Christopher R. Hill, former US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, was US Ambassador to Iraq, South Korea, Macedonia, and Poland, a US special envoy for Kosovo, a negotiator of the Dayton Peace Accords, and the chief US negotiator with North Korea from 2005-2009. He is Chief Adviser to the Chancellor for Global Engagement and Professor of the Practice in Diplomacy at the University of Denver, and the author of Outpost: A Diplomat at Work.
SINGAPORE – While NATO probably will not want to replicate its Libya intervention anywhere else anytime soon, it appears that the alliance, with a little help from its friends, has prevailed in Libya, succeeding in toppling Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. This is a good moment for NATO, but one that evokes more a sense of relief than of celebration.
Given the mismatch of member states’ policy (topple Qaddafi) and a strategy to “protect civilians” based on a contested United Nations Security Council resolution, NATO can certainly take pride in managing a great challenge and strengthening its role as the preeminent Euro-Atlantic institution.
Now, however, comes the really hard part. Libya was not a smoothly operating country before the civil war started six months ago; today, it is thoroughly broken and will require an enormous amount of rebuilding – post-conflict operations, or “stability ops,” to use the current jargon. Libya’s needs run the gamut of challenges faced by countries in transition: governance, institutional capacity building, economic reform, and security.
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