A Unique Success Thanks to Gadhafi

NATO did everything right in Libya. The notion that this would be a war for imperial interests was quashed, and the West worked in concert with Arab nations. This alliance, however, was unique — it shouldn’t be seen as a recipe for success in the future.

With a little luck, superior firepower and political skill, NATO pulled off this Libyan adventure. They helped the insurgents to victory without themselves being drawn into a ground war. Despite daily air attacks, civilian casualties were light and NATO forces themselves suffered no losses.

But the alliance’s greatest success was a political one. The notion that this would be a war for imperial interests was refuted. That will continue paying long-term dividends for Western involvement in North Africa and in the Arab world. It was a good idea to make Western military involvement contingent upon Arab League agreement that Arab air forces would take part and that the Arab world would take shared responsibility for the action.

But despite the success of the operation in North Africa, NATO must resist the temptation to make the Libyan operation a blueprint for future deployments. A decisive factor for the success was the death of the man that marked the end of the war: Moammar al-Gadhafi.

Everyone cooperated with NATO, not only because he managed to make enemies of his own people, but because he also incurred the wrath of nearly every Arab and Muslim country. This unusual coalition of the willing from East and West will never again be duplicated.

The mission could have failed

While Gadhafi became isolated right from the beginning of the Libyan rebellion, Syria is a different case entirely. Syria’s dictator treats his people just as brutally, but in contrast to Libya, many geostrategic interests collide with one another in Syria: Turkish, Iranian, Lebanese, Saudi Arabian and Israeli. There will be no grand consensus among these nations to cooperatively take action against Syria, even with the possible involvement of NATO. Even if there were an armed uprising against Assad, the West would be able to do little beyond imposing political and economic sanctions on the Damascus regime. Seen in the sober light of day, there are few lessons for the alliance to learn about building partnerships for deployments beyond their own borders in the region: NATO has many willing partners in Afghanistan but has had very little success there.

Libya does offer NATO one important insight: The greatest military alliance in the world is ill-prepared to wage even as straightforward a war as it did in Libya. Had the United States, which ceded operational responsibility to its European allies, not assisted with its high-tech weaponry and sophisticated equipment, the entire mission could have been a complete failure. The Europeans are not sufficiently equipped for such operations. Now, after Libya, it’s time for them to do something about that.