Libya

[not on facebook]

what i worry about is if gadaffi is outed via whatever means what political stance
will the rebels take up if they are elected in?

no one seems to have an idea how/who will/could run the country.
might come back to bite the west in its arse big time.

for all of gadaffis faults today,libya was running a very tight iron fist rule
on asylum seekers trying to get across to europe from their shores to italy.

cant see them upholing that policy.

[Mr1Croft]

After speaking on Libyan state television last night, Gaaffi was clear that he plans no exit soon, making comments that the airstrikes were no more than fireworks, What personally worries me is 2 of the 5 countries that abstained from the 10-0 vote, Russia and China. Dmitry Medvedev may see this as the time to really challenge the white houses power in internation terms, its no secret that the President of Russia hold more power of his state than any the President of the US can imagine.

I still believe that Churchill was right in his 1946 speech to the Americans about the \"Iron Curtain\" could this small dispute be the spark of what could be a catastrophic war between the two ultimate Superpower states, and where would the European allies of Russia (including UK) lie? Would the \"special relationship\" be worth siding with the US when such a time arrises?

I think its only a matter of time before Russia and China stand to defend Gadaffi, and what happens then? Who has International ground? Who is ultimate the International Country seen as 'Cheif in Command' ?

[Dutch Uncle]

I'll come clean Filo - having lived for 35 years in Germany and Holland I am taking a wider multi-national view. With all the legal basis now approved by the UN I would hope NATO would become involved, and would somehow speed up its decision making process. If I was chairing a NATO Force Generation Conference I would not necessarily be looking for UK carriers - if US ones are currently anywhere near they would be my first choice, and I would also look at French ones.

But I agree that scrapping the Ark Royal weakens the independence and global role of the UK, and makes us reliant on allies in more scenarios than before.  

However the scrapping NIMROD AEW I see as less of a mistake since I have real doubts as to its long term effectiveness - we should have gone for our own Boeing E3A from the very start.

Can't see this being a NATO-led operation Dutch. Germany and Turkey are both dead-set against it (although Germany only abstained at the UN last night rather than vote against it). NATO could hardly be officially involved with two key states opposing the action. More likely to be a \"coalition of the willing\" again I'd have thought.

I can well understand Turkey being against the action, but it's difficult to understand why Germany is against it. Mind, they do have previous. It was Germany's rush to recognise Croatia and Slovenia's independence in the early 90s that accelerated the Balkans War, and then they were one of the least willing nations to get involved in pulling the warring sides apart. They have a heavy satain on their conscience over that one.

You may be right BST, since requiring concensus means every member nation has a veto, but then NATO would (again) run the risk of becoming perceived as being irrelevant politically (although militarily they are clearly the only game in town when it comes to procedures and systems for armed forces of many nations operating together). If you are right I will be disappointed with NATO.

Well the NATO Decision making process finally seems to have got there

OK - so now hopefully we can actually command and control this mission effectively

Now all we need is an analysis and  decision about endstate, exit strategy and relevant lessons learnt from Afghanistan, or maybe that is asking a little too much?

Not much use if you can do 'how' without knowing 'what'

Edit: the last comment is directed at politicians rather than the military arm of NATO