this point, it looks as if the best he can hope for is a stalemate, with the country divided east and west. Unfortunately, that is a very bad outcome for the international community, one that would burden it for a long time to come and open up all sorts of opportunities for “bad actors” to engage on one side or the other.
Capturing or getting Gaddafi and his family out of Libya has to be the priority, as that could allow Libya to be reunified and create a relatively benign environment in which the EU and Arab League could take the lead on reconstruction. I don’t see how a cease-fire, as Les Gelb proposes, would help that cause. To the contrary, it is doubtful Gaddafi would observe one or that the international community could enforce one. It would allow the two sides to regroup and rearm for the next round, which is not exactly a virtue in my book.
Ivory Coast, of all things, points in the right direction: with Laurent Gbagbo arrested (see video below), not killed, the country has an opportunity to go down a relatively peaceful post-war path. Those who wish Libya well will hope it gets a similar opportunity, soon.
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For an Ivory Coast scenario, somebody has to be willing to stand up and say, “Follow me, or get out of the way!” This someone in the case of Libya would probably have to be the US, and Obama has already tied his own hands by insisting that action be multilateral, with the blessing of the Russians and Chinese, with no involvement of the currently most experienced forces in the world … Didn’t Hillary tell him about Bill’s mistake in initially ruling out an invasion of Serbia? It’s like antibiotics – unless you take the full course, you end up strengthening the disease organism. “Unconditional surrender” worked to everybody’s eventual benefit, when there was the will to demand it. And as for waiting until the rebels learn how to fight – remember how long that took the Continental Army?
As for the Chinese, you’d think they’d prefer a quick, brutal strike by foreigners to a long-drawn-out campaign where there’s a chance of news filtering through to their own public. A strike from abroad is after all something they can plausibly tell their own people there is absolutely no chance of in the most populous country by far in the world.