George Friedman
The war in Libya is over. More
precisely, governments and media have decided that the war is over, despite the
fact that fighting continues. The unfulfilled expectation of this war has
consistently been that Moammar Gadhafi would capitulate when faced with the forces
arrayed against him, and that his own forces would abandon him as soon as
they saw that the war was lost. What was being celebrated last week, with
presidents, prime ministers and the media proclaiming the defeat of Gadhafi,
will likely be true in due course. The fact that it is not yet true does not
detract from the self-congratulations.
For example, Italian Foreign
Minister Franco Frattini reported that only 5 percent of Libya is still under
Gadhafi’s control. That seems like a trivial amount, save for this news from
Italian newspaper La Stampa, which reported that “Tripoli is being cleaned up”
neighborhood by neighborhood, street by street and home by home. Meanwhile,
bombs from above are pounding Sirte, where, according to the French, Gadhafi
has managed to arrive, although it is not known how. The strategically
important town of Bali Walid — another possible hiding place and one of only
two remaining exit routes to another Gadhafi stronghold in Sabha — is being
encircled.
To put it differently,
Gadhafi’s forces still retain military control of substantial areas. There is
house-to-house fighting going on in Tripoli. There are multiple strongholds
with sufficient defensive strength that forces cannot enter them without
significant military preparation. Although Gadhafi’s actual location is
unknown, his capture is the object of substantial military preparations,
including NATO airstrikes, around Bali Walid, Sirte and Sabha. When Saddam
Hussein was captured, he was hiding in a hole in the ground, alone and
without an army. Gadhafi is still fighting and posing challenges. The war is
not over.
It could be argued that while
Gadhafi retains a coherent military force and significant territory, he no
longer governs Libya. That is certainly true and significant, but it will
become more significant when his enemies do take control of the levers of
power. It is unreasonable to expect that they should be in a position to do so
a few days after entering Tripoli and while fighting continues. But it does
raise a critical question: whether
the rebels have sufficient coherence to form an effective government or
whether new rounds of fighting among Libyans can be expected even after
Gadhafi’s forces cease functioning. To put it simply, Gadhafi appears to be on
his way to defeat but he is not there yet, and the ability of his enemies to
govern Libya is doubtful.
Immaculate Intervention
Given that the dying is far
from over, it is interesting to consider why Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy and
David Cameron, the major players in this war, all declared last week that
Gadhafi had fallen, implying an end to war, and why the media proclaimed the
war’s end. To understand this, it is important to understand how surprising the
course of the war was to these leaders. From the beginning, there was an
expectation that NATO
intervention, first with a no-fly zone, then with direct airstrikes on
Gadhafi’s position, would lead to a rapid collapse of his government and
its replacement with a democratic coalition in the east.
Two forces combined to lead to
this conclusion. The first consisted of human-rights groups outside governments
and factions in foreign ministries and the State Department who felt an
intervention was necessary to stop the pending slaughter in Benghazi. This
faction had a serious problem. The most effective way to quickly end a brutal
regime was military intervention. However, having condemned the American
invasion of Iraq, which was designed, at least in part, to get rid of a brutal
regime, this faction found it difficult to justify rapid military intervention
on the ground in Libya. Moral arguments require a degree of consistency.
In Europe, the doctrine of
“soft power” has become a central doctrine. In the case of Libya, finding a
path to soft power was difficult. Sanctions and lectures would probably not
stop Gadhafi, but military action ran counter to soft power. What emerged was a
doctrine of soft military power. Instituting a no-fly zone was a way to engage
in military action without actually hurting anyone, except those Libyan pilots
who took off. It satisfied the need to distinguish Libya from Iraq by not
invading and occupying Libya but still putting crushing pressure on Gadhafi.
Of course, a no-fly zone
proved ineffective and irrelevant, and the French
began bombing Gadhafi’s forces the same day. Libyans on the ground were
dying, but not British, French or American soldiers. While the no-fly zone was
officially announced, this segue to an air campaign sort of emerged over time
without a clear decision point. For human-rights activists, this kept them from
addressing the concern that airstrikes always cause unintended deaths because
they are never as accurate as one might like. For the governments, it allowed
them to be seen as embarking upon what I have called an “immaculate
intervention.”
The second force that liked
this strategy was the various air forces involved. There is no question of the
importance of air power in modern war, but there is a constant argument over
whether the application of air power by itself can achieve desired political
ends without the commitment of ground forces. For the air community, Libya was
going to be the place where it could demonstrate its effectiveness in achieving
such ends.
So the human-rights advocates
could focus on the ends — protecting Libyan civilians in Benghazi — and pretend
that they had not just advocated the commencement of a war that would itself
leave many people dead. Political leaders could feel that they were not getting
into a quagmire but simply undertaking a clean intervention. The air forces
could demonstrate their utility in delivering desired political outcomes.
Why and How
The question of the underlying
reason for the war should be addressed because stories are circulating that oil
companies are competing for vast sums of money in Libya. These stories are all
reasonable, in the sense that the real story remains difficult to fathom, and I
sympathize with those who are trying to find a deep conspiracy to explain all
of this. I would like to find one, too. The problem is that going to war for
oil in Libya was unnecessary. Gadhafi loved selling oil, and if the governments
involved told him quietly that they were going to blow him up if he didn’t make
different arrangements on who got the oil revenues and what royalties he got to
keep, Gadhafi would have made those arrangements. He was as cynical as they
come, and he understood the subtle idea that shifting oil partners and giving
up a lot of revenue was better than being blown up.
Indeed, there is no theory out
there that explains this war by way of oil, simply because it was not necessary
to actually to go war to get whatever concessions were wanted. So the story — protecting
people in Benghazi from slaughter — is the only rational explanation
for what followed, however hard it is to believe.
It must also be understood
that given the nature of modern air warfare, NATO forces in small numbers had
to be inserted on the ground from the beginning — actually, at least a few days
before the beginning of the air campaign. Accurately identifying targets and
taking them out with sufficient precision involves highly skilled
special-operations teams guiding munitions to those targets. The fact that
there have been relatively few friendly-fire accidents indicates that standard
operational procedures have been in place.
These teams were probably
joined by other special operators who trained — and in most cases informally
led — indigenous forces in battle. There were ample reports in the early days
of the war that special operations teams were on the ground conducting weapons
training and organizing the fighters who opposed Gadhafi.
But there proved to be two
problems with this approach. First, Gadhafi did not fold his tent and capitulate.
He seemed singularly unimpressed by the force he was facing. Second, his
troops turned out to be highly motivated and capable, at least compared to
their opponents. Proof of this can be found in the fact that they did not
surrender en masse, they did maintain a sufficient degree of unit coherence and
— the final proof — they held out for six months and are still holding out. The
view of human-rights groups that an isolated tyrant would break in the face of
the international community, the view of political leaders that an isolated
tyrant facing the might of NATO’s air forces would collapse in days and the
view of the air forces that air strikes would shatter resistance, all turned
out to be false.
A War Prolonged
Part of this was due to a
misunderstanding of the nature of Libyan politics. Gadhafi was a tyrant, but he
was not completely isolated. He had enemies but he also had many supporters who
benefitted from him or at least believed in his doctrines. There was also a
general belief among ordinary government soldiers (some of whom are mercenaries
from the south) that capitulation would lead to their slaughter, and the belief
among government leaders that surrender meant trials in The Hague and terms in
prison. The belief of the human-rights community in an International
Criminal Court (ICC) trying Gadhafi and the men around him gives them
no room for retreat, and men without room for retreat fight hard and to the
end. There was no way to negotiate capitulation unless the U.N. Security
Council itself publicly approved the deal. The winks and nods that got
dictators to leave in the old days aren’t enough anymore. All countries that
are party to the Rome Statute are required to turn a leader like Gadhafi over
to the ICC for trial.
Therefore, unless the U.N.
Security Council publicly strikes a deal with Gadhafi, which would be opposed
by the human-rights community and would become ugly, Gadhafi will not give up —
and neither will his troops. There were reports last week that some government
soldiers had been executed. True or not, fair or not, that would not be a great
motivator for surrender.
The war began with the public
mission of protecting the people of Benghazi. This quickly morphed into a war
to unseat Gadhafi. The problem was that between the ideological and the
military aims, the forces dedicated to the war were insufficient to execute the
mission. We do not know how many people were killed in the fighting in the past
six months, but pursuing the war using soft military power in this way
certainly prolonged the war and likely caused many deaths, both military and
civilian.
After six months, NATO got
tired, and we wound up with the assault on Tripoli. The assault appears to have
consisted of three parts. The first was the insertion of NATO special
operations troops (in the low hundreds, not thousands) who, guided by
intelligence operatives in Tripoli, attacked and destabilized the government
forces in the city. The second part was an information operation in which NATO
made it appear that the battle was over. The bizarre incident in which Gadhafi’s
son, Seif al-Islam, announced as being captured only to show up in an
SUV looking very un-captured, was part of this game. NATO wanted it to appear
that the leadership had been reduced and Gadhafi’s forces broken to convince
those same forces to capitulate. Seif al-Islam’s appearance was designed to
signal his troops that the war was still on.
Following the special
operations strikes and the information operations, western rebels entered the
city to great fanfare, including celebratory gunfire into the air. The world’s
media chronicled the end of the war as the special operations teams melted away
and the victorious rebels took the bows. It had taken six months, but it was over.
And then it became obvious
that it wasn’t over. Five percent of Libya — an interesting calculation — was
not liberated. Street fighting in Tripoli continued. Areas of the country were
still under Gadhafi’s control. And Gadhafi himself was not where his enemies
wanted him to be. The war went on.
A number of lessons emerge
from all this. First, it is important to remember that Libya in itself may not
be important to the world, but it matters to Libyans a great deal. Second, do
not assume that tyrants lack support. Gadhafi didn’t govern Libya for 42 years
without support. Third, do not assume that the amount of force you are prepared
to provide is the amount of force needed. Fourth, eliminating the option of a
negotiated end to the war by the means of international courts may be morally
satisfying, but it causes wars to go on and casualties to mount. It is
important to decide what is more important — to alleviate the suffering of
people or to punish the guilty. Sometimes it is one or the other. Fifth, and most
important, do not kid the world about wars being over. After George W. Bush
flew onto an aircraft carrier that was emblazoned with a “mission accomplished”
banner, the Iraq war became even more violent, and the damage to him was
massive. Information operations may be useful in persuading opposing troops to
surrender, but political credibility bleeds away when the war is declared over
and the fighting goes on.
Gadhafi will likely fall in
the end. NATO is more powerful than he is, and enough force will be brought to
bear to bring him down. The question, of course, is whether there was another
way to accomplish that with less cost and more yield. Leaving aside the
war-for-oil theory, if the goal was to protect Benghazi and bring down Gadhafi,
greater force or a negotiated exit with guarantees against trials in The Hague
would likely have worked faster with less loss of life than the application of
soft military power.
As the
world contemplates the situation in Syria, this should be borne in mind.
George Friedman, Stratfor –
Geopolitical weekly, Aug. 30, 2011, republished with permission of STRATFOR
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