Sarkozy's War — Europe’s Libyan Melee

The Americans are looking for a way to back out of Libya as quickly as possible. If there is a ground-based intervention, its execution will be up to the Europeans.

When Gadhafi’s tanks started rolling in the direction of Benghazi, Barack Obama was packing his bags in anticipation of his long-awaited South America trip. Just a day earlier it seemed that the situation in North Africa was under control. The democratic overthrows in Tunisia and Egypt succeeded without American help and the Libyans became engaged in a civil war which the U.S. had no interest in joining. France was lobbying for the implementation of a no-fly zone, but the president heeded the warnings of his secretary of defense and generals, who warned him against getting involved in another military conflict. On March 16, however, Gadhafi’s army started advancing toward Benghazi, and Gadhafi’s son threatened the rebels with a massacre to happen within 48 hours. The decision to intervene was brought about through the efforts of three women.

Hillary Clinton, up until two days before, was against intervention. As the Washington Post wrote, her opinion changed after her return from the Middle East, where she heard pleas for help, and from Europe, where she saw a will to act. According to The New York Times, Hillary Clinton was backed up by the two other women supporting intervention, Susan Rice and Samantha Power. Rice is the U.S. representative to the UN Security Council; in 1994, she was responsible for Africa in the State Department, while Bill Clinton passively stood by as genocide raged across Rwanda. Power, before advising Obama in the National Security Council, received a Pulitzer for her book about ’90s-era American politics regarding genocide. As a reporter, she saw the conflict in Bosnia up close. Both of the women wanted to avoid repeating the mistakes of those tragedies.

“There is something positively mythological about a group of strong women swooping down to shake the president out of his delicate sensibilities and show him the way to war,” wrote Maureen Dowd , an op-ed columnist for The New York Times. Obama gave the green light for intervention, but demanded a broad UN mandate authorizing him to not only ground the Libyan air force, but to stop the advance of Gadhafi’s armies toward rebel-held cities. The French submitted a resolution, and Rice convinced Russia and China in the span of one and a half days, to withhold the use of their veto power. On March 17, the Security Council gave the go-ahead for intervention in Libya. “It was quite a surprise,”* said Professor David Bosco, a political scientist at American University and a UN expert.

Who Started It?

The Western consensus on Libya was only illusory. On March 19, as Obama flew to Brazil, Nicolas Sarkozy called together a summit of members of the anti-Gadhafi coalition, which was to decide the timetable for the impending intervention. Not only did Sarkozy secretly send French warplanes over Libya before the summit even started, but he did not invite the general secretary of NATO, nor the Turkish foreign minister, whose country is an important member of the alliance and a valuable ally in the Middle East. Obama, on board Air Force One, could only watch as the president of France morphed into the leader of the free world, announcing the beginning of the intervention. Sarkozy badly needed to be the sole announcer, as he had local elections happening the next day, with his party nearly being swept by the far right.

Sarkozy has suffered in ratings partly because the French are not tolerating their declining importance in the world very well. In 2003, France blocked the UN resolution regarding intervention in Iraq. History has proven the French right, but the affront Paris gave Washington led to the marginalization of the French in the international arena. With Libya, Sarkozy saw an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Namely, he could bring France back to the forefront of world politics and erase the bad impressions left after the revolt in Tunisia, where France had initially supported the teetering dictator. “After Iraq, even Americans opposed to Bush’s foreign policy were not enamored with France, so the aggressiveness of Sarkozy with regards to Libya came as quite a surprise,”* Bosco said. But for the White House it was a twist of fate.

Obama gladly stayed in the shadows because, as opposed to Sarkozy, he had some political difficulties leading up the intervention. On the Republican side, critics said that he was too slow to respond, and on the Democratic end that he was forcing himself into another country without the consent of Congress. In reality, he did not have to ask Congress for permission because the president has the power to deploy American forces for operations lasting no longer than 60 days. America led in the air strikes against Libya, but wants to back out as soon as the Europeans have the resources to take over. Because the European Union does not have a military infrastructure, the only institution capable of taking command was NATO. Sarkozy, however, was opposed, fearing the loss of political control over the operation, and like most of the French, simply distrusting the alliance.

This put him at odds with Great Britain. David Cameron’s team began its rule by signing a defense agreement with France, partly to prove that a Eurosceptic government can work with EU partner nations and partly because they wanted to avoid an EU debate on a common defense policy. Sarkozy and Cameron worked hand in hand, but when the French started to cut themselves off from NATO, the British took an opposing stance. After a few days of operations, the smaller nations of the alliance, fearing that America would lead them into a long drawn-out conflict, threatened to pull out unless command was transferred to NATO. “Sarkozy, in typical fashion, went further and faster than everyone else,”* said Daniel Korski, an analyst from the European Council on Foreign Relations in London.

Who’s in Charge?

Left in the dust was, most notably, Germany, which abstained from voting. “What a surprise,” remarked the Libyan vice-minister of Foreign Relations while thanking the nations that had withheld from supporting the UN resolution. Berlin landed in the same camp as Moscow and Beijing, for which Angela Merkel was criticized even by members of her own party.

But the chancellor also had local elections looming in March and did not want to galvanize the doves from the Greens and SPD. Merkel had already avoided a much larger setback. Guido Westerwelle, the leader of the co-ruling FDP and the foreign minister, wanted to veto the resolution. However, if there had been a massacre of civilians in Benghazi, the responsibility would land squarely on Germany’s shoulders.

Merkel went to Paris for the summit, but was furious with Sarkozy for leaving her in such a bind. She also made it clear that Germany would in no way help the intervention. She ordered that German ships stationed in the Mediterranean Sea as part of a NATO contingent come back to port. While NATO could do without those ships, the reconnaissance AWACS planes and the German crews flying them were sorely needed to patrol the skies of Libya. In a gesture of goodwill, the Germans agreed to send 300 pilots and mechanics to Afghanistan so that AWACS crews from other NATO nations could help out in Libya.

The Italians, who found themselves in the same predicament, half-heartedly supported the Libyan intervention and allowed the use of seven bases.

The Americans, eager for a quick end to the operation, organized intense raids, which not only implemented the no-fly zone but also instituted a no-drive zone. The wide range of targets, which included strikes against the Libyan leadership in Tripoli, was met with opposition from the Arab League, which previously supported the UN resolution. The League was supposed to give credence to the intervention in the Middle East, especially since the larger and more representative African Union supported Gadhafi. “The Arabs never liked him [Gadhafi] and were happy that the West was focused on Libya, and not Bahrain or Yemen,”* said Bosco.

When Gadhafi started televising alleged victims of the bombings, the Arabs became afraid of their own citizens, already agitated by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Qatar sent fighters, but withheld from using them, demanding that the coalition stop bombing ground targets. The United Arab Emirates, the other token participant from the Middle East, canceled its military participation and instead focused on a humanitarian mission. Turkey, previously slighted by Sarkozy, also started to criticize the operation. Only Obama’s phone call to Recep Tayyip placated him enough to not block the NATO takeover. After a week of confusion and arguing, France also agreed to the takeover.

Are We Fighting or Spectating?

According to the compromise reached last Thursday, the Americans would concentrate on bombing operations and the Europeans would take upon themselves the sea blockade to support the Libya arms embargo and patrol missions over Libyan airspace. Both operations would be coordinated by NATO, provided that the European states reach an agreement on assigning missions and costs to each country.

“The crisis in Libya demonstrated that, despite the Lisbon Treaty, the EU still does not have its own diplomatic corps, and their military potential, built up over the past couple of decades, is useless for the most part,”* says Korski. “This is a setback for the security organs based on the joint efforts of NATO and the European Union.”*

But it could be worse. A week of concentrated strikes essentially grounded the Libyan air force but did not stop the attacks against rebel-held cities, and the dictator keeps on threatening the West from the ruins of his palace. The realization that the Libyan operation might last months has been creeping into the governments of the West, and that air strikes alone will not be able to remove Gadhafi, which was the real objective of the mission. If the dictator does not stop murdering his own people, Europe might find itself a victim of its own rhetoric. The motivation for the U.N. resolution was to protect Libyan civilians; to realize that goal, Europe might be forced to put boots on the ground, which is a move opposed even by Sarkozy. If Europe does that, it can guarantee itself another Iraq. If it folds on its promises, it might lose a lot of respect in the eyes of the international community.

That is the reason why the coalition is bombing the Libyan army, in the hopes of rendering them weak enough to be overrun by rebel forces. But if the civil war is not quickly resolved in their favor, Great Britain and France might start pondering the use of land forces. Contrary to popular belief, the UN resolution does not prohibit land operations. It clearly forbids the occupation of Libya, but not peacekeeping or assistance of civilians. If that happens, Sarkozy will not be able to count on Obama’s support. The American president helped ratify the French resolution to establish a no-fly zone, but he will not risk his reelection and send soldiers to a third unpopular war. Even if he wanted to do that, he would not get the support or funding from Congress.

Sarkozy says that the intervention helped prevent another Srebrenica. He might be right, but the problem remains that while leaders are punished for allowing massacres or genocide, they are rarely rewarded for preventing them. 66 percent of the French support the war right now, which is a stunning reversal from 63 percent being opposed last month. The rapid swing in opinion suggests that sentiments may swing rapidly against the president, especially if he were forced to send soldiers to support the stated objectives. In Germany, 62 percent of people support the intervention, but 65 percent also support Angela Merkel’s decision to stay out of the conflict.

Why Did They Abstain?

Russia and China, the Security Council members most happily vetoing Western resolutions, abstained from voting on the Libyan issue. “The Kremlin has dropped its former policy of vetoing anything in the UN Security Council that it doesn’t like,” says Dmitri Trenin, director of the Moscow office of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. To avoid a veto, the Americans reportedly promised the same with regard to Russian initiatives. Moscow and Beijing do not want to be seen as allying themselves with leaders the likes of Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein or Moammar Gadhafi, but that does not stop them from criticizing the Libyan intervention.

*Editor’s Note: These quotations, accurately translated, could not be verified.