Losing the Long Game by Philip H. Gordon

Author:Philip H. Gordon [Gordon, Philip H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub

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After Obama left office, the security situation in Libya deteriorated even further, and the Trump administration largely disengaged. A few months after taking office, Trump himself stated, “I do not see a role in Libya. I think the United States has right now enough roles.”123 Instead, Washington limited its efforts to counterterrorism actions against the Islamic State and largely left the diplomacy in the hands of the UN and the Europeans, who continued their efforts to mediate among the various warring Libyan factions. For the next several years, the UN special envoy for Libya, Ghassan Salamé, proposed measures to revive and amend a stalemated 2015 political agreement, but his efforts remained “stuck on nearly every count.”124 While almost all parties were committed to the UN-backed agreement in principle, in reality Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia (along with Russia and France) continued to provide support for General Haftar’s forces, while Qatar and Turkey backed the Misrata-based Islamist force, and Italy cut deals with western militias to counter the flow of migrants.125

In April 2019, Trump abruptly changed course and seemed to endorse Haftar, who had just launched a new military offensive on Tripoli, apparently hoping the general could fulfill his long-standing promise to unify the country under his own leadership through force of arms.126 But aside from the issue of whether embracing a new Libyan strongman was the right approach, Haftar never demonstrated the ability to take over and stabilize the country, and as the civil war escalated and casualties mounted, the administration pivoted back again to focusing on trying to negotiate a cease-fire. The tragic reality was that Libya was broken, and—especially with Americans increasingly averse to intervention and regional powers lined up on opposite sides of the conflict—no one had a recipe or the means to put it back together.

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