In Libya, there’s also a strategy/policy mismatch. The policy is to remove Colonel Gadhafi from power. The strategy – the mandate for the means – is to protect civilians. The latter will not ensure the success of the former.
Defence Secretary Robert Gates's prognosis of a "dim" and "dismal" future for NATO has triggered much debate, but it could well prove optimistic. June, it turns out, marks another milestone on the alliance's uncertain path: Its operation in Libya has now surpassed in length the one in Kosovo 12 years ago. After 78 days in 1999, Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic gave up, while Libya's Moammar Gadhafi has yet to get the message - and may, in fact, be getting the wrong message.
For those of us who were engaged in the Kosovo crisis, the Libya intervention seems like déjà vu. In the skies of Serbia and Kosovo, NATO warplanes attacked target after target, not to support the liberation of territory or in furtherance of a strategic bombing campaign, but to change Mr. Milosevic's mind. To be sure, denying Mr. Milosevic the means to engage in "ethnic cleansing" was added as a rationale after the campaign began, but the real purpose was to convince him that he had to allow NATO forces into Kosovo. It was a classic strategy/policy mismatch.
No war is without its list of false assumptions, and the Kosovo campaign had its share. Perhaps the most important was the view that Mr. Milosevic would give up after a few days of bombing. Instead, like many a leader in such circumstances, he entered a bunker, both figuratively and literally, and stayed there with little communication.
NATO planners, meanwhile, desperately sought to identify targets that would either deny him the means of ethnic cleansing, or, more often, encourage him to reconsider his position.
The intervention had its low points, perhaps none lower than the bombing of the Chinese embassy, misidentified as a building that housed Serbian security assets. There were also moments of great concern about whether the allies would be willing to stay the course. Surely, those engaged in Libya are feeling some of the same pressures.
Back in March of 1999, few NATO leaders doubted that removing Mr. Milosevic from Kosovo by force was the right thing to do. Nor was there much doubt that European and American leaders had made a good-faith effort to convince him through negotiations. Indeed, the decision to go to war was understood to be correct, because all other possibilities had been exhausted.
Nobody involved in the Kosovo operation entertained the idea that NATO could give up. That's why NATO began to assemble a ground component. Ground troops ultimately proved unnecessary, but failure was not an option.
Nor can it be an option today. In Libya, there's also a strategy/policy mismatch. The policy is to remove Colonel Gadhafi from power. The strategy - the mandate for the means - is to protect civilians. The latter will not ensure the success of the former.
This gap is beginning to close as NATO starts to deploy assets, such as attack helicopters, aimed more directly at removing Col. Gadhafi. But far more needs to be done to ensure success. Complaints about the fecklessness of the rebels are not going to help. Libya's opposition is what it is.
Mr. Gates, the U.S. Defence Secretary, has appropriately focused on the question of NATO's financial sustainability. As European military leaders publicly discuss the limitations of their budgets, it's easy to see why he raised the issue. (Note to Europeans: Please don't signal to Col. Gadhafi that you're running out of bombs.)
But another point made by Mr. Gates is far more serious: lack of political will. Some countries with needed capabilities have not brought them to the fight, and others have not even provided political support. This à la carte approach is how NATO has always worked. What's new is the possibility that NATO will fail. The alliance's reluctant warriors ought to consider that risk as they stand on the sideline.
These are difficult days for NATO. A decision was made to engage militarily in a situation of arguably marginal interest, but now all of the allies must understand they're using serious means to a serious end. The countries that decided to intervene in Libya must conduct themselves with renewed vigour, and with the understanding that NATO must prevail.
Christopher Hill, a former U.S. special envoy for Kosovo and a negotiator of the Dayton peace accords, is dean of the Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver.