Don’t rush into Libya

Canada has barely figured out the details of its reconfigured military mission in Iraq and the pressure is already on to get involved in yet another failed state — Libya.

As the Trudeau government ponders its options, the best advice in this case is straightforward: Don’t go there. There’s little chance of success and no reason to believe Canada can play a useful role.

For weeks now the pressure has been building for western allies — the United States and a few European nations — to send troops to Libya to fight Islamist extremists and try to bring stability to a country that has utterly fallen apart since Moammar Gadhafi was deposed and executed in 2011.

Now, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan has been in Europe talking to the Italians, Germans and others and says Canada is willing to consider some kind of involvement in a military mission in Libya.

Quite rightly, Sajjan says Canada wants to hear more about what kind of mission it would be, and to see a long-term strategy to bring stability to the North African country and the whole region. And he pointed out the obvious: that when western nations (including Canada) intervened in Libya in 2011 to tip the balance in favour of insurgents rising up against Gadhafi, “we got rid of one dictator, leaving a political vacuum” that allowed extremists and rival militias to carve up the country.

Now, apparently, we’re being sounded out to join some kind of new coalition (yet to be defined) that, according to multiple reports, would be led by 5,000 Italian troops, and might involve the British, French and Americans as well.

Set aside for a moment the irony of trying to establish order in Libya with soldiers from Italy — which ran a brutal colonial regime in that country for most of the first half of the last century.

This has all the hallmarks of a mission doomed to failure. As a member of the British Parliament’s select committee on foreign affairs told the Guardian this week, it would be a good idea to figure out what went so wrong with the last Libyan intervention “before we agree to a new one.”

In fact, it’s fairly clear what went wrong. Western countries bombed Gadhafi’s forces when he was about to massacre his opponents during the heady time of the “Arab Spring” five years ago. Once the dictator was gone, the country fell into chaos, with a tangle of competing militias and, more recently, the rise of extremist groups like Daesh.

Meanwhile, western countries stood by and did nothing. U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledges that quite frankly in a new interview in The Atlantic magazine, in which he points the finger at the Europeans for letting themselves become “distracted” and failing to follow up the bombing with political action in a country that after all is in their immediate neighbourhood.

Now the drums are beating for a new intervention to support a United Nations-sponsored “Government of National Accord” established in Tunis. But two rival governments and a tangle of other forces control various parts of the country and it’s unclear how outside intervention could actually work. Nonetheless, Canada’s top soldier, Gen. Jonathan Vance, has been predicting for a month that this country will be “involved somehow” — possibly in a military role.

It’s understandable that the Trudeau government wants to play along with other powers as they discuss possible action. Canada always wants to be part of the big boys club, and ruling out participation now would put Ottawa on the sidelines of that debate.

In addition, after pulling Canada’s CF-18 fighter jets out of the fight against Daesh in Iraq and Syria, the Liberals came under criticism for cutting and running. So the government may well be tempted to sign up for a role in a future Libyan operation just to demonstrate its resolve and rebuild credibility on another front.

It’s fine to keep talking to our allies about Libya. That keeps us in the game. But in the end Ottawa should not get involved militarily in yet another western intervention in the Middle East.

We have 15 years of recent experience of botched, costly and frustrating missions across the region. The warning lights are flashing for another looming disaster in Libya.

Canada must resist pressure to send troops to try and restore order to the beleaguered African nation