A rebel fighter walks beside a Grad multiple rocket launcher on the front line along the western entrance of Ajdabiyah April 19, 2011. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

WASHINGTON (IPS) — Even as the conflict in Libya appears
increasingly stalemated, the administration of President Barack Obama seems
determined to resist growing allied pressure to commit more U.S. military
resources to the fight.

While Washington has not ruled out redeploying AC-130 and
A-10 “Warthog” aircraft that proved highly effective at hitting
tanks, artillery, and other heavy equipment used by pro-regime forces to
besiege and attack rebel positions in the early stages of NATO’s intervention,
the Obama administration has made clear it has no plans to go further — at
least for now.

Asked Wednesday whether Washington was considering following
the lead of Britain, France, and Italy in introducing a small number of
military advisers — reportedly around ten from each country — to work with
rebel forces, ostensibly in fulfillment of the U.N. Security Council Resolution
(UNSCR) 1973 mandate to protect the civilian population, White House spokesman
Tim Carney was unequivocal in his reply. “The President, obviously, was
aware of this decision [by the three countries] and supports it, and hopes
that, believes it, will help the opposition. But it does not at all change our
— the President’s — policy on no boots on the ground for American troops,”
he said.

Carney’s words appeared to reinforce those of Vice President
Joseph Biden, who insisted in an interview with the Financial Times that
Washington’s NATO allies were fully capable of accomplishing the mission in
Libya without additional assistance from the U.S.

“If the Lord Almighty extricated the U.S. out of NATO
and dropped it on the planet of Mars so we were no longer participating,”
Biden said, “it is bizarre to suggest that NATO and the rest of the world
lacks the capacity to deal with Libya — it does not.”

Still, both the course of the ongoing conflict in Libya,
where rebels have proved unable to hold major territorial gains against Muammar
Gaddafi’s forces along the central Mediterranean coast and appear to be losing
their control of the long-besieged western city of Misurata, and the apparent
inability or unwillingness on the part of the U.S. and European forces to
deliver a decisive blow against the regime, has raised increasingly serious
questions both about how it will be resolved and the West’s role in its
resolution.

When the administration first yielded to French and British
entreaties — backed by a less-than-unanimous endorsement by members of the Arab
League — to intervene with military force, its hope was that an overwhelming
show of U.S. air power would so intimidate the Libyan army and embolden the
rebel forces that the Gaddafi regime would swiftly collapse, an objective that
Washington and NATO have endorsed but that is not explicitly authorized by
UNSCR 1973.

But, despite early high-level desertions, the regime and its
forces have proved both more durable and adaptable — and the rebel forces far
more disorganized and ill equipped — than Washington and its chief allies had
hoped.

Since Washington turned over command of the operation to
NATO two weeks ago and confined its role mainly to refuelling and surveillance,
the conflict has turned into a war of attrition that may actually worsen the
humanitarian situation that the original intervention was meant to ameliorate.

The result on the ground has been stalemate, as well as growing
testiness within NATO between Britain and France, which are carrying most of
the burden, on the one hand, and other, less enthusiastic and engaged allies,
including, at this point, Washington itself, on the other.

The testiness is not confined to the NATO allies, some key
members of which, most importantly German and Turkey, have refused to support
the military operation.

The decision by the three European capitals to send military
advisers to Libya is almost certain to be seen by other major powers, notably
the so-called BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — which
collectively called for a peaceful solution to the crisis at their meeting on
Hainan Island last week, as an unhelpful new escalation in the conflict. Of the
five BRICS countries, only South Africa voted for UNSCR 1973 — the others
abstained in what was interpreted as disapproval.

Obama’s official position is that U.S. military power can
only be used in pursuit of the U.N. resolution’s mandate to protect civilians
and that, at this point, the West must rely on non-military measures to achieve
regime change.

His rejection of London’s and Paris’ appeals to resume a
more aggressive role in the military campaign is also based on his conviction
that Europe, due to its proximity to North Africa, should assume greater
responsibility for policing its neighborhood and cease relying so much on
Washington’s military power. “We can’t do it all,” Biden told the
Times.

U.S. participation in a “no-fly zone” over Libya
was also opposed by the Pentagon whose top officials made little effort to
conceal their distaste for any new military intervention in yet another Muslim
country before the final decision was made.

It is not that Washington is withdrawing from the fight. In
addition to its supporting aerial role, it has excluded neither the eventual
redeployment of its gunships nor the possible supply of arms to the rebel
forces. In addition, teams from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) —
reportedly protected by the CIA’s own paramilitary forces — have been in Libya
since late March, albeit primarily to collect intelligence both on the rebels
and the regime’s forces.

Officials also confirmed reports Wednesday that the U.S.
plans to supply the opposition with 25 million dollars worth of non-lethal
assistance — including uniforms, body armor, boots, tents, radios, and
ready-to-eat meals that can be used by rebel fighters.

But continued stalemate on the ground is likely to increase
pressure — and not just from its western European allies — on the
administration to do substantially more.

Neo-conservatives and liberal interventionists, who led the
charge to intervene from the outset, are calling for stronger action and
warning of dire consequences — ranging from the end of the “Arab Spring”
to the dissolution of the NATO alliance — if the current situation persists.

And even some “realist” analysts who questioned or
even opposed intervening are warning that stakes — in both humanitarian and
strategic terms — are climbing too high to ignore.

“The Franco-Anglo-American gamble now seems far too
likely to fail at [the] expense [of the Libyan people],” according to
widely respected defense specialist Anthony Cordesman of the Center for
Strategic and International Studies, who compared the initial assumptions of
the major Western powers to the wishful thinking and lack of preparation that
preceded George W. Bush’s 2003 Iraq invasion.

“Moreover, it seems likely to drag the other nations
that support the operation into their failure — along with part of the
reputation of NATO and credibility of the U.N.,” he wrote Wednesday in an
appeal for the three powers and their allies to shift to an aggressive bombing
campaign targeting Gaddafi’s military and security forces “in their bases,”  as well as the Libyan leader and his
extended family and key supporters themselves “even if they are collocated
in civilian areas… France, Britain, and the U.S. now have a special obligation
to both finish what they started in military terms, and deal with the aftermath.”