The coalition is now in danger of coming unstuck — not because of failure, but because of its success. It needs to urgently decide how to run itself and what its aims are. Before it runs out of targets.
Neither is easy to do. The US may want to handover control of the mission but there is not really anyone they can transfer authority to. NATO is being blocked from assuming control, the EU does not have the wherewithal — its naval mission off Somalia’s coast is already run out of Permanent Joint Headquarters in north London — and the UK and France would struggle to run the mission, either jointly or individually.
The answer may lie in a hybrid structure, like the AU/UN mission in Sudan, which is partly based on NATO and partly on other organisations.
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