Libya's ball of confusion

Updates below regarding NATO's pending assumption of command and control

When Operation Odyssey Dawn began, President Obama stated two things very clearly. First was that control of the operation would be turned over to another authority "in a matter of days." Second was that American ground forces would not be sent to Libya.

Well, it's been days now, so let's see where we are on number one. The condensed version is that the Allies are more in disarray than ever. Briefly:

• The Italians have said that if NATO does not assume overall control, Italy will revoke its permission to use the air bases in the country. I explained the significance of Italy's air bases here.
  
  
• However, France insists that NATO not assume control. (Italy accuses France of wanting to set itself up as the leading partner with the Libyan rebels so they will give France priority when exporting oil.) The French say that the intervention should have a coalition partner in charge - meaning "France" of course.
  
  
• The British seem just to mumble to themselves about offing Qaddafi, which draws rapid rebukes from US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. The British apparently want NATO in charge, too, but do not seem to be pressing the issue.
  
  
• Then there are the Germans. More properly, one German: Chancellor Angela Merkel, facing a critical election shortly with a large portion of the electorate firm pacifists. She just ordered German naval vessels to withdraw from the coalition naval group offshore Libya. She also ordered German AWACS crewmen not to participate in missions supporting Odyssey Dawn.
  
  
• Just yesterday, NATO ambassadors adjourned their meeting on the issue without reaching any kind of basis to resolve the command and control issue.

Would it not have been a good idea to have the transition details worked out before beginning the operation? The administration's lack of clarity of the objective and apparent indifference to resolving these difficulties calls to mind the old adage, "When you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there." As far as I can tell, none of the mission-essential questions I asked last Saturday are being addressed, mainly these two:

1. What is the primary strategic objective that the United States will achieve through military forces that cannot be obtained otherwise?
   
   
2. What are the conditions of success in Libya? What must happen before American combat forces are withdrawn? In other words, how will you know when you've won?

Some key American figures are demanding answers, too.

Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, yesterday called for congressional hearings on the mission as U.S. and allied warplanes continued to strike Qaddafi’s ground forces.

“The administration has not adequately defined the U.S. strategic interest in Libya or adequately articulated how the conflict ends,” Lugar said in a letter to the panel’s chairman, Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts.

Speaker of the House John Boehner has finally awakened from his political slumber to send a letter to the president.

He said in his letter that the U.S. public needs to know “what our national security interests are” in the mission “and how it fits into our overarching policy in the Middle East.” These concerns, he said, “point to a fundamental question: What is your hallmark for success in Libya?”

Asked about Boehner’s letter today, White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that “we have answered a lot of those questions and will continue to answer them.”

Except that the administration has not answered them. Meanwhile, coalition warplanes are now conducting air strikes agaunst Qaddafi's forces threatening the rebel-held, western city of Misrata. The pretense of the air strikes is that government formations are threatening civilians,and so UNSC Resolution 1973's provisions more or less automatically kick in. (That Qaddafi's army is also about to destroy the rebel fighters there seems to be both coincidental and inconsequential.)

Military commanders have said the focus of U.S. and coalition air patrols had shifted from only enforcing a no-fly zone to hitting the regime's ground forces where they are poised to attack civilians.

Strike aircraft, the military official said, "continue to look for opportunities to target regime ground-based mechanized forces and command-and-control facilities."

"No fly zone," eh? Yes, against the famous Libyan flying mechanized combat vehicles, one supposes. No wonder that respected analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said yesterday that "essentially, the no-fly zone is not going to succeed."

The no-fly zone imposed by the coalition doesn't solve the rebels' challenges on the ground. "The problem the rebels have is that simply stopping Gaddafi from flying a limited number of helicopter and fighter sorties a day, didn't give the rebels tanks, artillery, discipline or the ability to plan and execute operations, as distinguished from essentially swarming an area and causing a popular uprising," he says. "They remain very vulnerable to ground action."

So the poser for coalition leaders, meaning President Obama, is whether they are going to creep the mission from the UN resolution to actually using air power tp help the rebels defeat Qaddafi's forces. As I wrote last Sunday,

If indeed we want the rebels to succeed in taking over governance of the whole of Libya, instead of the rump state it claims to have established in the eastern part of the country, then the Allies' air forces must play the same role there that the US air forces played in the first months of the Afghanistan campaign: be the air force of the indigenous army to support its offensive operations of the anti-government army.

However, Afghanistan's anti-Taliban Northern Alliance had significant advantages over the Libyan rebels. First, the Northern Alliance had a unified chain of command and years of experience, neither of which the Libyan rebels have. The Northern Alliance was already recognized in the world as the legitimate government of the whole of the country, including occupying Afghanistan's UN seat, while the Libyan rebels have no such advantage or existing legitimacy. The Northern Alliance was Muslim but not in the slightest Islamist; Islamist Talibanism was what they were fighting. And the Libyan rebels? Far from clear.

Cordesman's assessment?

The rebels are too under-equipped and under-trained to prevail over Gaddafi's mediocre, but more powerful, forces, he says. "So what we have, basically, are rebels that have a great deal of enthusiasm and who are willing to risk their lives, but don't have discipline or structure," Cordesman says. "In case after case, it's clear that when they do have officers present, they won't pay proper attention, they won't show sufficient discipline to carry out maneuvers that are even very simple -- either in advancing or retreating."

A joke going around Washington is that President Obama just flew into the United States for a visit and it is hoped that he might stay a few days.

There is a tie-in to the president's other pledge, that US ground forces won't be used. More than anything, this statement proves that not even President Obama sees any significant national interest in Libya, for this pledge is a pledge not to win the war. It is an admission that our aims are limited and that decisive use of force is not on the table. The two pledges, that we won't remain in control of the operation and won't use ground forces, together are a neon sign from the president to the world that we are not seriously engaged in Libya.

It is therefore unsurprising that President Obama, with no sort of military experience or strategic training, has made the same mistake that President Bill Clinton, similarly inexperienced, made in 1993 in Somalia: Great powers should not fight small wars absent compelling national interest. And if they are to be fought, they must be fought quickly and decisively.

Update, 5:30 p.m. CDT: It is now reported that NATO will take command and control of the Libya war.

Navy Adm. William Gortney told reporters Thursday that the U.S. role predominantly would be in support of allied partners, with refueling missions, surveillance, reconnaissance and other noncombat flights. He also said that he expects U.S. planes would continue flying some strike missions.

I have written that the Libya war is illegal under the US Constitution, and that "I'd be more than happy if the US role never included actual, direct military action and was limited to logistic, intelligence and transportation support. It's the Euros who've been propping Qaddafi up all these many years, France in particular. So they can have it." Still think so.

The devil is in the details, of course, and no details have been announced. As I type, we await Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to come to the microphone to tell us what's going on. I expect that her statements will conceal more than it reveals.

One thing to bear in mind is that to say that NATO will assume command and control really means that C2 will remain in American hands. The Supreme Allied Commander Europe (meaning NATO's commander in chief) is American Admiral James Stavridis. He is responsible to NATO's Military Committee, the highest military authority in NATO, for the overall direction and conduct of military operations for NATO.

The main advantage of keeping C2 in NATO is that the channels of communication, standardization of operations orders and plans and common military terms are well understood by all NATO members. The main disadvantage of turning C2 over to NATO is that the Libya mission has nothing to with NATO's founding purpose and therefore there is nothing in the NATO charter than can be invoked to compel member countries to take part.

So, pending what Sec. Clinton says, Odyssey Dawn will remain an American-run operation.

This seems as good a time as any to ask again, "What has NATO done for us?"

Update: Apparently NATO will take over enforcing the no-fly zone over Libya, but the rest of the UNSC's terms seem to have no change. I am guessing that this was pushed hard and successfully by the French, who have not been reluctant to attack Qaddafi's ground forces (see above) and want to keep doing so. I predict that French President Sarkozy will not place French forces under NATO control.

So NATO-controlled forces will keep Qaddafi's aircraft on the ground or shot down and non-NATO French planes will continue to bust Qaddafi's tanks. This may prevent Qaddafi from wiping out the rebels, but it will not lead to Qaddafi's downfall.

"Starting a war is like entering a dark room blindfolded." It would be well for America's president and other nations' leaders to be mindful of two of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's dicta:

"In war there is no substitute for victory" and, "Prolonged indecision is never a just aim of war."