The last intervention: Libya's dark lesson for NATO

Either Europeans will develop the security and defense identity they have advertised for so long, so Europe can have its own credible voice in a world not only run by soft power, or given the expense and difficulties of defeating even Libya, they will simply stop trying. The jury is out, but the verdict is important.

Some defense experts, like Tomas Valasek of the London-based Center for European Reform, suggest that Washington’s diplomacy worked, in that during the Libyan conflict “the allies established a new division of labor for NATO operations on Europe’s borders, which should be encouraged.”

Possibly. And just possibly, given the cost and strain of the Libyan operation, combined with the vital necessity to cut budget deficits at home to save both the euro zone and themselves, even the eight European nations that fought will decide that a real European security and defense identity is too expensive and that their already shrinking defense budgets will continue to shrink past the point of utility — at least to Washington. After all, the European Union itself played no role at all in the war…

So Libya may be a dark model for NATO’s future: internal coalitions of the willing, hemmed in by conditions and national “caveats,” running out of ammunition and targets, with inadequate means to achieve stated political goals.