No-Fly Zones and Other Military Options

The debate over na No-Fly Zone over Libya is intensifying, and some are calling for more direct military intervention. So much of the rhetoric appears to be occurring in a vacuum that it may be worth returning to a few first principles and home truths. (For the moment, I'm going to leave aside the blowback from playing into Qadhafi's hands by making it look like the rebels are Western puppets: I'm just going to look at the practicalities.)

You cannot commit forces you do not have. I have heard few if any of the advocates of increased US involvement call for 1) a military draft or 2) massive tax hikes to support a huge increase in our military forces, already committed to two wars. I, too, would like for Clark Kent to slip out of the Daily Planet, change into Superman, fly to Libya, and, oh, let's say throw Qadhafi into the sun with a single heave. But I can't find the area code for Metropolis, or even for Gotham City to ask Commissioner Gordon to crank up the Bat-Signal. Absent those solutions, we're stuck with an overcommitted US Armed Forces, many of whose front-line troops are on their fourth or fifth deployment, or worse, with dwindling budgets and massive stress, and they're a volunteer force, so the longer this goes on, the harder replenishment will be. And we don't even have one carrier in the Med. Not one, save a recently deployed helicopter carrier. Take on MiGs and Sukhois with helicopters? You go first, please. Where will we run our No-Fly Zone from? Europe?

Libya is big. Sure it doesn't have many people, and most live near the coast, but the air bases are scattered inland, and by many accounts the African mercenary troops are being flown into desert air bases like Sabha, and a no-fly zone would presumably want to stop that. So you really want to deny the whole airspace. Libya is 679,359 square miles in area; or 1,759,541 square kilometers. The whole of Iraq (and even when the northern and southern no-fly zones were both in place, the whole country was never included) is 169,234 square miles, or 438,317 square kilometers. (Numbers are from Wikipedia.) Or, for the mathematically challenged, Libya is four times the area of Iraq, and some of its key airfields are deep in the Sahara. And we never enforced a no-fly zone over all of Iraq.

You need either carriers or bases nearby. We may be able to dispatch B-2s from Missouri or B-52s from Diego Garcia to make the rubble bounce in troubled regions, but a no-fly zone requires continuing combat air patrol to deny the skies to the bad guys, and that requires fairly close-in bases, large deployments, and high sortie rates. For the Iraqi northern no-fly zone we had NATO bases in eastern Turkey, and for the southern we had carriers in the Gulf and bases in Kuwait, Qatar and, with a wink and a nod, probably Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Now let's look at the options in Libya.

1. Carriers.We would have to bring the USS Enterprise from its current Gulf deployment, and it's due for retirement soon anyway, and is supposed to be supporting those other two wars. Of other NATO allies in the Mediterranean, France has one active carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, homeported in Toulon, and some older ones in mothballs. Italy has two, Garibaldi and Cavour, both short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) carriers, homeported in Taranto and La Spezia, respectively. Spain also has two STOVL carriers, Principe de Asturias and the new Juan Carlos I, only just commissioned in September, both homeported in Rota. These STOVL carriers, sometimes called "Harrier carriers," embark AV-8B Harrier aircraft, which have limitations in speed and range against frontline fighters, and helicopters. Britain has one STOVL carrier still in service, HMS Illustrious, homeported in Portsmouth and not, so far as I know, in the Med. That's it for NATO, unless they can get Russia or India to join the party.
2. Land Bases. One could wish that Egypt would be willing to commit its western air bases or even its Air Force itself nto operations over Libya, but in the present revolutionary situations there and in Tunisia (which has a minuscule armed forces), this seems unlikely, and even offering to host Western forces would be difficult if not impossible. Right now the Egyptian Armed Forces are not only running the country but trying to provide police functions as well, with the State Security Forces somewhere between dissolved and in opposition. Similarly, though the rebel forces are apparently in control of the old British airbase at Tobruk and other Libyan airbases in the east, they seem unlikely to host foreign air operations there. Other nearby land bases could include a) Malta, with a number of bases that served well for the RAF in World War II, but aren't terribly current; b) the British Sovereign Bases at Akrotiri and Dhekelia on Cyprus; c) various NATO and Italian airfields in Italy, Sicily, and offshore islands. The closest to Libya would be an airstrip on Lampedusa, apparently just a civil airfield, but I don't think it could sustain combat aircraft operations. A bit farther away is Pantelleria, from which bombers operated during World War II, but neither is exactly ready, so far as I know at least, for modern air war. For all I know there may be covert bases in some of these places, but if so, they're still covert from me.
3. A Regi0nal Operation.There are reports that the Arab League has suspended Libya's membership, OPEC is moving to increase production, etc. If this all proves to be both true and somehow substantive. the possibility of some sort of regional collective action, unprecedented as it might be, could increase, and that could allow a figleaf for, say, the Egyptian Air Force to step in. Experience suggests pigs will fly before this happens, but I must note that experience has not been the most reliable guide lately.
   

Having noted these obstacles to a No-Fly Zone, need I discuss the problems of a ground force intervention?

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Lebanon Dodges a Bullet, for Now

Word that although indictments may be submitted shortly to the pretrial judge of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), no details are likely to be made public for several months while a decision on whether to proceed to trial is considered, has led to sighs of relief in Lebanon, which was bracing for potential conflict if, as reported, senior Hizbullah figures were indicted.

This may just be postponing the inevitable, but it also gives the Lebanese factions time to prepare for the inevitable if it comes, or to lobby for some sort of compromise. It at least delays the confrontation.

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Israel to Withdraw from Ghajar, Partially at Least

The town of Ghajar, an ‘Alawite town in the Golan Heights on the Lebanese border, has been a thorny issue for years. You'll find this blog has revisited it many times, and that link in te previous sentence will also link you to YouTube video and podcasts of an MEI presentation by Asher Kaufman of Notre Dame, not to mention his article in the Middle East Journal (only free to subscribers; sorry). Well, it looks like after a lot of discussion, Israel is finally going to withdraw from the northern half of the town, which it acknowledges as Lebanese. The southern half, which was Syrian before 1967 (some argue the northern half was, too) remains under Israeli occupation like the rest of the Golan.

This being the Middle East, of course, it's not as simple as it sounds, or as immediate as it might be. Although the Security Cabinet has authorized the withdrawal, the details are being negotiated between Israel and the United Nations (emphatically not between Israel and Lebanon), since Israel wants UNIFIL to take over security, fearing the alternative will be Hizbullah.

And of course no one asked the residents of Ghajar. Israeli reports suggest they want Israel to remain, and are protesting the withdrawal.

Most Ghajar residents consider themselves Syrian, and say they were never considered a part of Lebanon; the town expanded northward during Israel's long occupation of South Lebanon from 1982 to 2000, and has been reunited since 2006. They fear partition will separate families, and owners from their farmland. Many accepted Israeli citizenship during the long years of occupation, and may fear retribution, especially if Hizbullah moves in. So while the end of occupation is a step forward, absent a solution to the Golan Heights as well, it may have unfortunate personal impact on those involved.

Also, stand by: Israel still has to negotiate the details with UNIFIL, and Israeli negotiations with the UN (unless they've worked it out behind closed doors already) may not be automatic.

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