<http://www.stratfor.com/sites/all/themes/zen/stratfor/images/email_header.j pg> STRATFOR Wednesday, April 6, 2011 France Struggles in Libya as the U.S. Focuses Elsewhere France responded to rising criticism Wednesday from eastern Libyan rebels stating that NATO is not doing enough to protect them from Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's forces, as the air campaign nears the three-week mark. The rebels posit that NATO is overly concerned with avoiding civilian casualties, and as a result, it is allowing the Libyan army to regain territory lost during its low point last week. Indeed, the army's most recent counteroffensive has taken it back through Brega, with Ajdabiya now within its sights once again, while the rebel enclave of Misrata in western Libya continues to get bombarded by loyalist forces on a daily basis. France, which was the biggest proponent of involvement in Libya from the start, would very much like to step up the intensity of the campaign against Gadhafi, but is handicapped by the rules of engagement that NATO is operating under and the inherent limitations of airpower. Thus, French officials took time Wednesday to explain (in couched terms) why it is not Paris' fault that NATO jets are not pursuing the enemy more aggressively and how France was trying to adjust the way the military operation is being conducted. "The United States was conspicuously absent from Wednesday's debate over whether NATO is doing enough in Libya." French Foreign Minister Alan Juppe and French Chief of Defense Staff Adm. Edouard Guillaud both said Wednesday that NATO's aversion to killing civilians is the main problem facing the operation. While Juppe was slightly less direct in his criticism of NATO, Paris clearly sees the current situation as unlikely to lead to any real success on the battlefield. More than two weeks of daily airstrikes have taken out almost all of the easy targets, and Gadhafi has shifted his tactics to avoid drawing enemy fire, meaning that a stalemate is fast approaching. Indeed, Juppe expressed fears that at the current pace, NATO forces risk getting "bogged down" in a situation that has the ability to linger on for months without producing a clear-cut winner. NATO officials tried to defend its record in response to the rebel criticism and the French complaints, with one spokesman saying Wednesday that its planes have flown more than 1,000 sorties - with at least 400 of them strike sorties - in the last six days, and on April 5 alone it flew 155 sorties, with almost 200 planned for Wednesday. This is unlikely to mollify concerns from those who want more intense action, however, about the potential for the Libyan intervention to accomplish nothing but create an uneasy, de facto partition. As no one - not even Paris - wants to put boots on the ground, though, the best solution Jupee could proffer was to broach the topic of NATO's timid approach with NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in a Wednesday meeting. There, he was expected to push the suggestion for NATO to create a safe sea lane connecting Misrata to Benghazi, so that supplies could be shipped in by unknown naval forces. The United States was conspicuously absent from Wednesday's debate over whether NATO is doing enough in Libya. While French foreign policy is focused almost entirely on Africa (where France is involved in two conflicts, the other being the Ivory Coast), Washington's attention span is divided between Libya and the Persian Gulf. The Persian Gulf may appear a lot calmer than it did three weeks ago, but the challenge of containing Iran looms large. Washington is seeking now to mend damaged ties with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries that felt they did not receive enough American support during February and March. In addition, Washington is likely having second thoughts about its scheduled withdrawal from Iraq this summer, and suspects that Iran may have been seeking to foment much of the instability that was seen in Bahrain, which had a slight ripple effect on the situation in Saudi Arabia's own Shiite-rich Eastern province. ?U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates visited both Riyadh and Baghdad Wednesday, while U.S. Central Command Gen. James Mattis was in Manama, three regional capitals that form a line of American Arab alliances that serve as strong counters to Iranian hegemony in the Persian Gulf. Maintaining the balance of power between the Saudis (and by extension, the other five Gulf Cooperation Council countries, as well as Iraq) and Iranians in the Persian Gulf is of the utmost importance for the United States, certainly more important than anything that might occur in Libya. ? Gates visited Saudi Arabia at a time in which relations between the United States and the kingdom are at their lowest in nearly a decade, as a result of what Riyadh viewed as American indecisiveness during not just the uprising in Bahrain, but also in Egypt and elsewhere. Saudi King Abdullah canceled a meeting in March with Gates and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, officially due to his health. However, it could have been seen as anger over how Washington was treating allied regimes during the midst of the popular unrest that has been spreading across the region since January. While he was there, he made the strongest comments to date by U.S. officials about the role of Iranian meddling in the region, saying for the first time that the United States has explicit evidence of a destabilization campaign hatched by Tehran. This was music to Saudi ears, as Riyadh and its GCC cohorts have been pushing this notion for the past several weeks in public, and the past several years in private, as seen by the WikiLeaks cables from Riyadh. Meanwhile, Mattis' presence in Bahrain was a sign that while the United States may still be committed to the al-Khalifa family engaging in reforms, it is not about to abandon them in the face of the popular uprising that has largely been suppressed. Washington's support for Bahrain, where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based, is by extension support for Saudi Arabia, as Shiite unrest in one directly affects the Shiite population in the other. It was most interesting that Gates ended his trip in Baghdad, where the United States is trying to withdraw forces by the end of the year. Washington is officially still committed to its withdrawal timetable, especially with U.S. President Barack Obama now officially back in campaign mode for the 2012 elections. Iraq was labeled by Obama during the 2008 campaign as the "wrong war" and has staked a large chunk of his political capital upon following through with a pledge to withdraw. But the events of 2011, and the strategic imperative of maintaining the balance of power in the Persian Gulf as a means of countering Iranian power, may be cause for a broken promise, or a slightly delayed one at least. <http://media.stratfor.com/images/clear.gif?n=190954&h=0&u=128209&t=13021764 24&j=190193> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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