Leading article: Victory in the air

Critics of our intervention in Libya said that Colonel Gaddafi’s treatment of his people was not Britain’s direct concern.

Critics of our intervention in Libya said that Colonel Gaddafi’s treatment of his people was not Britain’s direct concern. They argued that a prime minister’s job is to defend the national interest, not the rebels in Benghazi. When David Cameron called for a no-fly zone, he was ridiculed at home and outvoted in Brussels. Why interfere in a civil war? Why lose ourselves in another maze of Islamic tribal conflict?

The Prime Minister saw it in more simple terms. The West had the means to prevent a massacre, and very little time to do so. It needed to act straight away, and worry about an exit strategy later.

There was nothing inevitable about the Nato campaign. Had Cameron not pushed Barack Obama so hard for intervention, it is unlikely that the mercurial Nicolas Sarkozy could have convinced the United Nations on his own.

This was a moment of great peril. Had Gaddafi been able to proceed with a siege on the rebels in Benghazi, it would have sent a message to every dictator in the world that they had nothing to fear. The ‘international community’ would have looked like a debating society: it would have seemed that the West could rattle the sabre, but was too war-weary, exhausted and bankrupt to fight.

We will have to wait many months, perhaps years, to see what type of country Libya will become. But a massacre in Benghazi was averted, and the West has proved itself capable of working with new Arab allies. As James Forsyth reveals on page 12, British ministers now believe that Jordan, Qatar and the UAE will jointly oversee Libya’s post-Gaddafi transition.