Analysis: How the West has won

Certainly, military assistance to the rebels by France, Britain and the US, plus other allies, appears to have been highly successful. The dictator is gone, and the wholesale slaughter of the opponents he threatened has been averted. All of this, we are told, has been achieved by air-power alone, and the absence of “boots on the ground” has avoided the West being drawn into the endless quagmire of another Afghanistan.

And the cost has only been financial; no grieving families (except in Libya itself, of course), no sad cortèges through Wootton Bassett. The pattern has been set for future military adventurism by the West. Hi-tech war fought from 20,000 feet and no body bags. What’s not to like about it?

Well, maybe. Let’s be honest here; we did have people on the ground. Not very many, perhaps, but they were there, training the rebels and gathering information plus, no doubt, marking targets for western aircraft. A few good men with laser target markers does wonders for reducing collateral damage. And that is a good thing, no argument. Nothing can be worse that the innocents suffering.

But whether recent operations in Libya set the pattern for the future is another thing altogether. Every conflict brings with it a unique set of circumstances and, whilst there will always be similarities, no two conflicts are ever the same.

In Libya, a deeply unpopular dictator faced with an uprising from within his own population was deposed with the help of western military expertise. Would a similar result be achieved if the same strategy were to be applied in, say, Syria, or Zimbabwe, or even – Heaven forfend – against Iran?

I very much doubt it. Just look at where the British military is now. A decade of operations in Afghanistan has, quite understandably, focused all our efforts on that sort of conflict. Britain’s armed services are, arguably, perfectly attuned to cope with Afghan type operations.

Which may go some way to explaining why we had just taken the decision to scrap our aircraft carriers and the Harrier fleet that flew from them more or less at the exact moment we needed them for Libya. No need for aircraft carriers in Afghanistan. The only constants in military conflict are confusion, chaos, the unknown and the unexpected. Britain, and I dare say other countries too, has an unfortunate tradition of entering the next conflict perfectly prepared to fight the last. Think of 1940 and the melting away of the British Expeditionary Force under the onslaught of Hitler’s blitzkrieg.

The main lesson from Libya, as it has been of past wars, is the need for the military to retain the ability to adapt, and adapt quickly.

Others have said that Libya has shown that European powers are now able to undertake military operations without US involvement.

After all, didn’t the US withdraw from combat operations early on? And still the West “won”?

This is dangerous stuff.

Nobody should cast any aspersions as to the efficiency and professionalism of Europe’s armed forces. They are, generally speaking, comparable to any worldwide. But the US holds the trump cards in terms of strategic lift, satellite technology, innovative battlefield technology and sheer scale of military inventory which is still unique and still, just, unmatched. We turn our noses up at it at our peril.

Libya has been seen as a triumph for liberal, western, military interventionism. But we shouldn’t expect to see exactly the same again.

• Stuart Crawford is a former army officer who is now a military analyst and commentator