BRUSSELS: NATO was due to wind down its mission in Libya on Friday after a six-month campaign that saw the United States hand over the helm to Europe for the first time in the history of the alliance.
"A great success, a triumph to the political courage of (British Prime Minister David) Cameron and (French President Nicolas) Sarkozy," Nick Witney, the first head of the European Defence Agency and currently an analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told AFP.
"The price is, we'll never get another one of these through the United Nations in the foreseeable future. NATO exceeded the UN mandate, going from save Benghazi to get Kadhafi."
NATO ambassadors were gathering later Friday to discuss how to wind up the six-month campaign in Libya on the heels of Moamer Kadhafi's death and the fall of his last bastions.
With nations involved in the war concerned "to halt the operation in orderly fashion," as one diplomat put it, the 28-member alliance may maintain some naval and air capacity over the next two weeks "to ensure capability for intervention should the situation require."
In a statement hailing the end of Kadhafi's "rule of fear", NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the alliance would terminate the mission in coordination with the UN and the country's leaders in the National Transitional Council (NTC).
He urged the NTC "to prevent any reprisals against civilians and to show restraint in dealing with defeated pro-Kadhafi forces."
Failing Operation Unified Protector, "there would have been thousands and thousands more killed," said Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa of Italy, one of the eight European nations that took part in some 8,000 strikes since the March 31 start of the campaign.
NATO officials privately express satisfaction over the fact there was little collateral damage, thanks to extremely strict rules of engagement, and say the low-cost military operation that banned boots on the ground has been "rich in lessons."
"It shows a decisive intervention can tip a local military balance and that you can do that without being sucked into the aftermath, as in Afghanistan," Witney said. "It is a new model, or a more realistic one."
It also was the first instance of the US stepping back and throwing Europe into the NATO drivers' seat, though US military hardware -- its drones, refuelling planes and intelligence -- proved decisive to the strikes carried out by European planes.
But analysts warn the new partnership could be the beginning of the end, as Washington increasingly looks to secure its strategic interests in Asia, turning away from NATO.
"I am not sure NATO is viable," said George Joffe of Cambridge University and an analyst at The Global Policy Institute.
"If it is not an American community, it should be European, but are the Europeans ready to effectively organize it into a reliable force?"
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