USA Africa Dialogue Series - Allies Split On Libya Goal And Exit Strategy

 Allies Are Split on Goal and Exit Strategy in Libya

Goran Tomasevic/Reuters

Rebel fighters take cover during a shelling near Ajdabiyah, Libya on Thursday. 

By STEVEN LEE MYERS and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: March 24, 2011

The United States has all but called for Colonel Qaddafi's overthrow from within — with American commanders on Thursday openly calling on the Libyan military to stop following orders — even as administration officials insist that is not the explicit objective of the bombing, and that their immediate goal is more narrowly defined.

France has gone further, recognizing the Libyan rebels as the country's legitimate representatives, but other allies, even those opposed to Colonel Qaddafi's erratic and authoritarian rule, have balked. That has complicated the planning and execution of the military campaign and left its objective ill defined for now.

Only on Thursday, the sixth day of air and missile strikes, did the allies reach an agreement to give command of the "no-fly" operation to NATO after days of public quarreling that exposed the divisions among the alliance's members.

"From the start, President Obama has stated that the role of the U.S. military would be limited in time and scope," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday evening in announcing the plan.

But even that agreement — brokered by Mrs. Clinton and the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Turkey — frayed almost immediately over how far the military campaign should go in trying to erode the remaining pillars of Colonel Qaddafi's power by striking his forces on the ground and those devoted to protecting him. It was salvaged, one diplomat said, only by papering over the differences concerning the crucial question of who actually controls military strikes on Libya's ground forces.

"There were differences in the scope of what NATO would do and what would remain with the national militaries," a senior administration official said, expressing hope that the agreement on NATO command would be a step toward resolving them.

The questions swirling around the operation's command mirrored the larger strategic divisions over how exactly the coalition will bring it to an end — or even what the end might look like, and whether it might even conceivably include a Libya with Colonel Qaddafi remaining in some capacity. While few countries have openly sided with the Libyan leader, officials said on Thursday that most of the allies expected that the use of military force would lead to talks between the government and the rebels.

"I don't think anyone is ruling out some kind of negotiated settlement," the official said. Colonel Qaddafi has responded defiantly, making the likelihood of his negotiated departure seem exceedingly remote.

The allied bombardment remains in its early stages. It has already badly eroded Libya's combat power — with scores of missile and airstrikes against Libya's air defenses and armored columns — but not yet drastically reversed the military equation on the ground.

Mr. Obama, having returned from his trip to Latin America on Wednesday, met privately at the White House with his senior national security officials, but he made no public statements, even as reservations percolated in Congress and elsewhere about the conflict and its end game.

Asked about concerns raised the day before in a letter by the House speaker, John A. Boehner, Mr. Obama's spokesman, Jay Carney, said, "I think the president's been very clear, and he has been asked and answered this question numerous times."

In fact, Mr. Obama has not made clear what will happen if the international coalition succeeds in establishing control of the skies over Libya, but Colonel Qaddafi's loyalists and rebels continue to attack and counterattack each other in a bloody, protracted stalemate.

"We should never begin an operation without knowing how we stand down," said Joseph W. Ralston, a retired general who served as NATO commander and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We did a no-fly zone over Iraq for 12 years and it did nothing to get rid of Saddam. So why do we think it will get rid of Qaddafi?"

In Paris, the French foreign minister, Alain Juppé, expressed confidence in the success of the operation so far, even as he urged patience. "The destruction of Qaddafi's military capacity is a matter of days or weeks, certainly not months," he told reporters, adding: "You can't achieve our objective in just five days."