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“Easy” Wars and the Libya Trap

Nick Kristof talked recently to Gen. McPeak, who assured him that a Libyan no-fly zone is very easy. Kristof quotes him: “I can’t imagine an easier military problem,” he said. “If we can’t impose a no-fly zone over a not even third-rate military power like Libya, then we ought to take a hell of a […]

Nick Kristof talked recently to Gen. McPeak, who assured him that a Libyan no-fly zone is very easy. Kristof quotes him:

“I can’t imagine an easier military problem,” he said. “If we can’t impose a no-fly zone over a not even third-rate military power like Libya, then we ought to take a hell of a lot of our military budget and spend it on something usable.”

Unlike a lot of other people (all of whom now happen to be in the “attack Libya now” camp), I have no problem with Gen. McPeak, and he can speak with some authority on this subject, but I can’t stand this line of argument. For the last week, I have seen some version of this “if we can’t impose a no-fly zone on Libya, we should get our money back” argument quite a few times, and it is just an updated version of Madeleine Albright’s question to Powell: “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” It is usually the sort of thing that silly civilians say to military commanders. For their part, the commanders probably don’t think the armed forces exist to fulfill the passing whims of politicians, officials and pundits in response to the latest news cycle. If the U.S. has the ability to take military action somewhere, the claim seems to be, there is no argument against doing it.

In fairness to him, that isn’t what McPeak is saying. He is answering the technical question, “Can the U.S. military do this?” The answer to that has always been yes, but that has never been the question that mattered. McPeak is not assessing the policy implications, nor is Kristof asking him about the effect a Libya operation would have on other missions elsewhere. My guess is that Gen. McPeak would give Kristof less satisfying answers to those questions. It is Kristof who is using McPeak’s expertise to bolster a bad case for attacking another country, because this time it “feels different.” As Scoblete says, this is not much of an argument. Scoblete cites a more recent post from Mark Leon Goldberg from U.N. Dispatch, who made the point very early on that a no-fly zone is ultimately little more than a “gesture.” He argues the following now:

A no fly zone carries all the political risks of military intervention, but without the intended benefits.

Indeed, I suspect some no-fly zone advocates understand this, and want to make the U.S. commit to a no-fly zone as the first step in a series of escalations that would lead to a much larger, more destructive operation. So, yes, it is relatively easy to enforce a no-fly zone, but it won’t have that much of an effect on the civil war. It should tell us everything we need to know about how unwise intervening in Libya is that even the most hawkish interventionists aren’t proposing more significant military action right now. It may be that some hawks are trying to get the administration to accept a half-measure in the hope that committing to the half-measure will force the administration into taking additional military action later.

The overwhelming focus on the “easy” part is a warning sign that the people advocating intervention haven’t given the issue enough thought, or they don’t want to acknowledge publicly that agreeing to their “easy” and minimal military commitment will in all likelihood lead to a much more difficult, costly, dangerous, larger commitment once it begins. Tom Ricks detailed in Fiasco how there was no real “Phase IV” planning for what to do after the invasion of Iraq ended, and many others have made the same observation. This proved to be one of the more disastrous blunders of the war. From everything we have heard so far from war advocates (which is what they are), there doesn’t seem to have been any thought given to what the second phase of a Libyan intervention would be, much less anything after that.

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