The news that France has begun supplying arms to Libyan rebels is likely to deepen discord within the NATO alliance, which is in charge of the 103-day Western military campaign, but has refrained from giving direct support to the rebels given that the mission was authorized by a U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at protecting Libya's civilians. While the French deem arming the rebels as permissible within the bounds of the U.N. resolution, many other interested parties, within NATO and outside, regard it as a violation of that resolution's arms embargo.
But such legal niceties are of secondary importance; the bigger problem facing the NATO effort is that the European alliance members who have undertaken most of the combat over Libya near the limits of the resources they can devote to expeditionary warfare. And the U.S. is highly unlikely, given the level of opposition on Capitol Hill to even the current limited support role, to fill the breach.
Pressure is growing within the alliance and outside of it to end the military campaign and seek a political solution to the crisis, with the bombing campaign having weakened the regime but not broken it. |