The escalating crisis in Libya is sparking new calls for Western military intervention, with British officials discussing the creation of a no-fly zone and some American lawmakers urging the Obama administration to provide weaponry to the rebels working to overthrow Libyan strongman Muammar el-Qaddafi.
But the push for aggressive action against Qaddafi’s regime is running into surprising opposition from the Pentagon, where senior military officials are urging policymakers to proceed cautiously and warning that any form of armed intervention into Libya could carry unforeseeable dangers and costs.
The upshot is that anyone expecting the U.S. military to take action against Qaddafi in the days ahead is virtually certain to be disappointed. The Obama administration has been steadily escalating its financial and diplomatic pressure on the Libyan dictator, freezing tens of billions of dollars of his assets and joining its European allies in vocally demanding that he step down. Publicly, White House officials insist that “all options are on the table” when it comes to Libya, including military force. In practice, however, there are no signs that the administration is actually preparing for military action inside Libya.
The administration’s go-slow approach has been evident in the limited amount of military assets that have been moved closer to Libya. Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered a pair of American warships to the Mediterranean Sea on Tuesday, and announced that the U.S. would augment one of the vessels—the USS Kearsarge—with a new contingent of 400 Marines. The ships should arrive in the vicinity of Libya by Thursday.
But Gates’ announcement was just as notable for what it left out. Military officials told National Journal that one of the most powerful seaborne weapons in the American arsenal, the USS Enterprise, had been diverted from its anti-piracy duties and shifted to the Red Sea in recent days so it would be within range of Libya.
For the moment, though, the Enterprise—a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with a large contingent of planes and helicopters—is effectively in a holding pattern there. The massive vessel has yet to be ordered through the Suez Canal, which it would have to traverse to reach Libya. That means it’s not clear when, or if, the Enterprise will be deployed to the Mediterranean, let alone when it might arrive in the international waters near Libya.
The military’s caution about Libya reflects its institutional wariness about being drawn into a new conflict while hundreds of thousands of troops are already at war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Senior commanders believe that their forces have been pushed to the breaking point by more than a decade of unrelenting combat and worry that U.S. troops could find themselves stuck in the middle of a protracted civil war between Qaddafi loyalists and opposition forces.
Top Pentagon officials also believe that the “Black Hawk Down” debacle in Somalia offers a cautionary tale about how quickly humanitarian interventions can go awry.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Gates offered a litany of reasons why the U.S. shouldn’t rush into a military confrontation with Qaddafi’s forces. He noted that the U.N. Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on Libya didn’t authorize the use of armed force and said it wasn’t clear whether other close American allies would support such a move. Gates also noted that rebel leaders had not yet asked for Western airstrikes on targets linked to Qaddafi, though there were indications Wednesday morning that Libyan opposition figures were strongly considering making such a request.
More broadly, Gates noted that imposing a no-fly zone over Libya or mounting any other kind of military intervention would bring “their own consequences and second- and third-order effects, so they need to be considered very carefully.”
Gates said he also had concerns about the "use of the U.S. military in another country in the Middle East."
Other senior military officials warned that creating a no-fly zone over Libya would be far more difficult—and dangerous—than it might appear at first blush. Speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Gen. James Mattis, the head of U.S. Central Command, said that creating a no-fly zone over Libya would first require American warplanes to destroy the country’s radar arrays and anti-aircraft batteries.
“You would have to remove the air-defense capability in order to establish the no-fly zone,” Mattis said. “No illusions here, it would be a military operation. It wouldn’t simply be telling people not to fly airplanes.”
Despite Mattis’s insistence that creating a no-fly zone over Libya would be “challenging,” there is little doubt that the American military could quickly knock out Libya’s air-defense systems if it was ordered to do so. The administration’s appetite for that kind of fight, however, remains very much to be seen.
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