World

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

War aims

A few days into the no-fly zone and the initial aim of the intervention has been achieved: Colonel Ghaddafi no longer controls his own airspace and cannot use airpower for close-air support, intimidation or murder. But success has bred a new problem – what now? Should the coalition turn itself into the airborne wing of the resistance, providing support to a rebel advance on Tripoli? Or should it just continue patrolling the skies above Libya as the rebels fight on? If so, how should the coalition react when the rebels face military set-backs? Should they stand back or prevent Libyan forces from taking advantage of their tactical victories and just

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Putin rages against the “crusading” West

A gold star for Vladimir Putin, for providing us with one of the most extraordinary interventions of the day. While we knew that the Russian Prime Minister is opposed to military action in Libya — and also that he is no natural friend of the West — it is still striking to hear him talk as he does in the video above. “It reminds me,” he says of the UN resolution at hand, “of the medieval call for a crusade.” Ever the pacifist, he then goes on to rail against the “steady trend in US policy” to get involved in conflicts abroad. Meanwhile, our government is doing its part to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Targeting Gaddafi

The press is currently making great play of an apparent difference between General Richard and Liam Fox on whether or not Gaddafi can be targeted. The whole debate flags up one of the absurdities of international legal convention. If it is legitimate to hit a Libyan tank crew moving on Benghazi, why it is not legitimate to target the person who is ultimately giving these orders?     Given the whole nature of the Libyan state, the fastest — and, I would say, most humane — way to end this conflict would be to kill Gaddafi. Anne-Marie Slaughter, until recently the head of policy planning at the State Department, argued

Peter Hoskin

The Yemeni domino totters

Call it the domino effect, if you like. After Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, Yemen is the latest country to drag its rulers to the precipice — and it could push them over, too. The latest news is that several Yemeni generals have joined the protesters in calling on President Saleh to stand down. One source tells al-Jazeera that 90 per cent of the army could do likewise by this evening. The broad consensus is that the current regime is wheezing to a close. So what next? From this vantage point, Yemen is certainly one of those countries where change should be greeted warily. It’s not so much the emerging prospect

Daniel Korski

Moussa’s mess

Just as the world thought the Arab League had entered adulthood its Secretary-General, Amr Moussa, threw a teenage tantrum, voicing concern that the coalition bombing of Libya went beyond a no-fly zone. He had wanted the protection of civilians, he said, not the bombardment of more civilians. But it is hard to see what Moussa had in mind. Did he want to micromanage operations from his desk, picking targets as Lyndon Johnson did during the Vietnam War? Or is the temptation to play to the Arab gallery too much? Could it be that Moussa’s presidential ambitions in Egypt are better served by not being too close to the West? Either

Peter Hoskin

Obama’s nervousness makes life difficult for him and his allies

Gingerly, gingerly — that’s how the Americans are approaching the presentational battle over Libya, if not the actual campaign itself. There is no bombast in the official broadcasts from Washington, nor categorical intent. Instead we have Robert Gates emphasising, as he did yesterday evening, that the US will soon handover “primary responsibility” for the mission to us or the French. Or there’s Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying that “potentially one outcome” is for Gaddafi to stay in power (see video above). The idea of regime change, or of deeper US involvement, is being downplayed all round. What’s clear, perhaps even understandable, is that Obama

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Allied strikes hit targets in Tripoli

Tonight’s news of major explosions in Tripoli shows that the allies are putting little store in the Gaddafi regime’s unsubstantiated claims of a ceasefire. Some of the targets appear, from reports, to have been in the same area of the city as Gaddafi’s barracks and residence. The US military, though, says the allies are not targeting the dictator specifically. Judging from comments made by the US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, the Americans are looking to hand over control of the operation to the French and/or British in the next few days. Pentagon fears over US military overstretch, which are part of the reason that Obama has sounded such an uncertain

David Blackburn

Gaddafi calls for a ceasefire, again

Sky News has footage of officials of the Gaddafi regime (if that’s not too grand a phrase) saying that the Colonel has called his armed forces to a ceasefire. This announcement has come after a day of intense air attacks on targets across Libya, including in Tripoli, where anti-aircraft guns have been called into action. It also follows the Arab League’s sudden crisis of confidence, which Gaddafi may have seen as a chance route to safety.  Statements from the MoD and Foreign Office suggest that the allies have not been perturbed by Amr Moussa’s reservations. The bombing is expected to continue. But perhaps this ceasefire, if it is honoured, will make the US,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

War Aims Matter, So What are We Trying to Achieve in Libya?

I know it’s tedious to bang on and on about this but it does seem quite important that we have some idea of what we’re actually trying to achieve in Libya. Until we have a goal it seems most unlikely that we can have a coherent strategy. At present no-one seems to know what the goal is and the Americans are busy contradicting one another. For instance, here’s Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff insisting, again, that the operation is strictly limited: “The goals are limited. It’s not about seeing him go.” And here’s National Journal’s Marc Ambinder, quoting an administration official who says “We have

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Sarkozy’s game

I’m hearing more reports about the rather peculiar behaviour of Nicholas Sarkozy, and how he is playing the Libya campaign thus far. Obama wants to hand over leadership of this mission quick. He was never really into it, but the US Navy was overwhelmingly the best placed to do the first phase of the mission (ie, fire Tomahawks into 20 Libyan targets). The Tomahawk team constituted 11 US ships and submarines, plus one British submarine. Anything other than American leadership would have been a joke. Phase Two is to take out Gaddafi’s surface-to-air missiles as soon as he dares to move them. Obama wants to hand over the baton to

Saturday

The Spectator

Media Meltdown

The extraordinary images from Japan over the past week evoke not only sympathy but awe. The damage wreaked by the natural disasters, in both human and economic terms, has been colossal. Entire communities have been reduced to little more than shattered glass and driftwood. The death toll is already well into the thousands, with more bodies being washed up on the country’s shores each day. Yet what we see in Japan is not despair; it is an extraordinary stoicism. Strangers helping each other as if they were family. A nation pulling together. The hysteria has come not from the Japanese people, but from the rest of the world. The tsunami’s

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Allied military intervention in Libya has commenced

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

David Blackburn

French planes take to the skies as Sarko talks tough

And so it starts. French News Channel BFM reports that French fighter jets are airborne over Libyan skies; al Jazeera corroborates the report, adding that these are reconnaissance missions. By the sounds of things, French military sources are briefing international agencies, adding to the sense that the domestically troubled President Sarkozy wants to capitalise on his sudden international prominence. Sarkozy has just been speaking outside the summit meeting in Paris, which he hosted as Chairman of the G20 and G8. His words were stern: “In Libya, a civilian population which is passive which requires nothing further than the right to choose itself its destiny finds itself in danger of life. We have a

David Blackburn

Gaddafi defiant as the international coalition prepares his noose

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJl8s8DSYvQ The fog of war lies thick in Benghazi this morning. There are reported explosions and gunfire and Sky News is showing footage of a Soviet-era fighter jet combusting in mid-air over the city; it is not clear if the aircraft was the victim of anti-aircraft fire, air-to-air combat or technical malfunction. Equally, it is unclear if the international coalition’s campaign has begun – leaders will meet in Paris today to finalise diplomatic agreements before mobilisation, but defence analysts say that French and Italian aircraft could already be patrolling Libyan skies.      The Gaddafi regime has been typically deranged in response. Some ministers insist that the ceasefire is real; Gaddafi on the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Regime Change is the Issue in Libya. Why Doesn’t Obama Understand That?

Further to this item noting the differences between what David Cameron and Barack Obama are saying, a White House spokesman emails Ben Smith to say there’s no contradiction between the American insistence that this is not about regime change and Cameron’s suspicion that it’s hard to see how Gaddafi can remain in power: This is very easily explained. We still believe that Qaddafi has lost his legitimacy to lead and must go. However the goal of this resolution is not regime change. Rather it authorizes the use of force with an explicit commitment to pursue all necessary measures to stop the killing. Those two things aren’t contradictory. Fine, the resolution

Janine di Giovanni

A Le Pen as president?

Marine Le Pen is the new, friendly face of French extremism – and suddenly, she’s leading in the polls There are just 13 months to go until the French presidential election and Le Phénomène Marine Le Pen, as it is called here, is getting spooky. Not so long ago, the 42-year-old daughter of Jean-Marie, now leader of the French National Front herself, was regarded as something of a joke — albeit quite an intelligent one. But now her detractors are taking her seriously. The last national opinion poll placed her first, with Nicholas Sarkozy trailing in third place. A quarter of Sarkozy’s former supporters are thought to have abandoned him

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

The Arab world deserves our pity, not our fear

The Spectator of March 2030 will wonder how the immense, mature, formidable, intelligent, capable, rational western society of 2011 got itself into such a tizz about the Arab world. Why ever (our successors will ask) did we think we had anything really big to fear from the 21st century’s most spectacularly unsuccessful regional culture? Last weekend news reached us that Arab League leaders had approved the idea of a (presumably) US-led and UN-flagged imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya. ‘Great news,’ cry the muddle-headed advocates of such a plan — as though what the Arab League leaders think is of any serious importance, even in their own countries. William

Tim Price

INVESTMENT SPECIAL: Folding money

Forget Bernie Madoff. The biggest Ponzi scheme in history is unfolding before your very eyes. If you have money in the bank, you will be a victim. The rot set in on 15 August 1971. That was the date on which the Nixon administration, reeling from the costs of the Vietnam war, unilaterally took the dollar ‘off gold’, ending fixed convertibility between the US currency and the precious metal. From that day to this, the currencies of the world have been backed by nothing more substantial than politicians’ promises. It was not always thus. Throughout history, man has used a variety of things as money, including cattle, shells, tobacco and

Friday

Jonathan Jones

From the archives: fleeing nuclear catastrophe

As the severity of the Fukushima nuclear disaster is upgraded and thousands of people are evacuated from Japan, here’s Samuel Phipps’ account of his own evacuation from Minsk following the 1986 Chernobyl explosion. A Sudden Evacuee, Samuel Phipps, The Spectator 10 May 1986 ‘You’ll be national heroes when you get back to England,’ said one of our Russian friends in Minsk, as we sat outside the hostel, waiting in the evening sunshine for our fates to be determined. Sure enough, pictures on Friday lunchtime television showed a relieved mother pouring champagne over her relieved Sloane Ranger daughter at Heathrow. In the studio afterwards, the girl somehow got the conversation around

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Hillary Clinton is Not On Maneuvers

Freddy Gray is right: Hillary Clinton is more hawkish, and always has been so, than her boss Barack Obama. This part of his argument, however, is less persuasive: It is becoming increasingly obvious that Clinton has been using Obama’s indecision over Libya to promote herself. Contrary to her expressed desire to be a grandmother, the former first lady is making another play for the presidency. Hillary recognises that Obama’s unwillingness to bomb Gaddafi is a political misstep. She long ago realised that the way to impress Americans who might otherwise oppose her was to sound aggressive about US foreign policy. Why is it less persuasive? Because this is what Mrs