26 Aug. Robert Fox: There seems to be very little strategic vision of where Libya and the Libyans are going
There has been an awful lot of dashing about and literally aimless firepower let loose in Libya this past week. Think of the hundreds of thousands of rounds fired into the air in 'celebration'.
Interestingly few of the correspondents and reporters embedded with the liberationists have asked: where does this huge arsenal of light weapons come from, who's paying for it, who is in charge – if anybody – and does anyone have a clue what is going to happen next?
Libya, like so much of the arc of instability from the Himalayas to the Atlas mountains, reaching down to the African Atlantic coast, seems to be a game of tactics, short-term opportunism and manoeuvre. No one seems to have a genuine long-term grasp of strategy or strategic thinking.
Greeting the fall of Tripoli, the principal leaders of the Nato alliance have seemed as keen to stress what they and their countries are not going to do, as much as what they will do.
They will offer training and advice, and small amounts of aid, but there will be no physical presence in terms of a much needed aid and stabilisation mission – and of course this means no military force, not even for peacekeeping. This is now known as the 'no boots on the ground' option.
There is very little evidence that this is going to work in Libya. This week's narrative from the principal Nato powers that the liberation of Tripoli, including the attack on Gaddafi's Bab-al-Azaziyah compound, was a case of do-it-yourself liberation by the Libyans themselves is already proving to be less than a half-truth.
As The First Post has reported this week, the incursion was guided by bands of special forces from Qatar and other emirates, mentored by trainers from the British, US, French and New Zealand.
According to the New York Times, British and French special forces carried out the crucial task of interpreting real-time surveillance images from Predators and other drones and aircraft to guide the liberators past known ambush points.
Some have hailed what has happened in Libya as a new magic formula for intervention. The former Clinton adviser and law professor Philip Bobbitt has branded this 'preclusive intervention'. In the Evening Standard he argued that the lessons of the Iraq debacle had been learned. The west and the international community now could, and should, intervene because the Libya formula proves it can work.
This, says Bobbitt, involves regional powers backing the intervention, through bodies like the Arab League, with local forces acting under international guidance and training on the ground – with the whole package tied up loosely with the ribbon of a UN mandate.
On the contrary, at best Libya today invites the Scottish law verdict of 'not proven'.
It is far from clear that the war is over and that the rebels have a full regional mandate. Although the UN agreed to release $1.5bn in Libyan assets last night, it was achieved only by removing any reference to the National Transitional Council which neither the African Union nor South Africa's President Zuma has yet recognised as the country's legitimate rulers.
Even as the NTC decamps from Benghazi to Tripoli, the questions remain: what can it actually deliver in terms of stability? How representative is its leadership and can it prevent Libya becoming a playground of local warlords and banditry?
There seems to be very little strategic vision of where Libya and the Libyans are going. The same could be said of the Middle East as a whole, as relations between Israel and Egypt noticeably worsen by the week; the Assad regime in Syria continues undeterred in shooting down its demonstrating citizens; and Yemen seems set to return to its bad old ways.
In Afghanistan and the wider region of Pakistan, Kashmir and India, the lack of strategic vision is palpable. After 10 years of a Nato presence, many parts of Afghanistan have achieved unprecedented local security, prosperity and even local government. But at the centre the government is drifting, afloat on corruption and a fair degree of inertia.
"After all these years, the really big questions like the engagement with Pakistan haven't been addressed effectively at all, despite the talk," a senior British serving officer of long Afghan experience told me recently. The problem, he said, was the lack of strategic vision. And, he might have added, the lack of willingness on the part of leaders like Obama, Merkel, Cameron and Sarkozy to make a bold move, because this would involve risk. Largely unreported, this week the French government has ordered its troops in Afghanistan to stay in their barracks and compounds, because the casualties have suddenly shot up.
It is feared that Obama's decision to pull 40,000 US troops out of Afghanistan inside the next 18 months will leave other international troops, and the Afghans they are training, dangerously exposed. The move is highly political, and aimed at the US voters in next year's presidential campaign – though there is no sign from the opinion polls that the Obama retreat from Kabul is registering with the US electorate at all.
It is all reminiscent of the way Obama plays golf, according to Tom Friedman in the New York Times. He plays "not to lose [but] hoping for the opponent to make a mistake."
What the president needs to do is adopt the Tiger Woods playbook - "always play the course, always play to win and always assume your opponent will do well and make that long putt". This way, you have to do better.
Obama is not the only culprit. The same criticism could and should be hurled at most of the world's leadership, collective and individual – for their failure of strategy, vision, will and nerve.
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