Why NATO Will Never Take Full Command of the Libyan Operation

“Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.” — Peter Drucker

“Today Fox News reported: NATO will assume command of all aerial operations — including ground attacks — in Libya from the U.S.-led force that has been conducting air strikes against Moammar Gadhafi's forces, officials said Sunday.”

“The North Atlantic Council — the alliance's top body — approved a plan to expand the previously agreed mission to enforce the U.N. arms embargo and no-fly zone by agreeing to protect civilians from attack.”

"NATO Allies have decided to take on the whole military operation in Libya under the U.N. Security Council resolution," Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in a statement.”

"NATO will implement all aspects of the U.N. resolution. Nothing more, nothing less," he said.”

NATO expects to start enforcing the U.N.-authorized no-fly zone on Sunday or Monday, as well as coordinating naval patrols in the Mediterranean to enforce the arms embargo.

A Canadian three-star general, Charles Bouchard, will be in charge of both operations. He will report to an American admiral, Samuel Locklear, commander of NATO's Allied Joint Force Command Naples.

There is an absolutely brutal essay by Phillip Stephens in the Financial Times. Mr. Stephens points out why European militaries are so unprepared to get the "hand off" from President Obama for responsibility in Libya:

Mr. Stephens writes; ”Americans are grappling with an unfamiliar role. They are accustomed to running things – especially when those things involve going to war. Not this time. As the west’s fighter jets patrol the skies over Libya, President Barack Obama has told his generals and diplomats to stand back. We have been shown the new geopolitical landscape.”

“Europeans – or at least the French and the British – find this territory equally strange. Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron put themselves in the vanguard of diplomacy to stop Libya’s Muammer Gaddafi. When Mr Obama eventually consented, he attached a condition: you want it, you can own it.”

“It is more than half a century since Paris and London embarked on a military adventure together in this part of the world. Then, they were out to prove they were still great powers. Dwight Eisenhower soon put a stop to that. Now Washington is wishing its allies well. Unhappily, the Libyan mission, like Suez, could yet have an uncomfortable ending.”

“I am told that US diplomats are finding it a struggle to adjust to the new disposition of responsibilities. They are used to driving off in their chosen direction as others clamber aboard. It’s the natural order: Americans do things; Europeans talk about them. Washington does not wait on Paris and London.”

“Taking a back seat must be particularly hard for US military chiefs. True, Mr. Obama’s commanders were not enthusiasts for this operation. But for all the fanfare about it being an Anglo-French (Franco-British, if you happen to be in Paris) mission, the US initially has provided most of the hardware – the fighter jets, missiles and, crucially, electronic intelligence and command and control. American aircraft are still flying most of the sorties over Libya.”

“Mr. Obama, though, is clear about the next stage. If US punch was needed to establish the no-fly zone, France, Britain, Spain, Italy and the rest of the coalition must now run it. America, he said this week, cannot solve every problem in the world.”

“This is as it should be. The Maghreb, after all, is Europe’s long-neglected backyard. The US has a smaller strategic interest; and it has its hands pretty full in Afghanistan. Anyway, haven’t Europeans spent the best part of the past decade complaining that Americans do not properly understand the Arab world?” [Source: Financial Times, March 24, 2011]

The French have a serious point in arguing that political oversight of this mission should reach beyond the western nations represented in NATO. But theological objections to vesting military command and control in NATO have shown the childish side of French diplomacy.

Above all, however, the Libyan venture has betrayed the inadequacy of Europe's military capability. Britain has sent a dozen or so fighter aircraft, a couple of frigates and a submarine, and its military chiefs say that is about as much as it can do. It has nothing left if some new crisis were to emerge in, say, the Gulf. Everything is committed elsewhere, mostly to Afghanistan.

France has assembled a more impressive force — it still has an aircraft carrier — but it too is looking overstretched. Both countries have been cutting their defense budgets.

The uncomfortable facts were set out by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the NATO secretary-general, at last month's Munich security conference. “A decade ago”, Mr. Rasmussen said, “The US accounted for about half of the defense spending of all NATO countries. That share is now closer to 75 per cent. During the past two years, spending by the European members of the alliance had shrunk by $45 billion, equivalent to the entire German defense budget.

The Europeans, in other words, have been pretending that history did indeed end in 1989. The Arab uprisings have reminded them otherwise. The lesson of the Suez debacle was that Britain and France could not defy American power; the message of the Libyan campaign is that they cannot take it for granted.

The domestic politics in the U.S. speak for themselves. Barack Obama did not win the presidency on a promise to start a third war of choice in the Middle East. Now he has a second term to secure and he wants to focus on getting the domestic economy right. As much as Col. Gaddafi is reviled, there is not much appetite among voters to commit U.S. forces.

The mistake for America’s allies would be to see this more selective, almost diffident, posture as an aberration – a response to a unique set of political circumstances and regional sensitivities. Much more likely, it marks the structural shift in the geopolitical balance.

The U.S. remains the world’s indispensable power, but it is becoming a more reticent one. The Obama administration has understood that to be indispensable is not necessarily to be sufficient. The president and Hillary Clinton were saying long before Libya that the U.S. can best exercise influence through alliances, networks, coalitions and multilateral institutions. The flip side of the analysis is that it expects more from its partners.

It would be nice to report that Europe has risen seamlessly to the challenge. That would be to ignore the inconvenient fact that Germany abstained in the UN Security Council vote to impose the no-fly zone. The bad blood between Paris and Berlin has since been visible for all to see.

In Berlin, Sarkozy’s bid for international leadership has been seen as a characteristic act of self-promotion ahead of next year’s French presidential election. In Paris, Angela Merkel is accused of turning Germany into greater Switzerland as she forever runs scared of voters.

More unkindly, some European diplomats have pointed out that by standing with China, Russia, India and Brazil, Ms. Merkel has guarded four of Germany’s big export markets. In truth, European interests would be better served if Sarkozy was a little less impetuous and Merkel a little more willing to spend rather than hoard political capital.

It would be nice to report that Europe has risen seamlessly to the challenge. That would be to ignore the inconvenient fact that Germany abstained in the UN Security Council vote to impose the no-fly zone. The bad blood between Paris and Berlin has since been visible for all to see.

Do you think someone mentioned the paucity of NATO assets to the president before he decided to hand off command to the Europeans? As many analysts have been saying since this adventure started, the only way it is going to succeed is if America, as always, does most of the heavy lifting. We have the quantitative and qualitative military assets to make the operation work. But Obama wants to pull American assets out of the fight and have us in a "support" role.

According to recent polls the American public remains indignantly aware that they have been bullied into participation in a speculative adventure, for which they are obliged to do the heavy lifting, because the British and French cheerleaders lack the firepower. For instance, of 112 cruise missiles fired at Libya last Sunday night when the offensive began, just three were British, and one of those got stuck in its launch tube. For the American taxpayer this represented a cost $112 million dollars.

French behavior is viewed as frankly frivolous. President Nicolas Sarkozy’s aircraft have engaged in unilateral activities that seem designed to promote his own political interests rather than the common allied cause. The Americans, for both domestic and global political reasons, want to withdraw to the back row as swiftly as possible. But the allies are stuck with the fact that only the US, albeit wearing a NATO hat, has the resources to control complex multilayered air operations.

Even if Gaddafi goes, deep doubts persist about what follows him. British ministers scold skeptics who press this issue arguing that the fall of the tyrant will be achievement enough: thereafter, we can become benign spectators while the Libyan people decide their own destinies. This is a dangerous and typical European outlook.

Early in the Libyan crisis, Secretary of State Clinton raised the specter that Libya might become a giant Somalia. A long and inconclusive tribal conflict would be in nobody’s interests. Yet in a situation in which intelligence is very poor, nobody has a coherent notion of who might run a post-Gaddafi Libya or how the country is to be stabilized.

As of this witting we are seeing numerous reports from Libya, all focusing on the combat operations. We see or hear little of the politics, theology or DNA of the “rebels.” Are they true democrats or just another group of tribesmen who want to take power from Gaddafi? Will they eventually be infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood as Egypt seems to be going?

This seems fanciful, and is perceived as such by military chiefs on both sides of the Atlantic. They have never doubted that, once the west launched an armed intervention in Libya, it accepted a responsibility for the country that will be hard to fulfill – especially without a ground force commitment, which no sensible westerner wants.

This is not going to work and I'm sure the Europeans, at some point, will let the president know this. In the end, we will probably have American combat aircraft and other assets under the command of NATO and no one will believe that it isn't an American operation.

The Europeans, in other words, have been pretending that history did indeed end in 1989. The Arab uprisings have reminded them otherwise. The lesson of the Suez debacle was that Britain and France could not defy American power; the message of the Libyan campaign is that they cannot take it for granted.