France Attacks

So, enforcement of the no fly zone in Libya just started… with France taking the lead.

Those of you you listen to the podcast know I (and Ivan) have expressed a huge amount of skepticism on the wisdom of the US getting directly involved militarily. It seemed like folly, adding a third major military commitment, for a cause where while you could certainly make a case that it would be nice to have a regime change in Libya or otherwise constrain the regime, the case that there was a compelling enough direct threat to the US to justify acts of war such as those needed to enforce a no fly zone was very very weak.

However… if Obama has succeeded here in something that George HW Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W Bush all failed in (well, if they even really tried)… namely working toward a UN-supported military action that did NOT have the vast majority of the action done by the US, but rather one where Europe (and perhaps others) take the lead… or maybe even do almost the whole thing by themselves with just symbolic support from the US… well… if that is what happened, then we have a whole new picture here.

It is still really early here. It is not entirely clear exactly what is happening. But it will be interesting to watch. If we do end up having a situation where regional players, who perhaps have more of a direct interest, take the lead and end up doing something successfully, while the US just nods and says “good luck with that”… without somehow getting sucked in deeply and directly… then that is a VERY interesting development. I’ll be especially interested in understanding exactly what the involvement is of the various countries (including the US) in this action.

Time to pay attention closely. I’m sure Ivan and I will be talking about this a bunch in this week’s podcast (which we will record tomorrow) as well.

Interesting times.