Examining the Air Campaign in Libya

Between March and October 2011, a coalition of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member states, and several partner nations from outside the Alliance, waged a small but remarkable war against the Libyan regime of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi.¹ Through its intervention, the coalition stemmed and then reversed the tide of Libya’s civil war, preventing Qaddafi from crushing the nascent rebel movement seeking to overthrow his dictatorship and going on to enable the opposition forces to prevail against an enemy that many had argued the rebels could not defeat without a foreign army invading Libya. The central element of this military intervention