NATO Chief: Clearly No Military Solution to Libya War

Declines to Estimate How Long War Will Continue

Speaking some 10 days in to the war on Libya, NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen today said “clearly there’s no military solution” to the conflict, echoing the slogan NATO officials have constantly trotted out to explain the continuation of the Afghan War.

NATO is poised to assume full control over the war, having agreed to do so on Sunday. The lack of any strategy for ending the war and indeed Rasmussen’s belief that no such strategy even theoretically exists does not appear to have hampered enthusiasm among a number of NATO nations for prosecuting the war, forever if need be.

“I am not going to guess,” was Rasmussen’s only answer to the question of how long the war would last and how NATO nations would tolerate the financial burden of yet another open-ended war. Some NATO officials have suggested a “90 day” plan, but as this lacks any endgame strategy itself it has been suggested to be little more than a wild guess.

Despite the firm belief that the attacks won’t accomplish whatever NATO’s goals are, the Pentagon announced 22 addition Tomahawk missile strikes over the past 24 hours. Officials did not reveal what, if anything, these missiles actually hit.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.