Of Course We Won

Sometimes the urge to over-analyze can be silly. Analyzing whether NATO won the Libya War of 2011 is just looking too hard. NATO won. Period. And after President Obama said Khaddafi "has to go" we won since we backed that objective until Khaddafi "went." Toss in President Obama as winning this since his policy did result in victory. It took way longer than planned, but then again we lost zero people. That's something. Lots of Libyans died in the drawn out fight, true. But the Libyans don't seem to be holding that against us. And since I thought Khaddafi would outlast NATO, it is an added boost. I think that in part it was because we departed from the original script, but NATO will to fight did last long enough even if it was a closer run thing than is apparent in the flush of victory.

Saying that the victory gives new life to NATO is silly. Unless you want to argue that the war has led the alliance to embrace humanitarian intervention as the central purpose of the alliance, in what way has NATO been strengthened?

At best in this line of thinking, defeat in the war didn't kill the alliance. If NATO hadn't beaten Libya, many would have wondered what the point of it was. Not me, mind you. I think that keeping the Russians out, the Europeans down, and America in Europe are good reasons to keep NATO. But plenty would have argued for the dissolution of the alliance.

Heck, those who don't like NATO can still call for that since the war exposed weaknesses in non-American alliance military capabilities.

Let's also make it clear that Russia lost the Libya War of 2011. Russia backed Khaddafi and the new rulers know it:

Russia's belated recognition of Libya’s provisional leadership on September 1 carried a hint of desperation.

For months, Moscow had refused to recognize the National Transitional Council (NTC), was reluctant to distance itself from Muammar Qaddafi, with whom it had good relations, and was critical of NATO's military campaign to assist rebel fighters.

But with the NTC now in control of most of Libya, Russia fears that it could lose billions of dollars in energy, defense, and infrastructure contracts it had negotiated with the ousted Qaddafi regime.

That alone was worth the price of admission, in my book.

Oh, and China lost. They've been caught selling arms to Khaddafi during the war:

During the recent fighting in Libya, the rebels complained of encountering government troops armed with new Chinese weapons. Accusations were made that China was selling weapons to the Kaddafi dictatorship despite a UN embargo. A little investigating found that this was indeed the case, and that Chinese arms merchants had approached the Libyan government earlier in the year, offering to sneak the weapons in via Algeria and South Africa. The last shipments appear to have arrived in July. Back then, there were reports of smugglers moving truckloads of weapons across the Algerian border into Libya.

I figured Khaddafi could smuggle in weapons and supplies. It's nice that China got caught. I'm sure the new rulers appreciate the gesture.

I think that Russia and China won't be so quick to withhold their Security Council vetoes in the future; and in the future, small rogue states will be more careful to cultivate their veto-holding friends in Moscow and Peking.