Europe’s free ride on the back of Nato is over - Telegraph

Europe’s free ride on the back of Nato is over - Telegraph

Time for NATO's countries to start to look inward and prepare for a post-American alliance.

... In 2000, America’s share of Nato defence spending was around 50 per cent. Today, it has risen to 75 per cent. With peace at home, many European nations have redirected spending towards other priorities, free-riding off the US when it comes to threats overseas. And this problem is set to get worse, since every European Nato member is set for severe defence cuts – including France, whose own equivalent of Britain’s defence review begins next year.

This decline in capability has come about not just because we are spending less, but because we continue to spend badly. Military funding is channelled through dozens of separate national programmes and structures, creating enormous duplication and failing to achieve economies of scale. While Europe has half a million more military personnel than America, it can deploy just a fraction of them overseas.

Nato is also being weakened by changes in US foreign policy: as the then defence secretary, Robert Gates, said earlier this year, his country is starting to look west as much as east. What America sees in Nato is yesterday’s vision of the future: allies with declining capabilities, reluctant to put troops in harm’s way, and an institution ill-suited to addressing US interests – especially with defence cuts looming in Washington as well.

NATO has become militarily worthless not only to the United States but to itself. And it is past time to ask ourselves, "What has NATO done for us?" Well, not much.

And this should make the Brits sleep well at night: The Royal Navy has not even one warship to spare for emergency response within Britain's territorial waters.

Reasons for optimism in Libya

The fall of Gaddafi — War in Context

Steve Negus says there are three main things that bode well for Libya's future (uncertain though that future is).

• The West has leverage because the rebel alliance knows it could not have prevailed without NATO's airstrikes, but the rebels' honor is intact because they did the hard fighting and bleeding.


• Qaddafi's ruling party was not much bigger than him. There are not large numbers of "dead enders" to oppose the transitional government as there were in Iraq when Saddam was deposed.


• Libya is highly tribal but pretty homogenously Sunni and conservative. There really aren't any heretics, political or religious, that provides easy planting for Islamist radicalism. My comment: that one we will wait and see most of all. 

DOD & Justice told Obama that Libya war was subject to War Powers Act

2 Top Lawyers Lost to Obama in Libya War Policy Debate - NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.

Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.” Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20.

But those lawyers didn't understand what the real purpose of the Libya adventure is. Hint: success in the theater of operations isn't it.

Where our defense money goes

Most of the countries in the embedded essay below are NATO members. They spend a pittance on their defense budgets. Instead, we pick up their tab. You can't understand the true costs of the US defense budget without understanding how much of other countries' defense budgets are actually being paid for inside ours - without reimbursement and, for that matter, without any reason.

As I have written before, NATO is obsolete and purposeless. It's past time for the US to disengage from NATO. See:

What has NATO does for us?

The pointlessness of NATO

France And Britain Call For Expanded NATO Role In Libya

France And Britain Call For Expanded NATO Role In Libya.

Meaning that Britain and France want the United States to take charge again and go Roman on Qaddafi. Well, otherwise, this war could spell the end of NATO. And I say good riddance.

Belmont Club offers insights.

The end of NATO?

The only air arms operating in a combat role over Libya are the Brits and the French. The other air forces are merely voting "present." But they are not doing anything, you know, military. So, the question:
Will the Libya intervention bring the end of NATO?

In truth, the Libyan expedition is an Anglo-French project and has been from the beginning. Yet neither Britain nor France wants responsibility for the operation — and neither feels comfortable relying on the other. ...

And NATO — an organization that, I repeat, did not plan for, prepare for or even vote for the Libyan operation — will shoulder most of the blame. The use of NATO’s name, in Libya, is a fiction. But the weakening of NATO’s reputation in Libya’s wake might become horribly real.

Well, that might be, but NATO has been pointless for more than 20 years now.

The pointlessness of NATO

Joseph Harriss, who has been covering NATO since 1966, explains how the alliance became a subcontractor of the United Nations in, "NATO Reconsidered."

Behind the façade of variegated non-defense activities, bigger and more complex command structures, and far-flung operations is an organization in identity crisis. "NATO's mission has been unclear since the end of the Cold War, and there is a sense of it trying to validate itself as relevant to today's world," Richard Perle, assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and former chairman of the NATO High Level Group, told me. "It's no longer the indispensable defense organization it used to be. It's become so much less important that, if it didn't already exist, you couldn't start it today. It's living on its legacy."

When the USSR and the Warsaw Pact disappeared into the dustbin of history, NATO became an alliance with no foe. So,

NATO went into limbo and into a funk. "It entered a profound existential crisis two decades ago," explains Dominique David, executive director of the French Institute of International Relations in Paris. "But it managed to survive for several reasons. First, big bureaucracies never go away. They always find other pretexts to stay in business. Then, the U.S. wanted to keep an eye on Europe and NATO was a convenient way. But the biggest boost came in the early 1990s when former Soviet satellites requested membership. It became both a military organization and an instrument for the political stabilization of Europe. That made it a strange, schizophrenic animal constantly looking for new threats to relegitimize itself." ...

In December 1992 the North Atlantic Council, NATO's governing body, declared that the Alliance was "prepared to take further steps to assist the UN in implementing its decisions to maintain international peace and security." Suddenly it was in the global peacekeeping business as a subcontractor to the UN.

Read the whole thing. It's telling that the French are complaining about NATO's bureaucratic inefficiency. Man, when the French complain about unwieldy bureaucracies, you know there's a problem! And here is Exhibit A:

This is NATO's new, $1.38 billion headquarters sitting on 100 acres near Brussels, under construction now. This for an organization that has essentially no purpose.

I wrote in, "What Has NATO Done For Us?",

I think the United States should reassess whether the NATO alliance really is serving American interests. I don't think it is, and I don't think it will do better in years to come. Though we must stay politically engaged, I think we'd be better off withdrawing from the military alliance, and work toward building an Anglosphere military alliance in its stead.

And with the Libya misadventure, which serves only European interests, I say that reassessing the United States' relationship with NATO is more justified than ever.

The Free Libya air force redux

Update at bottom: Why this will not be a short-term war for us

Don't you love it when a plan comes together? On March 20, I wrote in "The Free Libya Air Force?" that,

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 against the government army.

The Free Libya air force, a.k.a. Armee de l'Air, headquartered
in Paris, plows the  road for the Libyan rebels

And so it is.

The BBC's Ben Brown in Ras Lanuf says: "It's been a remarkable day for the rebels. After seizing Ajdabiya, they have advanced westwards alsong the coastal highway at breakneck speed. Town after town as fallen to them - Brega, Ugayla, Ras Lanuf and Bin Jawad. It has been hard at times for us to keep up with them. The rebels are in a state of high excitement, exhilarated. They can hardly believe the progress they have made. They have been firing their guns into the air in celebration, blaring their horns, screeching their tires and doing wheel-spins. But the truth is that they never would have made this breakthrough if it had not been for the devastating coalition air strikes outside Ajdabiya on Thursday and Friday. They destroyed dozens of Col Gaddafi's tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery pieces. [Italics added]

And Time mag:

But the Libyan civilians populating the front line, as it shifts from Benghazi to Ajdabiyah, Brega, and Ras Lanuf, have little doubt that rebel advancement — and safety from government shelling and siege — is heavily, if not entirely, dependent on allied air strikes.

So my apologies to retired British Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt, who in fact did foresee accurately that what the UN thought it was "mandating" and what the Allies would do were two different things.

Update, March 28: Now US Gen. Carter Ham makes the same point:

TRIPOLI, Libya — As rebel forces backed by allied warplanes pushed toward one of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s most crucial bastions of support, the American military warned on Monday that the insurgents’ rapid advances could quickly be reversed without continued coalition air support.

“The regime still vastly overmatches opposition forces militarily,” Gen. Carter F. Ham, the ranking American in the coalition operation, warned in an e-mail message on Monday. “The regime possesses the capability to roll them back very quickly. Coalition air power is the major reason that has not happened.”

But read between the lines: as many of us discerned very early, American forces will be involved in Libya for months to come.

Libya: The media-driven war

Now that widespread resistance has broken out in Syria, having festered on a small scale for a handful of weeks, will President Obama and Europe turn their attention toward protecting the lives of Syrian civilians who are being killed as they demonstrate against Bashar al-Assad's dictatorial rule?

Military troops opened fire during protests in the southern part of Syria on Friday and killed peaceful demonstrators, according to witnesses and news reports, hurtling the strategically important nation along the same trajectory that has altered the landscape of power across the Arab world. ...

Human rights groups said that since protests began seven days ago in the south, 38 people had been killed by government forces — and it appeared that many more were killed on Friday. Precise details were hard to obtain because the government sealed off the area to reporters and would not let foreign news media into the country. ...

Human rights groups said that since protests began seven days ago in the south, 38 people had been killed by government forces — and it appeared that many more were killed on Friday. Precise details were hard to obtain because the government sealed off the area to reporters and would not let foreign news media into the country.

Note that last sentence: the government "would not let foreign news media into the country." This is the key point to understanding the fury the West has unleashed against Libya compared to the yawn we are not even stifling concerning Syria.

The campaign in Libya was almost entirely media driven from the outset.

I do not mean by that the the media actually promoted the war against Qaddafi or that media outlets or reporters encouraged Western intervention. I mean that Qaddafi's major strategic blunder was allowing foreign media to cover the resistance from its beginning practically without hindrance, even including broadcasting from Tripoli literally while the initial Allied cruise missiles were landing.

The images and video coming from Libya, especially during the early days of the street demonstrations showing protesters being gunned down, were the sine qua non of Western intervention. Not all the images and video came through the media, of course, as much of it was sent out by the resistance itself, having been captured on smart phones and personal cameras. But the European and American commercial media used those images extensively and that coverage was key to the growing dismay and revulsion in Europe and the US.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton implicitly admitted that the media played a key role in energizing military intervention.

"I know that the nightly news cannot cover a humanitarian crisis that thankfully did not happen, but it is important to remember that many, many Libyans are safer today because the international community took action," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday.

Assad, on the other hand, is not the fool that Qaddafi proved to be. Assad's father, Hafez, slaughtered 20,000 people in in 1982 in the city of Hama for resisting his rule. Absolutely no foreign coverage was done because no reporters were there - and for sure Assad didn't send out a press release afterward. Bashar has obviously learned this lesson well.The corpses will mount in Syria quite out sight from the never-blinking eye of the international media. And the Western governments will therefore be able to to pretend they don't know.

Photo source, DailyMail.co.uk

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."

"When you don't know where you're going ...

... any road will get you there."

Jan Techau, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Brussels and former NATO defense analyst (link):

"I’m not convinced we have much of a strategy or goals. Our own set-up and lack of a real plan is more worrying than a backlash in the Arab world, which so far isn’t happening."

Headline, Britain's Daily Mail: "Who's in charge? NATO members squabble over who leads Libyan bombings...and they can't even agree whether to assassinate Gaddafi."

• Tensions with Britain as Gates rebukes UK government over suggestion Gaddafi could be assassinated 

• No-fly zone called into question after first wave of strikes 'neutralises' Libyan military machine 

• Italy to 'take back control' of bases used by allies unless NATO leadership put in charge of the mission 

• NATO baulks at taking over operation with Turkey and European countries unwilling 

• Russians tell U.S. to stop bombing in order to protect civilians ...

President Barack Obama, seeking to avoid getting bogged down in a war in another Muslim country, said on Monday Washington would cede control of operations against Muammar Gaddafi's forces within days, handing the reins over to NATO.

But Germany and European allies remain unwilling to have NATO take on a military operation that theoretically has nothing to do with the defence of Europe.

France, which launched the initial air strikes on Libya on Saturday, has argued against giving the U.S.-led NATO political control over an operation in an Arab country, while Turkey has called for limits to any alliance involvement.

Some allies are even questioning whether a no-fly zone is still necessary, given the damage already done by air strikes to Gaddafi's military capabilities.

Caroline Glick is right: America has descended into strategic dementia.

John Kerry agrees with me on Libya

Well, there's a snowball fight going on in Satan's realm: Sen. John Kerry and I agree on something. The subject is Libya and what to do about shutting down Qaddafi's air force.

He contradicted Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who condemned "loose talk" about a no-fly zone last week, saying it amounted to military intervention. "A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defences," Dr Gates told a congressional committee hearing.

Speaking on CBS, Senator Kerry said: "That's actually not the only option for what one could do. One could crater the airports and the runways and leave them incapable of using them for a period of time."

Well, give the 2004 Democrat presidential nominee credit, although a little late to the party. I wrote six days ago.

Crater their runways from one end to the other and the problem is solved. Carriers, while desirable, useful and highly symbolic for long-term commitment, are not necessary to get this job done. Sky park a few Predator UAVs above the airfields so that if Libyan engineers try to repair the craters, we will know immediately - and the Predators can launch disincentives. For that matter, we can crater the runways again and maybe bomb a few pilots' barracks as encouragement.

Unlike the senator, I am not gung-ho about the mission - my post was about the military problem itself, not on whether it would be wise to do it. In fact, I would not support that action for reasons I outlined here:

Bombing Libya, even as comparatively "gently" as merely cratering its bases' runways, is also unambiguously an act of war, period. It absolutely places the United States on the side of the rebels, in coercive opposition to their foes. But who are the rebels? Frankly, we just don't know enough about them to be confident that once they gain power they will be much of an improvement over Qaddafi. The "rebel alliance" (sorry, Mr. Lucas!) is mostly an inchoate alliance of convenience among a number of anti-Qaddafi groups. But once Qaddafi falls - if he does fall - who will replace him and what will they be for? ...

Libya is embroiled in civil war. While there is certainly no reason to shed a tear for Qaddafi's passing, if he does, I see no particular reason to align ourselves with his potential successor(s), whomever he/they turn out to be. Despite the breathless media characterizations of the demonstrators and newly-formed rebel force as "pro-democracy," there is no evidence that that is what they are. They are justifiably anti-Qaddafi, but that sure doesn't make them democrats (although one may hope).

If the US and its allies are not willing to go all the way and actually effect regime change in Libya, a no-fly operation is pointless. But downfalling Qaddafi will be harder than we might think and require more commitment of treasure and blood than we should be willing to make.

Senator John McCain weighed in, too,

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, agreed that sending in ground troops would be an inappropriate display by the U.S., but implementing a no-fly zone would not be difficult because Libya's air defenses "are somewhat antiquated."

Speaking on ABC's "This Week," McCain said it would send a signal to the embattled Qaddafi "that the president is serious when he says we need for Qaddafi to go. And also, it would be encouraging to the resistance, who are certainly outgunned from the air."

McCain is clearly endorsing using military violence mostly as a symbol: to "signal" Qaddafi. His comments are  a ringing endorsement of halfway measures (if even halfway) that surely our experience of the last decade should convince us not to do.

At Foreign Policy, Thomas Ricks has some read-worthy posts. Start with, "Six considerations for discussing the imposition of a Libyan no-fly zone," which posits some very good questions that should be answered before launching the first airplane.

The read, "What Obama needs to do with Libya -- and with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, today," which looks at other options.

Cameron: shut down Libya's air force

Where are the carriers? It doesn't matter.

British Prime Minister David Cameron: "I have asked the Ministry of Defence and the Chief of the Defence Staff to work with our allies on plans for a military no-fly zone."

The point of a no-fly zone would be to prevent by force the Libyan air force from continuing to attack civilians demonstrating against the country's dictator, Moammar Qaddafi (see, "Libyan jets armed to kill").

But where are the carriers?

US Navy: No carriers in the Mediterranean Sea.

Royal Navy: Britain has only a single aircraft carrier left in service, HMS Illustrious. Well technically, HMS Ark Royal will be on the active roll until 11 March, but its decommissioning work is completed. However, Illustrious is of "ski-jump" design and has no aircraft assigned to it, nor are any even available anywhere in the UK's arsenal. Harrier jets, the only type Illustrious can handle, are no longer in service there.

HMS Illustrious with US Marine Harrier jets conducting interoperability training in an undated photo. Britain's armed forces no longer fly the Harrier, the only type jet that the carrier can launch or recover.

French Navy: France has one carrier, Charles de Gaulle. Larger than Illustrious, it is smaller than American carriers but of similar design. Hence it can launch and recover conventional fighters and attack aircraft.

USS John C. Stennis, top and USS John F. Kennedy, bottom, flank the French carrier Charles de Gaulle, which is leading Britain's assault ship, HMS Ocean (a helicopter platform), in this 2002 photo.  

However, Charles de Gaulle has had its operational-readiness problems.

As President Nicolas Sarkozy prepares to use a historic London summit to announce the use of RAF jets off the Charles de Gaulle, his naval chiefs have told him she is no longer seaworthy.

Presumably the problems with the carrier's propulsion systems have been fixed, as de Gaulle just completed combined exercises with USS Abraham Lincoln.

Nonetheless, absent American carriers, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to enforce a no-fly zone over the long term if the model is the no-fly zones the US and Britain enforced over most of Iraq after the Gulf War. Those years involved constant patrolling and substantial commitment of airframes and crews.

The reason for the difficulty is that the closest Allied air base to Tripoli is Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily, about 350 miles away. This is not next door for flying high tempos of air interdiction. The next closest is Aviano Air Base in northern Italy, more than 900 miles from Libya.

However, Britain and the US (and France and Italy?) need not institute constant patrolling to shut down Qaddafi's air force. A fair number of these BLU-107 Durandal cratering bombs will do nicely:



Developed by the French and type-adopted by the US Air Force in time for 1991's Gulf War, the BLU-107 creates enormous craters even in concrete runways. The Brits once used an even more diabolical cratering bomb, the JP233, that not only made a huge honking hole, it also scattered 215 anti-personnel mines around the crater as a disincentive to repair the runway. However, this bomb was withdrawn from service, mainly because the Gulf War proved it was dangerous to the bombing aircraft.

However, chasing down individual Libyan fighters, while technically quite possible, is pointless. Crater their runways from one end to the other and the problem is solved. Carriers, while desirable, useful and highly symbolic for long-term commitment, are not necessary to get this job done. Sky park a few Predator UAVs above the airfields so that if Libyan engineers try to repair the craters, we will know immediately - and the Predators can launch disincentives. For that matter, we can crater the runways again and maybe bomb a few pilots' barracks as encouragement.

Putting Libya's air force into no-fly status is not all that challenging and it does not require aircraft carriers to do.

Update, March 2: Libyan air defenses would have to be dealt with, of course:

Option 1: Turn the runway-neutralization mission over to the US Air Force's 509th Bomb Wing with its B2 Stealth bombers. I doubt Libya would be able to counter them.

Option 2: Notify Libyan AF's high command that we are going to crater their runways but will not attack personnel or other facilities. Make it clear, however, that if they resist in any way all our gloves come off and Libya will not have an air force left.

USS Kearsarge, now on station offshore, can mount combat search and rescue missions in support. An aircraft carrier would be nice but is not necessary for this mission.

This is not to say I support such an action; I have serious reservations. But simply as a military action, it would not be terribly difficult.

Endnote: The toothless Illustrious is due to leave service in 2016. It's replacement, Queen Elizabeth, will not enter service until 2020 at the earliest. QE and its later sister ship, Prince of Wales, however, will be super carriers rivaling the US Navy's and will be the largest warships ever for the Royal Navy. Curiously, both predecessor ships of the same names were battleships sunk in World War II.

Related: To be clear, I do not think that doing this would be a good idea.