Reports are coming in that
French jets have fired the first shots in the UN-supported intervention in Libya. The coming conflict will determine, in the short term, whether the Gaddafi regime is toppled and, in the longer
term, whether the international community rediscovers its appetite for intervention which had been so diminished by the controversies over Iraq and the difficulties of the Afghan mission.
That there is intervention at all in Libya is down in no small part to David Cameron and William Hague. Hague played a key role in ensuring that Arab countries were prepared to commit to putting planes in the air in this operation, something that was crucial to moving the vacillating Obama off the fence. Indeed, I am told by British government sources that two to four Arab nations will now take part.
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