Germany's abstention in the UN Security Council vote authorising military action is most significant. The public split between France and Germany – ‘Europe's engine' – has led many to proclaim the death of the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy. And the political and military leadership provided by Paris and London has led to speculation that a Franco-British entente could be the new engine of European geopolitics.
If successful, Britain would end their fears of being the odd man out in Europe in the face of the long-standing French alliance with Germany within the EU and NATO at the expense of Britain. This is a rational reaction if the British assume their special relationship with America is dead rather than just wounded under the current Obama administration.
But this isn't just a British game. France hopes that ties to Germany and Britain will give France influence over both countries' foreign policies. But diluting French ties to Germany will just free Germany to reach out more to Russia. And Britain will also gain influence over France, even though France is pulling Britain along on the current war around Libya.
I don't see how closer British-French integration at the price of allowing closer German-Russian relations is wise in the long run for either Britain, France, or NATO as a whole. But what do I know? I freely admit my lack of nuance.
In the meantime, the grand alliance that President Obama boasted of is so shaky less than a month into the war that Britain and France are struggling to keep it together for their own purposes:
Their goal, a British official said, was to find ways to persuade other NATO nations to invest more aircraft and political capital in the bombing campaign, now being shouldered overwhelmingly by British and French warplanes. Although more than 175 aircraft from 17 nations have joined the coalition, most governments have surrounded their participation with restrictions that prevent them from carrying out effective strike missions against Gaddafi’s forces.
The restrictions make this the Caveat War (as I wrote). The allies are a varied lot in commitment as the article continues:
In addition to France and Britain, the countries participating in the airstrikes are Norway, Canada, Denmark and Belgium. U.S. teams are doing virtually all the surveillance and reconnaissance — and thus are chiefly responsible for targeting, without physically dropping bombs. Seven nations are patrolling Libyan airspace to enforce the no-fly zone: the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. Turkish airplanes are helping to enforce the arms embargo outside Libya.
But despite the restrictions on force usage that splinters the air power into limited packets, the coalition isn't short on aircraft to carry out its missions:
Adding more strike aircraft would not necessarily lead to a great increase in the tempo of the air campaign, said the U.S. official, who insisted on anonymity in discussing sensitive details of the international operation. “It isn’t like there are hundreds of targets not being struck because there’s not enough capability. Anything we see, we strike,” the official said.
The real problem is that the coalition is splintered on objectives. Britain and France want regime change, but that is hardly universal. America wants regime change without participating in regime change. I suspect the Obama administration called for Khaddafi to go because it mistakenly thought it was racing to the head of the parade for an assured rebel win and didn't want to appear on the wrong side of a people vs. dictator struggle yet again. Germany opposes the war and let's not even go into what the heck Turkey wants notwithstanding its NATO membership. To add to the confusion, Belgium of all countries is participating in strike missions!
Right now, the official reason for the NATO-led military action, blessed by the UN, is to protect civilians. How long will the shakier members of the coalition go along with that reason when it becomes clearer that however odious the Khaddafi regime is (and so deserves overthrow for many reasons), there was no evidence of intent to commit genocide (as opposed to the usual suppression of dissent by brutal means that most members of the Arab League who stand with the coalition against Libya routinely practice):
EVIDENCE IS now in that President Barack Obama grossly exaggerated the humanitarian threat to justify military action in Libya. The president claimed that intervention was necessary to prevent a “bloodbath’’ in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city and last rebel stronghold.
But Human Rights Watch has released data on Misurata, the next-biggest city in Libya and scene of protracted fighting, revealing that Moammar Khadafy is not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government.
I myself thought the pretext of imminent slaughter had no evidence to support it. Yes, there is the usual brutality of repression in areas captured by Khaddafi. But again, that is no worse than business as usual in the Arab world autocracies.
Are there civilian casualties in the civil war? Sure, and some is surely deliberate. But most is simply the byproduct of warfare through civilian areas common in any war throughout history. Ironically enough, our half-hearted intervention prolongs this type of civilian casualties by denying a quick win to either the loyalist side or our side. And we should have known this since Secretary Clinton stated that the purpose of our intervention was to level the playing field between loyalists and rebels!
If this seems like a lot of confusion for a clear-cut war of conscience, it is. But when the substantive objectives of those involved in prosecuting the war (other than Khaddafi and the rebels, of course) are largely distant from Libya, what would you expect? Does it even matter to these outside powers who wins inside Libya as long as oil flows out and refugees don't?
This is gonna be just great.
