So, it appears that the issue of just who the rebels in Libya are is finally beginning to receive greater attention. Good for the policymakers and the press! Even before the question of arming the rebels came into question, this should have been front and center. The presumption up until this point seems to have made is that the ouster if Ghadaffi is a good thing for regional stability. A solo-act rebel takeover would leave us in fundamentally the same situation that a western-backed ouster would leave us in. Specifically, we are left with the destruction of a regime, and little idea as to what sort of institutional arrangements would take its place, and who would occupy those institutions, which (in my mind) does not sound like a recipe for enhancing regional stability.
Michael Flynn is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Kansas State University. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Binghamton University in 2013. His research focuses on the political economy of foreign policy with a specific focus on security cooperation and military deployments.