This script is playing out again in Libya. Western air power can easily annihilate Moammar Gaddafi’s modest air force and prevent him from using massed armor and artillery in the open. But once the dictator’s forces move into populated areas and resort to fighting among the civilian population, the utility of air power diminishes rapidly. Especially when the multilateral action is based on protecting civilians, rather than defeating one side, a dictator willing to mix ruthless fighters with innocent noncombatants poses serious challenges to limited applications of precision air power [bold mine-DL]. ~Stephen Biddle

One of the other problems that Biddle doesn’t mention is that air campaigns of this kind run out of targets long before the other government is willing to give up. This became a significant problem during the Kosovo war, as this account reminds us:

It took 11 weeks, in which NATO ran out of targets, sending pilots back again and again to “bounce the rubble” of military sites they had already destroyed. Civilians were killed in strikes that went wrong, and NATO solidarity was battered.

Libya’s government says dozens of civilians have already been killed, though its claims so far are impossible to verify.

“You can always get ‘lucky’ with air power — a strike that kills Gadhafi, for instance,” said Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security studies at the U.S. Naval War College.

“But increased reliance on air power raises the costs, particularly the chances of collateral damage.” Faulty intelligence or an errant allied missile could destroy a school, a hospital or a mosque, killing dozens.

It’s important to remember that NATO succeeded in Kosovo because Milosevic finally capitulated, and not because the Alliance destroyed Serbian forces in Kosovo. Supporters of the current war like to compare this action to the combination of air power and the KLA on the ground that happened in 1999, but the reality is that NATO didn’t facilitate a KLA military victory. The Alliance did help the KLA achieve its political goal of driving out Serbian forces, but this was the result of Milosevic’s decision, which came as a surprise when it happened and only happened once allied governments began seriously considering a ground invasion. Thanks partly to Russian pressure, Milosevic agreed to withdraw.

Biddle explains why a Libyan stalemate is likely to develop:

The result could easily be a drawn-out, grinding stalemate. Libyan geography makes this more likely than usual: Vast expanses of open desert separate its urban centers, making it difficult for either side to move force over a distance and use it to take and hold enemy territory far from one’s base. Gaddafi has the transport but cannot safely move logistical convoys over miles of exposed roadways with coalition aircraft overhead. The rebels are safe from air attack but lack the organization, equipment or logistical capacity to project such power themselves over such distances. This could produce a deadlock in which neither side can prevail — but where the West is committed to flying apparently endless, apparently fruitless sorties while Gaddafi crushes any remaining opposition in the cities he controls and the rebels cry out for assistance from their sanctuaries.

The news today is that Ajdabiya has fallen to the rebels, but we’ve seen the rebels make successful advances before. What they have proven to be bad at so far is holding territory that they have taken, so it remains to be seen if they can successfully defend against concerted attacks from Gaddafi’s forces. If Gaddafi’s forces are prevented from launching attacks because of U.S. strikes on ground targets, that seems likely to create the stalemate Biddle describes.

Robert Haddick reaches a similar conclusion:

U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973, the guidance for Operation Odyssey Dawn, is almost surely too restrictive to permit a decisive air campaign against Qaddafi. As frustration mounts in the days ahead, coalition policymakers will likely seek to expand the target lists drawn up by their air planners. They may even look to Warden’s theory for an easy way out of the Libya conflict. But they won’t find enough there to avoid a looming stalemate.