Hello Solomon,What has me going from amused at the situation to being shocked is this simple fact.
you hit the nail on the head there.
To understand what is going on you would need to read the Lisbon Treaty,Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Anglo French defence agreement.
That is a lot of dull reading but it can be summed up as follows:
Eliminate individual European nations' ability to conduct independent military operations by cutting force sizes and eliminating capabilities to enforce military integration.
Hence eliminating British aircraft carriers, there is a European agreement on creating a Pan European carrier group,and maritime patrol aircraft and probably the heavy tank fleet in future.
The idea being that all European countries will work together to project European power overseas.
Sarkozy and arch Europeanist Cameron appear to have seen Libya as a demonstration of European military power.
Hence U.S.S.Enterprise staying in the Arabian Sea and U.S.Air Force operations now drawing down as Obama lets them get on with it.
Good call Mr.President.
Cameron and Sarkozy have been rudely reminded of their military impotence.
The Common Foreign and Security Policy has been shown to be a sham.
Europe is looking a bit silly.
The United States has reinforced it's global dominance.
GrandLogistics.
The UK went up against a more powerful foe, at a greater distance from home, with a more challenging set of mission objectives than NATO is facing right now.
The UK beat the Argentinians.
This current conflict is in doubt.
Whether its because of politics. Because of the UN mandate (essentially politics). Or a lack of military capability (I would guess this is the main reason). One thing is readily apparent.
If the current conflict is stressing resources then those resources need to be increased.
Sorry Solomon, but you're forgetting a very important aspect: the Falkland War was a war of necessity. A conventional interstate, peer-vs-peer war. The British also had a strategy and were ready to provide the necessary resources to achieve victory. The current involvement in the Libyan civil war is a war of choice fought with minimum involvement and at minimum cost and without a strategy. Besides that the Lybian civil war is a much more complex conflict, just look at the heterogeneous anti-Gaddafi movement. I also think that escpecially the French involvement is meant for domestic consumption and as some kind of effort to appease/fix their generally good relationships with the Arab world (Alliot-Marie).
ReplyDeleteWhat Europe - those countries who chose to contribute to NATO operations in Lybia - "lacks" is the will or rather the incentive to provide the necessary military resources - and these are also available so there's no need to increase our forces, let's be clear now and in the foreseeable future Europe has sufficient air, land and naval forces to defend its territory from any plausible threat and for major warfighting operations in its periphery.
The Common Security and Defence Policy is the domain of the Council of the European Union (the 27 governments) and the European Council (27 heads of state/government). If they cannot agree on a common policy, the European Union will not take action. This is a more intergovernmental element of the EU. The only thing that all 27 heads of state/government can probably agree on is the collective defence clause, even though it's unlikely that European Union member state territory would come under attack in the foreseeable future.
And about your constant rants that the US taxpayer is subsidizing European defence: There are currently 80.000 US troops in Europe, most of them in a support function, they are necessary to sustain US military operations in Africa and the Middle East, there are four combat brigades and all of them regularly deploy to theatres outside of Europe, there are two fighter wings and both of them regularly deploy to theatres outside of Europe. EU/NATO countries have more two million men and women under arms, there are more than 60 combat brigades and only a fraction of them regulalry deploy to theatre outside of Europe, there are more than 1000 fighter aircraft and less than 50 regularly deploy to theatres outside of Europe. How for fucks sake do you think you're subsidizing the DEFENCE of Europe? Carrier Battle Groups in the Altantic and the US intelligence community are the two most important things the US contributes to the DEFENCE of Europe. And even if the US would withdraw every single one of their soldiers tomorrow this wouldn't endanger Europe, because your carriers and your intelligence community are also critical to the defence of the United States and you'd have to keep them anyway.
And to end my comment something from a British officer who spent a considerable amount of time in the Arab world:
"Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them. Actually, also, under the very odd conditions of Arabia, your practical work will not be as good as, perhaps, you think it is." This also sums up my opionion about the Western involvement in Lybia.
The Falklands were a very different fight, in a much smaller geographic area and with the decision to commit ground forces to expel the rather small argentinian force from the islands. It was essentially a naval war (sea control) with an important air-componant (access denial for the argentinian, air defense and then air superiority for the British) with very little (if any, I'm not sure) bombing on mainland Argentina. The fight did not require long term involvment as Lybia seems to do : everything was settled in 74 days after the first british recapture shoot, the amount of forces deployed being much less than Khadafy's army's size, and with much less armored vehicules, and also with much less civilians in the way. The UK, NATO nations and allied arab forces not wanting to land and half of them not wanting to shoot means that political rather than technical/military issues are the causes of the current stalmate : should the political will be there, a SCALP-EG/Storm Shadow would already have killed the tyrant...
ReplyDeleteThe fact remains gentlemen!
ReplyDeletean unpleasant fact but it still remains.
the UK deployed more airpower, at a greater distance by itself than NATO is doing right now. the UK fought with super extended supply lines and was able to successfully dislodge an enemy that fought with skill and ability.
NATO has allowed this to turn into a furball.
to say that a SCALP-EG or Storm Shadow could end this today is to miss the point. do you not think that Sarkozy wouldn't order a strike if he could kill Kadafi by doing so? i believe he would and would celebrate after its success.
No, Sarkozy would not because it would be going further than agreed by the other nations and Sarkozy does not (for internal reasons) want a scandal after loosing badly a test election less than 1 year from the presidential election...
ReplyDeleteAlso note that indeed NATO does not deploy a lot of forces against Kadhafy but :
1) lots of hardware are not brought for political reasons (for example, Belgium has 6 F-16 in place out of about 60 if I remember well, because they were already in Greece for training : we won't spend more money than the absolute minimum and since we had just what was needed we kept it there but won't bring out more)
2) I'm not sure more planes would be more efficient : target identification seems difficult as Khadafy hides a lot of equipement and uses civilians as shields : no one is gonna bomb much in that kind of configuration
3) Various specialists say that NATO and western power must not, under any circumstances, bring more power into play and must simply support arabian actions (Quatar just sold a bunch of Milan AT missiles to the rebels, missiles made by France and also in use in the loyalist forces, but France will not sell any equipement dirrectly to the rebels for example). Why is it so ? A question of both image and not getting caught in a vice if the peoples we helped later show themselves to be Al Quaida (and there seems to be real fears of that right now)
So NATO might not be as powerless as you may think.
(Also, note that the UK could deploy more power because it was fighting on a single front at the time and the USSR was not threatening at the time, thus allowing the UK to concentrate while right now they have to commit forces to Afghanistan, just came back from Irak, have to keep a permanent force in the Falklands, etc.
I never argued that they didn't. It's just that in this conflict there's no or not enticing enough incentive to provide more airpower (consider that most European countries also contribute to various EU, NATO and UN peacekeeping missions and of course ISAF). Heck, one year in Afghanistan with the current troop levels costs the German taxpayer € 3B and we've already spent € 13B since 2002. Add to that the "threat" of negative press coverage and a difficult domestic situation (the current ruling coalition has lost significantly in the latest state elections) and there's really not much of an incentive to get involved. The situation is not dissimiliar in other European countries.
ReplyDeleteAlso it seems to me that whatever the West does, the Arab world still gets pissed off. It would have been preferable to just support the UN resolution, offer the Arab countries that were calling for a Western intervention technical assistance and access to European bases and to tell them politely that it's their job and not ours.
However, Foreign Minister Westerwelle has already said that Germany would contribute to a "humanitarian" follow-on mission.
Speaking of Argentina, if they tried to retake the Falklands today I seriously doubt the British would be able to defend their territory without seeking outside help. Without a carrier force, the U.K's only hope would be to throw the Argentinians back into the sea. Should they succesfully occupy the islands, it would be nearly impossible for the British to dislodge them on their own. I think if conflict returns to that region expect the British to ask the French, and maybe even the Italians or Spanish, to join the war and commit their carriers to the fight.
ReplyDelete