Another Thing Worse Than Fighting With Allies

In the NATO war against Libya, it has been mostly France and Britain at the pointy end of the stick (after we kicked down the door in the early counter-air defense and strike missions and then backed off to a support role). France, especially, has been aggressive, beating the official NATO strikes to the punch by striking around Benghazi first; and by recognizing the rebels early on in the fight. The rest of the coalition is a farce, just going through the motions of kinetic military actions.

It strikes me that while France has a dog in this fight--not wanting refugees pouring into France from a Libya in chaos--what's in it for Britain? They've been committed in Iraq and Afghanistan for nearly a decade, now, straining their military. Britain also has financial problems that are causing the British to shrink their already shrunken military even more in the years to come. So why is London so gung ho on Libya? Italy, Spain, and Greece should have more incentive to fight in Libya than Britain. Yet they do little.

The answer seems that the British aren't fighting over the status of Libya. The British are fighting as a down payment on their new military integration alliance with France. You'll recall that the British and French are to share aircraft carriers, among other things. So how could Britain stand aside in this crisis (as Germany is getting away with after being tight with the French these recent years on European Union issues) so important to France and expect the military integration to go ahead?

Of course, this means the British actually expect the French to return the favor one day when Britain wants to fight and France has no real dog in the fight. Good luck with that.

Churchill was wrong. While fighting a war with allies is a pain, fighting a war without allies isn't the one thing worse than that. No, fighting someone else's war is worse than either. And that is exactly what Britain appears to be doing in Libya.