We completely agree, with ourselves. David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy during a parade at London, June 2010..

Sarkozy and Cameron, the force is not strong

America is reluctant to lead Operation Odyssey Dawn, but fractious Europe lacks the resources and faces complications, with Germany and NATO ally Turkey dragging their feet.

Published on 23 March 2011 at 15:24
We completely agree, with ourselves. David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy during a parade at London, June 2010..

Forget Operation Odyssey Dawn, the name the Pentagon's semi-random name-generating computer system has allotted to America's contribution to the military campaign in Libya. Nor is Operation Ellamy, our own codename for Britain's involvement, any more relevant. The Libyan campaign should really be called The War Nobody Wants To Lead.

We've only been at war for four days, but already serious divisions have appeared within the coalition leadership over how to prosecute the campaign. It is easy to understand Barack Obama's reluctance to play a lead role in a conflict he didn't want in the first place. This was one war that America didn't want.

Britain and France may have made all the running in drumming up international support for a no-fly zone. So if London and Paris are so keen to confront Gaddafi, why don't they run the campaign? After all, it was only at the end of last year that the British and French governments signed a new defence cooperation pact, whereby they agreed to cooperate more closely on military issues. The French even agreed to allow us the use of one of their aircraft carriers – assuming, that is, we had the aircraft to fly off it.

The first problem Europe encounters when it comes to conducting independent operations is a distinct lack of military capability. When the UN imposed a no-fly zone against Iraq in the early 1990s, the RAF flew an average of one combat mission for every five undertaken by the US Air Force. The French did not fly at all because their Mirage jets had the same radar profile as the aircraft they had sold to Saddam Hussein, and were therefore in danger of being shot down by the Americans. Read full article in Daily Telegraph...

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From Germany

Paris, Berlin, Ankara: the infernal trio

“The international coalition against Muammar Gaddafi has two significant weaknesses,” laments Süddeutsche Zeitung. “It does not know what it wants to achieve in Libya. Worse, it does not know who is leading operations. [...] In the absence of American leadership, the politics are being guided by selfishness, vanity and waffling.” First accused is France. Nicolas Sarkozy, without whom there would have been no vote and no swift implementation of the UN resolution, “wanted at any price to keep out NATO, whose reputation could irritate the Arab partners in the anti-Gaddafi alliance”. No one, however, has tried to prove this assumption. “Turkey is playing a similar role, but at the other extreme,” adds the Munich daily. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to do business with autocrats “while remaining the democratic model for the rebellious masses. He is travelling down a strictly anti-European road and using Nicolas Sarkozy as a bogeyman to whip up fury against Europe.” As for Germany, the government “has wedged itself into an isolationist position that even its friends cannot explain away.” In short, the paper concludes, “the alliance is self-destructing. Three command centres are responsible for the intervention in Libya, and the operation is going under three different names. Norway and Italy have threatened to withdraw if the shambles is not sorted out immediately. The system of alliances Bismarck drew up was child’s play next to this chaos in Europe.”

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