Folding like a cheap tent?

It's hard to decide which is the more surprising: the international community, after weeks of dithering over the imposition of a no-fly zone in Libya, suddenly agreeing to something much more robust; or the Libyan regime, announcing a ceasefire within hours of the passage of the UN resolution. Interesting, by the way, that it wasn't Col. Gadhafi himself who made that announcement.

The experts' views on Libya's military capabilities seem reasonable, at least to this non-military observer. Gadhafi may be a fearsome monster at home, but his military poses little threat to anyone. It was reported early in the conflict that Libya spends less of its budget on its armed forces than Sweden does. As a direct result, the country's airforce mainly consists of obsolete Russian fighter-bombers, and its armoured vehicles are little better. Significantly, the Libyan army itself is a small and feeble thing, thanks to Gadhafi's paranoia, undoubtedly fully justified, about the risk of a coup against him. Much of the recent fighting against the rebels has been carried out by foreign mercenaries, Touaregs and others from further afield, brought in by the planeload since the uprising began. This is not a fighting force that can be expected to stay around once Predator drones start circling overhead, firing heat-seeking missiles.

If, as this suggests, it was always likely to be easy to rein Gadhafi in, then why did it take so long to bring a resolution in front of the UN? The answer must surely have something to do with the events prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. There's a recently-released movie called "Fair Game" that tells the story of an alleged plot to ship 500 tonnes of yellow-cake uranium from Niger to Iraq, a plot that formed much of the case concocted by the Bush administration to get UN support for an attack on Iraq. A former US diplomat, Joe Wilson, employed by the CIA to uncover the truth of this tale, quickly concluded that it was fictional. Far from dropping the story, the response of the White House was a vicious campaign to ruin the lives and reputations of Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, herself a CIA operative.

Not many people have seen "Fair Game", but a large number of people in the US, UK and elsewhere remain convinced that they were deliberately misled by their governments in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. So, undoubtedly, do a lot of the countries at the UN who were bamboozled into supporting the so-called "coalition of the willing" back then. It's hardly surprising that the Obama administration has been extremely reluctant to go down the same path on this occasion. A no-fly zone probably wouldn't have been imposed even now if it were not for the fact that the Arab League indicated last weekend that it would support one, and even help to enforce it. Once that happened, even Russia and China, who might have been expected to oppose action over Libya on their usual "non-interference" grounds, could do no more than abstain in the UN vote.

Better late than never, then? That depends on what happens on the ground in Libya in the coming days and weeks. Early indications are that the announced ceasefire has had little effect on the level of fighting. However, it seems quite clear that painful memories of the mendacious case for a needless war in Iraq, and the quagmire that has resulted there, made it much harder to agree on what could yet be a much easier task in Libya.