A mess awaits NATO in post-war Libya
Larison follows up on the issue of post-war planning in Libya:
The sobering thing to consider is that there has been far less planning and preparation for the post-Gaddafi Libya that the intervening governments say that they want than there was planning for a transition in Iraq. At least before the invasion of Iraq, the State Department had made some effort to come up with post-Hussein transition plans, which Pentagon planners and occupation officials dutifully ignored. There does not appear to be anything comparable going on in any of the NATO foreign ministries right now for officials to ignore later on. Supporters of the Iraq invasion were supremely overconfident and unreasonably optimistic about the prospects of transforming Iraqâ??s political system, and Americans and Iraqis have been paying the price for their arrogance ever since, but compared to Libya Iraq was a far better candidate for a transition from authoritarianism to some form of consultative or representative government. That doesnâ??t mean that it was a good candidate or that imposing political transformation on Iraq was wise, but that the same kind of transition in Libya will be vastly more difficult.
One argument I've made frequently is that a policy of nation building following a major conflict is largely unnecessary and costly. The U.S. has a very poor track record policing and restoring post conflict states and doesn't have the resources to devote to such endeavors given the meager security pay-off. So in this sense, if NATO presses ahead and unseats Gaddafi but avoids entangling itself in the messy aftermath, that's certainly better than dumping 100,000 troops into the place to try and police a post-Gaddafi Libya.
The problem for the administration is that it justified its intervention into Libya's civil war in purely humanitarian terms. It would completely undermine the war's rationale to sit idly by if a post-Gaddafi Libya descends into brutal chaos.
(AP Photo)
