this is the mantra pure results just keep to the recruiting bill came a triple her ilk a renaissance hotel ok rules we take from pacific so result. in israel blue cheese available in cinema till twelve derrius so when her children recent. cross talk is coming up here in our team but first let's check the headlines nato accepts command of the no fly zone over libya but not the full control of the military operation as our correspondent tells us air strikes are continuing to walk tappable to the. pension plans as the core of reactor three at the fukushima nuclear power plant may have been damaged sparking the fears of further instant risks. and also angry protests in brussels as e.u.

leaders meet to discuss new spending cock small continuing to splash through your answer on military campaigns abroad. and in our cross talk the great show peter lavelle next asked his gaffes whether the intervention in libya is a repetition of military action in iraq and you can stop it. wealthy british style. markets finance scandal. find out what's really happening to the global economy in these kinds of reports on r.t. . can.

follow in a welcome across talk on peter lavelle decision time what endgame looms for the compliment in libya what are the ultimate aims of the u.s. and its allies what is best for people on the ground in libya and are we dealing with deja vu. can you. discuss the cut off points of the coalition effort in libya i'm joined by horace campbell in syracuse he's a professor of african-american studies and political science at syracuse university in london we go to justin crump he is the c.e.o. and sibling an international risk assessment company and in new york we have a greenwald he is the associate editor of commentary and another member of our cross talk team yelling the hunger all right gentlemen this is cross talk and you can jump in anytime on justin if i can go to you first as we sit down at this virtual table right now nato still hasn't decided how this effort in libya is going

to proceed that means the americans are still kind of left hanging in the lead right now even though we're told that the americans want to back away cherokee seems to be very resistant to extending the mandate and the british are saying that the air campaign in libya is successful meaning the libyans can live in a government. no longer really cannot at all control its airspace so in a sense the policy has one if we look at the one now if we look at the resolution that the united nations security council passed so where do we go from here because in a strange way there is success but i guess it's not successful for some members of this coalition if there isn't regime change. i think it a very good point the military campaign was always going to be an easy place in a way certainly in terms of a no fly zone. defenses were pretty poor twenty five years ago when they faced the americans in eldorado canyon. so much so that in fact the russian general visit

often has to inspect where the performance have been so bad they're not been upgraded since so to be honest the strategic air defense out into the mediterranean off the coast of libya was never going to be a significant problem for allied air forces and certainly the air force in a very old aircraft called warrior aircraft the most part already suffering from a lot of bases from a lot of spares not going to be a problem the problems are always going to be in the alliance itself and the unity of effort. even between britain and france i think we've seen some of that with the french launching you know actual strikes almost before everyone got started so in a paris conference we could go so when you put all that together you can secede some of the major trouble is behind the scenes and the most controversial thing of all being the attack on ground targets. actually very very hard to do without causing casualties actually even with people on the ground without people on the ground incredibly difficult to try and accurately target khadafi forces in urban

areas in amongst the rebels using the same equipment so and that's going to the really big challenge and increasing opposition so far to the strategic easy campaign against big military targets is only going to get more controversial from horace is is this just going down the path of just a full blown military intervention the invasion of libya with use of ground forces this is part of the game plan all along because just pointed out the obvious the correct. interpretation is that. the libyan air force is never going to be a big problem for the united states and its nato allies the real thing they want to do is change the regime in there in that will happen with an invasion a ground invasion of eventually. and that is not the. that was not the a mandate and we must call on all members of the security council to go back to the secretary-general to ensure that need to withdraw as from libya we military

objectives need to these objectives are not aligned to the political objectives of the transitional national council. or put in the room for western involvement in africa by any is the new stall and in fact two massacres of people ok if i can go to eighty. eight and i to ask you we look at this resolution that was passed by the united nations security council and it's open ended so where we can where the united nations security what i'm saying is the people that are implementing it right now the united states and and primarily nato countries they can say there's no there's no deadline for us to achieve what we want to be cheap so i mean the at this point the united states and nato are not satisfied with the outcome because it really as we speak right now and things are changing very quickly in the country there's a stalemate right now i wouldn't call quite a stalemate but i. certainly i haven't heard quite the triumphal language that you

quoted at the beginning my understanding is is that commanders are speaking positively saying things are moving in the right direction certainly degraded. fees defenses tremendously but that that that fulfilling the mission is really some some days or even weeks away in general i'm sort of a fan of ok but can i ask you what is what is success what is success in your mind in this campaign what is success. successfully getting khadafi toppling that regime if we were to simply. whole hold off a massacre this discovery on which which we are doing and which which the u.s. and its allies should should be commended for. what's what's what's to stop the next massacre and what's to stop gadhafi is retaliation ok justin if i can go to

you i mean if we said he sees education of the military infrastructure of libya then what is the rationale to continue the the military campaign i mean they've taken out so many tanks and so many trucks ports ability to act like that has something to do with a no fly zone i don't understand i mean you continue to go after the infrastructure i mean then there cannot be another so-called massacre can there. very well could be in fact. as you just referred to the ambiguity over the mission itself and certainly you know very clearly i think you know u.s. british foreign policy objectives would be the removal of duffy's regime u.n. security council resolution one hundred seventy three for short of that clearly but it does have the mandate in the open ended mandate to protect civilians and so that's what much of this comes down to and that's what opens the door for this debate about the end state and all the controversy flowing from that but frankly i think if we look at previous no fly zones there are remarkably ineffective. flies

over bosnia achieved comparatively little no fly zone over iraq did have better achievements but look at the length of time that these operations went on for and again the air force wasn't really causing the damage to the rebels and it was it was symbolic you know i think it was important to the rebels that this was gone and they got this a level of support the arab league back that up the fact that the u.n. resolution went beyond that and you can open up the ground component is is going to troubling aspect and i really think that you know again you can go in the infrastructure you can cause it just to go problems. does pose a disco problems of its own because the length of space if you like between the various major cities and major fighting it's been happening in urban areas. but nonetheless i think could have his forces in misrata back on the offensive tanks on the street snipers or in the buildings and it's very hard for me to see what tactical air power is going to actually deliver against that in an urban environment you know with many civilians around without creating

a least the impression of an own goal if not in fact causing casualties among civilians amongst the rebels themselves so this is this is a really good aspect for me is you know where it goes how you actually deliver on that without making the controversy a new generation that exists already worsens to expose you know horace i mean just to really point out some very important points here i mean no matter how you cut it this is a slippery slope isn't it it's a slippery slope and if you want you can be a cynic and say yes no fly zones really don't work you have to go to the next step in maybe this was the rationale behind it in the first place. well no let's not use the word awkward let's be very clear britain france and russia were opportunistic in going into libya when they were the same persons selling to libya russia china and india abdicated their responsibility in the security council by giving susan rice the leeway to use very loose land which to get into libya we need to say

very clearly that the united states britain and france must see this system from any further military involvement in libya and that it is not their rule to cut out reaching change in fact what this would be doing is actually strengthening the credibility of gadhafi to present himself as that imperialist the transitional national council of libya must mobilize the people of libya to remove gadhafi it is the rule of the game libyans and africans to remove gadhafi not the western europeans who prop the gaddafi over the past forty one years horace brings up an interesting point in the countries of the i mean there is the international opinion is is is closing in on this i mean russia china and other countries have said here enough is enough i mean that your bombing campaign has achieved enough i mean it's what the u.n. resolution asked for it's not going further because there is

a it is the perception in the world going out is this is turning into exclusively an american nato operation. well that's that's often the way these things go because let's be honest russia and china. are certainly against. the v.v. assisted toppling of dictatorial regimes for their own reasons. so as far as i'm concerned mr putin should be ashamed of himself for for calling the u.s. forces crusaders while they're over there helping the libyan rebels be able to say so i made a lot of people would say that he echoes the opinion of restraint spammy and the receipt he would be actually isn't reflecting the opinion it's a mix of billions of people in the world i mean again you see the west make a determining political outcomes in other countries in this is the perception of it here there's a there's a lot a little bit of the law there's sort of the chinese style i want to charge you to go right ahead syracuse the general the german from syracuse presumes to know what

the libyan rebels should be doing well the libyan rebels themselves are the ones that have asked for western assistance in its core a suit for us what are we going to buy that real quick before we go to the great threat. and the point is you can only try and persons in countries to invite foreign troops and a very arab league that invited the west to enter into libya the very same arab governments that i think the countries in bahrain in countries such as in countries such as morocco in saudi arabia so there are so many johnnys here going after the short break we'll continue our discussion on the west action in libya state party. started.

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a secret. pledge. to keep the plane. welcome after cross talk on people about three minute we're talking about events unfolding in libya. place to pick up a sister plenty but first let's see what russians think about events in the region. the arab world on the move and rez started in tunisia and egypt clears across the region making a prognosis now is far from being easy since the arab world is changing its face every day and people in the streets show their power the russian public opinion research center asked citizens what drives these people forty five percent think it's low level of living standards fourteen percent say it's long terms or rulers

thirteen percent blame regimes so verity and eight percent see corruption in plain english people the arab world is going through a rep or transformation and today change is the norm. ok justin and i to go back to you in london a lot of people around the world are saying that what was happening in libya is a civil war and why is the west using this civil war to intervene when there are other civil conflicts around the world and the obvious answer a lot of people would say a cynical one maybe its oil because there's a lot of other things going on the world that the united states and its allies don't intervene on but they do on this one and i'd like to point out there wasn't a whole lot of public discussion about it it happened very very quickly and you even have members of the u.s. congress saying barack obama had no right to do that because no public discussion political discussion in the united states so for a country that likes to export democracy it wasn't very democratic process in the united states go ahead but some of the aspects of the united states thinks my more

informed american brethren i think a lot of it depends around how you define war and conflict as to when congress can get involved. the key thing i really libya. i think the expectations were very high following on egypt continues here that libyan regime is going to be gone as well and we're going to see more of this arab spring. so it has a lot of focus on that and i think the recent investment that went into libya which i don't just mean the financial investment all the corporate investment but actually some of the political investment that was into libya as a rube state in from the cold you know seen as suddenly on side no longer sponsoring terrorism made it more important and i actually think the scale events there is different to what we've seen in the rest the middle east perhaps up until the last few days with events in yemen and syria which are changing i mean bahrain is not on the same scale and there is not a mass armed uprising and you can effectively say civil war almost. on the scale

there is in libya so that's why there has been so much focus on it you know just given all that emphasis and i think not to be seen as a failure and hence far more interest and also of course libya isn't on that some sectarian fault line that so many other countries are where they sit between the sunni and shia divide which is the other major issue really and actually much older to get involved in. a much more dangerous potentially more of a cost i think libya many ways was the easiest place to intervene and that's that's kind of pathetic in a way if it's the easiest one to topple if i can go to you it looks it's clear that the the international alliance led by the united states and nato have chosen sides in this conflict if you call it a civil war or not we one of the things that's troubling is that if we do continue seeing this deadlock here the stalemate if you agree with him or not is that is the international community chosen to develop to recognize a new state inside of libya over the state of benghazi or something like that i

mean if there are unintended consequences being played out here cannot be toppled and that is the the intent then you have to protect these people and the responsibility of the international community alike and at a cost of all. right now with that's exactly why i'm i'm in favor for a for toppling the regime for a more pronounced end game here we cannot have an open ended protecting. where where where we're flying over over of a bisected country indefinitely so that and i think it is the i think it is the obligation of free countries to to choose sides in these things and to choose the interest to choose the side for democracy against tyranny against despotism and and that's the question of why libya and not elsewhere. it's a good one and and. perhaps should be thinking

about how we can shape these rivalries elsewhere whether through military means or not ok supporting me if i give a kind of forces like the ground if i could see it with you if i could stay with you i mean isn't a track record of the west over the last decade particularly nation building in the world especially in the greater middle east of the arab world pretty dismal. no not at all i think if you it's certainly it's certainly not spotless and it's a massive undertaking and it's been it's been done very imperfectly but that's not the same thing as saying it's dismal if you look at the region look to iraq where where you see the sort of the only fledgling arab parliamentary democracy that's that's that's kind of struggling along and i think for more u.s. involvement there will help it on its way ok laura what do you think about that i mean. the united states is falling apart here but it's

a same time the united states is going around the world building countries i mean a lot of americans would like the american government to start rebuilding its own country go ahead i mean nation building in the greater middle east outside intervention i mean we learned last year i must i must speak as someone from inside . the united nations did not give need to a mandate to change regimes in libya there is a revolution going on in north africa and the middle east. these revolutions are overthrew dictators who have been supported by the west for the past forty years these revolutions must be me by the people of north africa if we're going to have a democratization process social justice and the billions of dollars used to provide employment for the people of north africa the united states cannot afford a military adventure in north africa as they did in iraq in fact the opportunism of

pentagon is such that initially there were opposed to a no fly zone but now they're using this exercise as a public relations exercise for the united states africa that africa rejects so is it that the west is attempting to establish a military base in libya to stop the revolution in tunisia and egypt in the back let's be very clear that the west is not in support of democracy in africa they're not in support of democracy in yemen in bahrain in saudi arabia it is the west that is supporting one of the most arcade governments in the world in saudi arabia so for the west we all live in the united states of america when we are cutting back money for teachers for education for schools for health for housing for environment we cannot spend a billion dollars on tomahawk missiles against libya it is up to the people of africa and it is amazing that in this discussion we have not discussed the role of

the african union the united nations security council should be giving assistance to the you african union for humanitarian assistance to libya that was the mandate of the security council of the united nations france and britain were in bed with a good athlete but after his son finance succors his campaign succors is no in the lead to fight against libya this is a chrissy of the highest order africans and this is the this is definitely a reason to allow humanitarian disaster to take place you had a he's a. guy had you there's no there's no getting around the fact that the libyan rebels asked for our help that's plain and simple. morris you want to reply that yes i agree that the libyan insurrection forces ask for your help but we can also assist the libyan insurrection forces to say to them that their

pass through with gaddafi and if they ask the west the car into remove gadhafi for them then they will be puppets of the west when we come to power well justin if i can go to you i mean i guess that's asking people to make a choice on the ground here i mean even i and i'm very very skeptical about this whole operation as you guys all can tell me i can understand rebels saying look i mean we're going to get massacred in the next forty eight seventy two hours can you stop that from happening and haven't we already done that and it isn't really the job according to the resolution been achieved and i think that's where the discussion is here we go next year. because the resolution doesn't talk about any international force politically socially militarily supporting an insurrection in libya the resolution doesn't say anything about. i think it's an important distinction all the talk in strategic space in the media space in the political space has been about this you know the intent for regime change you know has been

stated. but actually if you look at the military operation is completely compliant with the u.n. security council resolution if you look at the reaction of the rebels on the ground to the downed fifteen the way they reacted to the crew there and the fact they were still celebrating a guy whose child was very seriously injured and he was injured as well and then fortunate so funny far at sanaa through it even they were actually still said we supported the americans they've come to help us so there is no getting away from the fact that was what they wanted and actually what's being delivered on the ground at the moment appears to be broadly in line got rebels need rebels want there's no evidence filling casualties i do suspect there will be some i think the inherent difficulties of chucking around large amounts of high explosives are such that you know there will be problems especially in a less than perfect intelligence. when i saw it on one side i think. the level of the great around the rest of these issues is very interesting i have to disagree about. the reasons. brought up just now about the whole issue of us being that.

the rebels really did us this it is compliant and that's a really important point ok you want to jump in there probably the last comment of the program here i mean what is very any limits to the support of the toppling of the regime in libya is very limited in your mind if you just put boots on the ground i mean we do everything we can to get rid of gadhafi right and have forced regime change go back to the old strategy. well of course there are limits but we're nowhere near there yet it's very hard to topple a regime just using air power. so we were going to have to start to think of novel uses of american power projection in order to make this happen but yes there is there is there is a limit we this is not worth a nother iraq that that is that i'll concede that for sure but it need not escalate to that point sorry gentlemen we've run out of time but i have to jump in many thanks to my guests today in syracuse in london and in new york and thanks to our

viewers for watching if you are to see you next time and remember crosstalk we. can.

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