After more than eight months of fighting and a total of 26,089 sorties -- including 9,618 strike missions -- by NATO aircraft and ships, Col. Moammar Gadhafi is dead and the Libyan rebels appear firmly in charge of the North African nation.For military strategists one of biggest questions to emerge from the Libyan civil war is whether or not Odyssey Dawn -- the official name for the operation -- is a new template for Western military intervention.
"I think you'll probably see NATO be very careful about engaging in anything like this in the near future," said Former undersecretary of defense for policy Eric Edelman, who is now an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "My own view is, because of the actions of the U.S. after the initial few days, it took a lot longer than it needed to; mostly because it exposed the lack of a deep magazine of precision weapons on the part of our allies. None of that should have been a big shock to anybody, the only thing, perhaps, that's shocking is that ten years after those kinds of deficiencies were exposed in Kosovo that they continue to be major deficiencies in the alliance."
And while this should be a wakeup call for NATO to address weaknesses such as the ammunition shortages, declining defense budgets mean that the problems will remain unresolved, added Edelman.
"It's going to be hard to remedy because there are going to be very few countries that are going to be able to invest that kind of money," said Edelman. Some wealthy NATO members like the UK and France may shift their priorities to address the shortfalls but most simply won't be able to afford it.