Libya the Ever Shifting War
In this week we talked about military force and terrorism. Within this we talked about countries will not pledge a large amount of troops to a campaign or they will not send it to a conflict where they predict a large amount of casualties from combat. As a result from this there are very few large combats with major powers, yet these same powers interact in conflicts with smaller powers. An example of this is of our invasion of Iraq in both 1990 and less so the 2003 invasion. In these events we greatly overpowered the opposing Iraqi Army, and as a result it was a complete and total victory for the Coalition Forces, in which we took close to 361 casualties while the Iraqi Armies took between 20,000 and 35,000 dead and up to 75,000 wounded. This was a complete and total slaughter in their terms, while it was just barely a nick to us. This leads to my main argument: from our perspective as parts of a major power, most of us do not experience it directly, but what happens when you look at the small power fighting that major power, another small power or in my case an internal conflict within the country.
In the past months there has been a series of unrests in the Middle East known as the Arab Spring. This is taking place in most of the countries in the contemporary Middle East, but on the other hand it has extended to North Africa. These events have happened for a various group of reasons including: rising unemployment, poor economic situations and in most of the states a lacking of political rights and their leaders usually have been in power for quite a while. The revolt started on December 18 2010 in the North African state of Tunisia, when a man who was facing financial difficulties, immolated himself in his village, which would set off a spark that would change the Middle East.
In the following months many countries in North Africa and the Middle East experienced protests, fighting, revolutions and even in one case a violent civil war. There was a revolution in Tunisia which toppled the Prime Minister Ben Ali who had ruled for a 24 year term since the Jasmine Revolution. In addition to this there was a revolution in Egypt which took down Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak after 30 years of rule. Yet through all of this there was more dramatic situation in Libya where opposition groups had risen to fight the despot Muammar Qaddafi.
Qaddafi was the longtime dictator of the oil rich, North African country of Libya. He ruled the country with an iron fist for the more than 40 years. Until recent times when the Arab Spring occurred, spurring revolts all across the Arab World. The same happened in Libya where revolts started appearing in the country most noticeably in Tripoli, Misrata, and Benghazi. Soon after this the Libyan government mounted a campaign against the dissidents, capturing most of Western Libya, and pushing the rebels all the way back to Benghazi. At that moment it seemed like the revolt was about to be completely crushed, NATO intervened initiating a no-fly zone over Libya, launching air strikes against the government forces, destroying most of the air force, and a large amount of the land forces. This gave the rebels a significant advantage, allowing them to fight back and eventually defeat the government and kill Qaddafi.
According to Themner and Wallsteen, modern states preferably do not want to engage another state, or participate in a way which would cost a lot of resources or risk a large amount of casualties. They also talk about how in modern wars today the competitors are usually much outmatched. Yet in this case the Libyan Government, engaged full force against the rebels, were willing to use a large amount of resources and tough it through the casualties of war. This is the opposite of the Themner and Wallsteen’s idea, was it because it was an internal conflict where in most cases only one can exist? The idea of overmatching was also an issue, in that power shifted constantly between the government and the rebels. At one point Qaddafi was almost completely victorious, yet the rebels were able to push back, and then stalemated on the eastern coast. Why is this, is it just because of NATO’s support, or was it the popular support by the people?
Sources
Reuters.com
Journal of Peace Research: by Themner and Wallsteen
NewYorkTimes.com
CNN.com
BBC.com
Since Gaddafi was in charge for over 40 years we would expect them to see some changes in the concept of war as we saw in class between the different generations and different wars. Do you think this opposition in Libya has changed over time in regards to how we saw the different faces of war over time change in class?
ReplyDeleteKevin,
ReplyDeleteWhen you bring up the Themner and Wallsteen article, I think you are right when you state the reason why the conflict in Libya contradicted their point is because it was a civil war. And unlike the few current state on state wars over long disputed border territories like between Pakistan and India, the Qaddafi's regime was fighting for survival against the Libyan rebel movement. Therefore they will throw all of their resources against them in order to secure their reign.
And as your last question poises, I do believe that the reason that the rebels were able to breakout of Benghazi was due to NATO air support. In some cases, elements of NATO air power served to provide close air support to eliminate Libyan Armored targets as rebel ground forces advanced out of the city. If NATO never neutralized those Libyan Armored targets, I feel the rebel's were sure to be bogged down in Benghazi, then destroyed.