The minute Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet
Davutoglu told the Anatolia news agency, "The
coalition that was formed following the Paris
meeting will abandon the mission and hand it over
entirely to a single command system under NATO",
the issue was settled.
The North Atlantic
Treaty Organization is about to enter the era of
the double quagmire - as in Central Asia
(Afghanistan) and northern Africa (Libya). And
everyone thought NATO was
supposed to be defending Europe
from the commies. Libya now is an official victim
of the endless war club.
This predictable
coup de theater (see Endgame:
Divide, Rule and roll with the oil Asia Times
Online, March 25) does not alter the fact Odyssey
Dawn remains an American war. Well, not a war,
according to the White House, but a "time-limited,
scope-limited military action".
For the
moment it's a time-limited etc conducted by
General Carter Ham, out of his Africom
headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany (none among 53
African countries wanted Africom). Next week it
will become a time-limited etc conducted by US
Admiral James Stavridis, NATO's top military
commander.
For all practical purposes it's
an all-American time-limited etc affair - enforced
by Globocop NATO, with a handy Pentagon back up in
the form of readily available "interdiction strike
packages" - inimitable Pentagon speak for fighter
jets loaded with missiles and ready to strike.
War by committee, revisited As
a crucial member of NATO and self-promoting
preferential bridge between the West and the
Muslim world, Turkey had to calibrate a very
tricky strategy. The government led by Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan - with extensive
business interests in Libya - spent the whole week
making it crystal clear that the NATO mission must
be totally restricted to protecting civilians,
enforcing the UN arms embargo and providing
humanitarian aid.
Predictably, the US and
Britain were absolutely convinced that the
military campaign in Libya could only be run by
NATO.
The problem was how to deal with
pesky France, led by neo-Napoleonic President
Nicolas Sarkozy. The French government was
lobbying hard for a joint Anglo-French military
command - with France on top, bien sur.
The final decision spells out that NATO's
huge "assets" will run the whole show on the
ground, while a political committee will provide
the "governance".
It's a copy of the
International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF)
arrangement in Afghanistan. (ISAF by the way does
not provide much security and much less
assistance). ISAF is led by NATO, and includes
non-NATO countries such as Australia and New
Zealand. The Libyan body will theoretically
include those paragons of equality and equanimity
- Gulf members of the Arab League. For the moment,
that translates only into Qatar, which has pledged
a huge fleet consisting of two Mirage fighter
jets.
Sarkozy's argument for France to
lead was that a signal should be sent that the
West was not once again imposing its will over a
Muslim country. As if there's much difference
between NATO and a French-Anglo-Saxon committee.
But in the end Sarko dug his own tomb
(where was Carla to teach her beloved Chou Chou
some manners?) He treated the Turkish government
like a bunch of illegal immigrants. France did not
invite Turkey to last Saturday's summit in Paris
which was the prelude to the war, sorry,
"time-limited, scope-limited military action".
Sarko wanted his Mirages to be the leading stars
of the show.
Erdogan and Davutoglu saw
right through it - the burning Sarko desire to
launch not only the no-fly zone but his 2012
presidential re-election campaign as well. In a
speech in Istanbul, Erdogan said, "I wish that
those who only see oil, gold mines and underground
treasures when they look in [Libya's] direction,
would see the region through glasses of conscience
from now on." To top it off, Sarko had made it
clear numerous times that he is against Turkey's
bid to join the European Union, saying it belongs
in the Middle East, not Europe.
The
tawdriest part of the whole spectacle is that
Sarko was propelled to grab the limelight on Libya
by another shameless self-promoter, French
philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy, king of the
chest-revealing white shirt, who flew to Benghazi
sniffing a golden media opportunity, ingratiated
himself with the "rebels", and from there called
Sarko and urged him to fulfill his glorious Arab
liberator destiny.
But enough of these
clowns. Which leaves Turkey on the spot. Last
week, at the al-Jazeera forum in Doha, Davutoglu
said, "The legal status and territorial integrity
of states including Libya and Yemen should be
protected." Yet no one knows what NATO's ultimate
designs on Libya really are.
NATO will be
in charge of enforcing the no-fly zone and the
arms embargo. Sooner rather than later NATO will
decide that's not enough - that more air strikes
on Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's forces are essential.
Turkey has not signed up for that kind of action -
and has already said it won't.
When the
NATO secretary general, Danish right-winger Anders
Fogh Rasmussen, says something like, "we must
think how NATO can assist North African countries
in their transition to democracy", Turkey better
have an exit strategy, or at least a good
explanation to the Muslim world when a deadly
quagmire sets in. Otherwise, from a bridge between
East and West, it will be reduced to a bridge to
hell.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
