--- title: Command Post: Why No U.S. Ground Troops in LIbya? | TIME description: A discussion between TIME and the Center for a New American Security. canonical: https://time.com/video/V1qiTfPo/ og:title: Command Post: Why No U.S. Ground Troops in LIbya? og:description: A discussion between TIME and the Center for a New American Security. og:url: https://time.com/video/V1qiTfPo/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/V1qiTfPo/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Command Post: Why No U.S. Ground Troops in LIbya? twitter:description: A discussion between TIME and the Center for a New American Security. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/V1qiTfPo/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Command Post: Why No U.S. Ground Troops in LIbya? > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Command Post: Why No U.S. Ground Troops in LIbya? [Watch (HLS stream): Command Post: Why No U.S. Ground Troops in LIbya?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/V1qiTfPo.m3u8) (6:10)  _Published 2011-08-10. A discussion between TIME and the Center for a New American Security._ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:16 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Command Post: Was it Right For the U.S. to Formally Recognize the Libyan Rebels?](/video/7v1xSdX1/) ### Command Post: Was it Right For the U.S. to Formally Recognize the Libyan Rebels? [Command Post: Why the U.S. Backed off from Leading the Libya Campaign](/video/k7EIIWQD/) ### Command Post: Why the U.S. Backed off from Leading the Libya Campaign [Command Post: Can the U.S. Afford Its Soldiers?](/video/agAklhIo/) ### Command Post: Can the U.S. Afford Its Soldiers? --- ## Transcript This is Command Post, a series of discussions about military matters from Time and the Center for a New American Security. So Andrew president Obama has repeatedly said there will be no US combat boots on the ground inside Libya. It reminds me of Kosovo, where president Clinton talked about no ground troops going in there. Maybe this is a necessary thing for a president to do politically. But for soldiers or for commanders does it make sense militarily to put such an edict out like that? Okay two, two quick things here. First off, it makes a lot of sense and we can all understand why the president would not wanna commit more boots on the ground. Especially after the experiences of, of Iraq and Afghanistan. This president I think had envisioned himself ending those, the American involvement in those two wars. And to start another conflict in Libya, and work for committing troops on the ground. I, I think he, he justifiably fears what that would do for his base. And that, that's probably not the way he envisions himself as a president. Starting other wars, other US ground commitment. second, if you do decide to commit the US military to these type of operations, I would say there's about a one to one ratio between the enthusiasm the military has for conducting these operations. And the enthusiasm political decision makers have at home for these operations. There's very little enthusiasm in Washington, on both sides of the isle. For any type of comprehensive campaign in Libya that would involve ground troops? And what about just a handful? What about just spotters? From air strikes. Yeah Which the president, apparently the president has ruled out. Yeah. I mean. Right Just very. Right. You know, thimbleful of troops. And, and here you get at two things. First off there's this issue with post- conflict reconstruction. If it begins right now, then you need those troops committed right now. Maybe not troops but maybe you have police trainers. Military trainers. I mean who's conducting the training mission with these Libyan armed forces. Who's ensuring that they're not committing rights violations. Who's been working to build up the institutions of eastern Libya. I mean, can we put USAID workers on the ground? Can we put State Department officials on the ground? Can we put Department of Defense civilian officials on the ground? And so far, we can't put DOD civilian officials on the ground. That probably doesn't make a lot of sense. Paul, do you have a sense of the wisdom here? Well, you know. The idea of, of post- conflict stabilization is a, a very complex one. You can put people on the ground in Libya. I mean the, the Brits are on the ground now. Yeah. Doing certain train and equip kinds of things. But there are other sorts of people who could conceivably be put in there who are not DOD. State Department has the coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization of the office of reconstruction and stabilization. That is supposed to maintain a Rolodex file of retired former officials, experts who they can call up and say, we need you in Libya. [ INAUDIBLE ] a civilian response corp. Exactly right. But, but the problem with it, is it's not matured yet. It has never been fully funded by the Congress. Even though there are members of Congress who say, we gotta do this. You know the, the house just cannot see any reason to fund anything related to foreign operations. In fact, the, the, the chair woman of The Foreign Ops committee in the House has vowed to swash, in the next fiscal year, the current level of funding for foreign operations by 52 %. You know, and, and it's just going down and down and down, when Foreign Operations accounts for so little of our budget. And the return on investment is so high. Exactly. Preventing situations that may make it necessary to commit large numbers of US troops. The return on the long term investment, and see, that's where I think members of Congress are, are a little uneasy because they can't see long term. They can only see two years to their next re- election. I mean this is in part because we look at national defence. And security as kind of, and national security as two different things. We'll never cut the defense budget, or you'll have, you'll have strong reaction against cutting the defence budget. But our development and aid programs, our foreign service officers, our state department budget. And that's not seen as part of the national security budget, which is absurd. It makes sense to have, to consider those part and parcel with the, the hard security stuff we do in the department of defense. And this lack of civilian capacity. Both in Libya and for future campaigns is going to make it more likely that there's gonna be a heavier burden placed on the U. S military. Yeah, the U. S Institute of Peace costs roughly an amount that rifle infantry platoon costs to be in Afghanistan for a year. About $ 42 million. About that much, and yet this is part of this these, these budget cuts. We'd never consider cutting. You know rightful infantry people [ UNKNOWN ] Afghanistan. But we'll cut US IP we'll cut the civilian organization we'll cut our civilian capacity because that's just seen as politically more palatable. It's nonsense, I think there's a reason why we do this we the response you get is oh, well we need these things for the Iraq war and we're never gonna do that again. But that's just like we never were gonna do Vietnam again, we were never gonna do these large, resource intensive counter- intrinsic campaigns. I'm all in favor of never doing these campaigns again. But political decision makers have a funny habit of getting us in to these types of , low intensity conflicts and stability operations where you need capacities. And capabilities that you're not gonna find organic to a live infantry battalion. And, and we're making decisions now about those capabilities that we are not going to have when we need them. This is not something that you can buy off the shelf. So, we need to be very careful about the long term strategic implications of the short term budgetary decisions we're making. 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