With the tide starting to turn against Qadhafi, Britains secretary for International Development, Andrew Mitchell, recently unveiled a 50-page report planning for a post-Qadhafi Libya that stresses that the existing security architecture of the Qadhafi regime should remain in place. This underscores the view that a future Libya does not need to be a liberal democracy but instead, a return to the old status quo minus Muammar Qadhafi.
In the months leading up to the Iraq invasion in 2003, alluding to the Pottery Barns store return policy, Colin Powell warned George W. Bush, You break it, you own it. France and Britain, filled with confidence, rushed to intervene in Libya with the vaguely defined mission of assisting the rebels in eastern Libya in their efforts to unseat the Qadhafi regime and its tribal allies in the West. With the United States embracing the leading from behind mentality, these two European states, often used to following from behind, have found themselves in the unfamiliar waters of being out front and responsible for charting the future direction of a NATO military operation in Libya.
With the tide starting to turn against Qadhafi, London and Paris have had to come to terms with the uncomfortable reality that, similar to Washington in 2003, while the military battle can be eventually won, rebuilding a state is an entirely different manner. 
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