Can Gaddafi stay in power?

Although the rhetoric is more fierce by the hour, and French planes are already flying over Libya it seems increasingly plausible that Colonel Gaddafi will stay in place. Whatever Clinton, Cameron and Sarkozy say about wanting Gaddafi to go UN Resolution 1973 does not authorise regime change.

None of them have yet tried to argue that the “threat” referred to in the resolution is Gaddafi himself. So with or without airstrikes we could soon be looking at a kind of stalemate.

It is always possible that if military action begins some in the regime will turn on the Colonel, that the army might stage a coup or Gaddafi might be assassinated. Regime change might also be affected by the Libyan people themselves turning on the regime. But there is a big gap between bombing tanks outside Benghazi and the end of Gaddafi.

Even if people rose up in Tripoli and the regime started firing on them, how would anyone stop them from the air? Are we really considering a ‘shock and awe’ campaign in Tripoli to take out the regime and target Gaddafi himself? Or the idea of special forces assassination squads? All of that seems a long way from where we are right now, and what the UN Security Council has authorised.

Add your voice via Channel 4 News live blog : Libya – Operation Odyssey Dawn

So let us suppose Gaddafi ceases fire in the next few days, with or without airstrikes to help him decide. The threat to civilians will be effectively neutralised, the UN resolution will have been enforced and the international alliance will have saved many lives. But Gaddafi could still control Tripoli and most of western Libya, sitting on vast amounts of cash and oil with which to make more (legally or not). What then? Will that be a triumph of international action?

I’m told Washington is quite content for Sarkozy and Cameron to take the “credit” on this one. And it stands to reason that the last thing they want is for this to look anything like another American war in the Middle East. But however this is being spun in Europe it was, I’m told, the Americans who turned the idea of a no-fly zone into UN 1973 leading to the insertion of air strikes into the plan, the corralling of Arab support and crucially ensuring Russia and China didn’t veto the resolution.

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Yet there are concerns in Washington that the Libyan action may not pass the Obama regime’s standard of only acting when you know you can secure a result. The scenario of Gaddafi staying in power but the threat to civilians removed, perhaps even below that in other more friendly Middle Eastern states, is no doubt causing headaches.

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