This Week at War: The Milosevic Option

NATO wants to get ‘more aggressive' against Qaddafi. But how exactly?

Over the past two week, the rebels fighting Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi have achieved some modest gains. Rebels in the western city of Misrata have apparently halted Qaddafi's artillery bombardment of the city center. More cracks may have developed inside the leader's inner circle. But some NATO military leaders, concerned that the overall military stalemate remains in place, are looking for ways to be "more aggressive" with the air power at their disposal. The task for NATO policymakers is to figure how to bomb Qaddafi and his forces more aggressively without taking more risks with the civilian population NATO explicitly pledged to protect.

According to the BBC, the rebel militia in Misrata has pushed back government forces a few kilometers in several directions. The bombardment of the port area and downtown has ceased as the modest rebel advance was enough to push pro-Qaddafi artillery and rocket launchers out of range. NATO airstrikes against eight Qaddafi warships -- some of which had mined Misrata's port -- will also provide some relief to the population. As welcome as these developments are for the residents of the city, this local tactical success does not seem to have affected the larger strategic stalemate throughout Libya. The eastern frontline south of Benghazi remains roughly unchanged and Qaddafi's forces remain in control of Tripoli and most of the western half of the country.

With rebel ground formations static and incapable of offensive maneuver, the NATO air campaign appears increasingly focused on attacks against government command-and-control and leadership targets. Foremost among these are repeated nighttime strikes against Qaddafi's sprawling compound in Tripoli. It is hard to imagine the military utility of these return visits to Qaddafi's compound -- Qaddafi himself long since decamped to residential areas or other obvious "no go" areas for NATO bombing. Subordinate commanders who might have once used the compound also must have long since established alternate command sites.

NATO's bombardment strategy is now likely more focused on applying political and psychological coercion against the regime rather than inflicting battlefield damage against military forces. Repeated attacks against the compound are designed to erode Qaddafi's prestige. NATO strikes on the compound and other possible leadership locations may also be aimed at frightening Qaddafi's inner circle. This intimidation, combined with legal carrots and sticks now offered by the International Criminal Court, are intended to induce more defections from those around Qaddafi. This strategy may have notched a success; Libya's oil minister has gone missing and may have defected.

But it may not be working fast enough for some NATO leaders. Gen. David Richards, Britain's top military commander, called for expanding the list of acceptable targets. Richards wants to add "infrastructure" targets to NATO's lists. Traditionally, attacks on classic infrastructure targets such as bridges, roads, power plants, and telecommunication systems are designed to isolate an adversary's ground forces, making them more vulnerable to defeat on the battlefield. But attacks on such targets are simultaneously devastating to the civilian population, which is why they have been avoided thus far in the Libyan campaign.

Richards may be hoping to reprise the strategy used effectively against Slobodan Milosevic during the 1999 Kosovo air campaign. As I discussed in an earlier column, NATO faced a similar stalemate during its bombing campaign against Serbia. It then expanded its attacks against Milosevic's lieutenants and the economic assets inside Serbia valued by those lieutenants. This change in tactics created enough pressure inside the ruling inner circle to force Milosevic to succumb. Richards' definition of "infrastructure" may have these regime leadership assets in mind.

Libya's rebels and NATO should be mildly encouraged by the perceptible erosion suffered by Qaddafi over the past two weeks. But it hasn't been enough to break the stalemate. NATO may now be willing to double down on the coercive air campaign it is aiming at Qaddafi. Whether it can do that without increasing the suffering of the broader population is another question.