fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

NATO Solidarity and the Libyan War

Third, the US cannot abdicate NATO leadership. This does not mean acting unilaterally, but neither can the US take a back seat. It is understandable that Americans would be frustrated that Europe does not pull more of the load. But an America that “leads from behind” is not leading at all. We must lead, and […]

Third, the US cannot abdicate NATO leadership. This does not mean acting unilaterally, but neither can the US take a back seat. It is understandable that Americans would be frustrated that Europe does not pull more of the load. But an America that “leads from behind” is not leading at all.
We must lead, and bring others with us. By rejecting this role in Libya, the US is allowing NATO to appear a paper tiger. That serves no one’s interests. ~Kurt Volker

This is becoming the standard critique of the limited U.S. involvement in Libya, but there a few things wrong with it. The fundamental American mistake regarding Libya was when it joined Britain and France in making the intervention possible at the U.N. and leading the alliance into an unnecessary war. From that point on, the administration had decided to wager NATO’s reputation for the sake of an ill-defined mission for which none of the allies was prepared to take major risks. If the U.S. were not “leading from behind,” the intervening governments would still be in more or less the same predicament, except that the U.S. would be seen as waging an unsuccessful rather than merely half-hearted war.

Had the U.S. been intensely engaged in the bombing campaign all along, everyone seems to assume that NATO would not appear to be a “paper tiger,” but would instead vindicate its reputation as the greatest alliance in history. No doubt this is what many hawks would like to believe, but I’m not sure that it is true. Once the U.S. and its allies ruled out an invasion, they outsourced the success or failure of the mission to the weaker side in Libya’s civil war. It is this that has left the U.S. and NATO in a “slog.” Something was wrong with this intervention as soon as the leading governments adopted the tiresome mantra that the future of Libya is in the hands of Libyans, as if NATO were not daily affecting the shape of that future and attempting to guarantee a particular political outcome.

One of the main lessons from Libya should be that the U.S. and NATO should not set ambitious goals when they are unwilling to commit the resources and take the risks required to reach them. If a successful intervention requires the use of ground forces, and if no allied government considers the intervention worth risking their soldiers on the ground, then that ought to put a stop to all talk of intervention then and there. If such a step cannot even be contemplated because the conflict is so tangential and irrelevant to national interests, we should stay out. If minimizing risk is more important than success, the intervention must not be all that important to the security of the allied governments.

This relates to Volker’s fourth lesson, which is that there must be no more “caveats” from allies when it comes to conducting military expeditions. The caveats exist to maintain the illusion of consensus. NATO cannot launch military expeditions outside Europe and not expect some of its members to condition or rule out their involvement. If caveats will not be permitted, there will be no consensus in support of taking military action in the name of the alliance. NATO members do not have formal obligations to support “out-of-area” operations. The thing that jeopardizes real allied solidarity is the use of a defensive alliance as an umbrella organization to wage wars that are unrelated to the defense of alliance members.

Volker concludes:

A “back to basics” NATO that focuses on the collective defense of the allies may be the most that publics and finance ministries will sustainably support. Which means that for complex, expeditionary, and combat missions, whether on Europe’s periphery or beyond, the old “coalition of the willing” concept is looking better and better.

This is where NATO’s role in the Libyan intervention creates misunderstanding. The Libyan war is an example of the “coalition of the willing” concept in action, and I don’t think anyone would say that it is looking so good. The coalition in question was responsible for starting the war, and it is this coalition that is waging the war. For various reasons, some in that coalition wanted to drag NATO as a whole into their mess, and incredibly the rest of the alliance’s members let them. Instead of complaining about a lack of solidarity, we should marvel at the display of misguided solidarity with Britain, France, and the U.S. that committed the alliance to a war that most of its members will not or cannot fight.

Advertisement

Comments

The American Conservative Memberships
Become a Member today for a growing stake in the conservative movement.
Join here!
Join here