Fifteen years after NATO helped topple Gaddafi, North Africa’s military powers appear to have drawn a lasting lesson from Libya’s collapse, spending more than $320 billion on stronger militaries, advanced weapons and deeper alliances to ensure they are not caught as exposed in a future crisis.
In 2016, then-US President Barack Obama was asked to identify the biggest mistake of his presidency. His answer centred on Libya, where a NATO-led intervention had helped end Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year rule five years earlier.
In an interview with Fox News, Obama described his “worst mistake” as “probably failing to plan for the day after what I think was the right thing to do in intervening in Libya.”
He nevertheless defended the intervention, arguing that it “averted large-scale civilian casualties (and) prevented what almost surely would have been a prolonged and bloody civil conflict”.
Obama also acknowledged failures in managing the aftermath, conceding that there was “room for criticism” over the international follow-up.
