Obama to Europe: Bon Courage

Philip Stephens writes an analysis in the Financial Times about the unfamiliar roles the US and Europe find themselves in during the operation in Libya:

Americans are grappling with an unfamiliar role. They are accustomed to running things – especially when those things involve going to war. Not this time. As the west’s fighter jets patrol the skies over Libya, President Barack Obama has told his generals and diplomats to stand back. We have been shown the new geopolitical landscape.

Europeans – or at least the French and the British – find this territory equally strange. Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron put themselves in the vanguard of diplomacy to stop Libya’s Muammer Gaddafi. When Mr Obama eventually consented, he attached a condition: you want it, you can own it.

It is more than half a century since Paris and London embarked on a military adventure together in this part of the world. Then, they were out to prove they were still great powers. Dwight Eisenhower soon put a stop to that. Now Washington is wishing its allies well. Unhappily, the Libyan mission, like Suez, could yet have an uncomfortable ending.

Read the rest of the article here.

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Read more at Libya February 17