TEc "A force for good" - Use of firepower to check Libya

The intervention in Libya is not a throwback to the days when France and Britain still held large possessions overseas.

The Suez Canal crisis would truly signal a turning point in big-power aspirations that the two European countries might still nurture by the late fifties.
Such a watershed became increasingly evident over the following decades as the US asserted its dominant military role across the world matched only by the expansionary desires of a then rising Soviet Union.

Times have changed completely though, history made its way and what brings the two countries together again, now in Libya, is a sudden realisation that Muammar Gaddafi has become dispensible.
Knocking him out of power may not prove especially difficult.
It may only take a little extra time and surgical hits to remove his establishment.

Questions on how to organise Libya after his departure should get asked (and get answered) right now, however.
That could prove a lot more challenging and tricky requiring painstaking clever diplomacy.
To sit around the same table a feuding Libyan family of many strands may turn out to be far more complex than flying sorties over Libyan airspace.

Even with a UN mandate and under NATO command coalition forces should not get bogged down in Libya indefinitely.
Politicians must act fast because there is only so much military firepower can do.