Published: March 17 2011 23:55 | Last updated: March 17 2011 23:55
The belated US decision to support Anglo-French proposals for a Libyan no-fly zone seems no more than a cynical gesture.
Washington concedes that merely grounding the Tripoli regime’s aircraft and helicopters may not change outcomes.
But the situation today is where it always was: once Muammer Gaddafi showed himself determined to fight, only direct ground intervention by the US and its allies would have enabled the ill-armed rebels to prevail.
Monopoly possession of organised force gives tyrannies a decisive advantage, unless they either lose the support of their own soldiers or are vulnerable to diplomatic pressure from Washington, as Colonel Gaddafi is not.
True, his forces are so weak that a small western army could crush them. But that is not the point. The important difficulties are political, moral and diplomatic.
Throughout this crisis, western leaders have looked foolish. France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy crippled himself by appearing hostile to the insurgents both in Tunisia and Egypt. His subsequent change of direction to lead a charge against Col Gaddafi impresses no one.
David Cameron has exposed his inexperience. The decision to deploy armed SAS soldiers in Libya to protect a wildly implausible liaison mission to the rebels was pointless unless the force was empowered to use its weapons. Their capture and subsequent release was a gratuitous embarrassment. Thereafter, for a British prime minister presiding over draconian cuts in his own armed forces to posture ahead of the US in favour of military action invited the ridicule that it received, not least in Washington.
The first principle for any nation using force is to ensure it succeeds. But in Iraq and Afghanistan the west has learnt that unseating regimes is relatively easy; the hard part is to promote acceptable alternatives.
The intelligence failure in Libya, and indeed across the Maghreb, has proved absolute. Western leaders know almost nothing either about the Libyan insurgents or about what is happening on the ground. It would be madness to commit US and allied forces to destroy Col Gaddafi, with no notion of what would follow.
To be sure, local goodwill for western assistance in supplanting the Libyan tyranny would quickly dissipate. The most powerful single strand in opinion throughout the Muslim world is bitterness about America’s continuing support for Israeli oppression of the Palestinians.
It is irrelevant whether this is just, or reflects a misplaced sense of priorities. It is a core political reality, depriving the west of moral authority throughout the region. If American troops displaced Col Gaddafi, within weeks they would either abandon the country to anarchy or find themselves the objects of popular hostility as they grappled with the hideously familiar problem of which factions to put in charge.
I am not an opponent of interventions on principle. The UK government’s recent defence review prompted widespread scorn, and its swingeing cuts well-founded dismay, precisely because it seems likely that this country will wish to participate in some future western military operations, while lacking means convincingly to do so.
But grown-up governments do not indulge emotional lunges, committing warplanes as if sending a donation to Oxfam. They make cool calculations about self-interest. The American people have no appetite for a Libyan adventure. This week’s poll in The Washington Post shows that almost two-thirds now elieve the Afghan war is not worth fighting.
In shaping future western strategy and foreign policy, it seems essential to disengage in Iraq and Afghanistan before contemplating any further overseas military action. The west should lead a vigorous offensive designed to bring down Col Gaddafi by economic and financial siege. The legitimacy of his regime, always precarious, now seems irreparable. Even the Russians and the Chinese, though unwilling to use force, will have difficulty justifying a resumption of business as usual with him.
Some people regard containment as a synonym for infirmity, and today wring their hands at Col Gaddafi’s military success. But the boy scout ethic that characterised Tony Blair’s leadership of Britain, driven by eagerness to do good deeds in a naughty world, is discredited by experience.
The west can do much more to show its repugnance towards dictatorships. But both the US and its allies know it is folly to deploy their own forces against perceived wickedness, unless their own vital interests are at stake and their intervention is likely to enjoy legitimacy within a given region. Neither of these propositions holds good in Libya.
The writer is an FT contributing editor