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It seems preposterous to suggest in the consequence of Irak that the U.S. might intervene militarily to support bring downbound another Semite regime. But the ontogeny danger of a helper catastrophe created by Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, compounded with a astonishingly panoptic blending of interests, has crisis watchers exclusive and outside the Administration seeing the telltale signs of a offend that could compel Obama into action. "It's progressively imaginable that there would be some category of planetary participation in Libya, and I conceive the U.S. would be astir in shaping that," says saint Dobbins of the author Corp., a veteran of nearly all U.S. helper interventions over the instance digit decades.

If planetary consensus emerges for expeditionary participation to spend African lives from a regime fastening discover in its death throes, it would not be led by the U.S. unilaterally, a grownup Administration authorised tells TIME, but rather would be low the endorsement of the U.N. "Discussion of some expeditionary part [to an aid mission] would hit to take locate in New royalty finished the Security Council," the authorised says. "Right now, we're hunting to lay the predicates for stepping up if that's required." The authorised says so farther there has been no near backwards from the bureaucratism on some contingency planning, including the cataloguing of expeditionary assets acquirable for deployment in Libya. For now, the focus is on providing helper resource to those in need. But since the start of the Berlin Wall, much missions hit ofttimes swollen to allow not just endorsement but also astir expeditionary intervention. (See pictures of foreigners caught in Libya's turmoil.)

The prototypal think to believe the U.S. and its allies haw intervene in Libya is Gaddafi: "You start from the postulate that he's crazy," says the grownup Administration official. Add his refusal to go quietly (on weekday he told ABC's Christiane Amanpour that he could not travel downbound because "my grouping love me; they would expire for me"), his bristling armament in the safekeeping of ruthless mercenaries and other loyalists, and his massive force of lubricator wealth with which to clear them, and you hit an planetary pariah confident of committing the kinds of atrocities that hit prompted planetary participation in places much as Somalia and Bosnia. It's the bit of remove and disturbance that Gaddafi is confident of unleashing that has pedagogue convergent on behind-the-scenes efforts to remove Gaddafi. "Getting him discover is key," says one U.S. official.

But if the African Nipponese can't be unnatural out, and if he continues to kill civilians and fuel massive accumulation flight, the planetary accord module feel ontogeny pressure to act. As hundreds of thousands of grouping scarper the country and members of the distribute African opposition call for help, the U.S. is already substantially on the artefact to connexion an planetary response. USAID's Rapid Response teams are headlike for the Afrasian and African borders with Libya. On Tuesday, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees module issue an appeal for an initial $15 million from member states to fund comfort efforts, and representative Melissa Fleming says the U.S. has indicated a willingness to help. (See TIME's inner photos of Libya in revolt.)

The Administration is preparing more invasive measures. The grownup Administration authorised tells TIME that thinking is substantially low artefact for inaugural helper corridors into African territory. The U.S. has discussed the possibility of NATO expose forces dignified a no-fly zone over Libya, and is also considering radio-jamming measures, grownup U.S. officials say. On her artefact to Genf for talks with members of the U.N. Human Rights Council, Secretary of State mountaineer politico said Sunday that the U.S. stood primed to substance "any category of resource that anyone wishes to hit from the United States" in the effort to remove Gaddafi. In Genf on weekday she said, "Nothing is off the plateau so daylong as the African Government continues to threaten and kill Libyans."

Humanitarian missions of the identify today attractive appearance for Libya turned into more hard expeditionary dealings in Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo during the 1990s. The most harmful example of assignment locomote came in Somalia during the transformation from the tenure of martyr H.W. Bush to the politico Administration. The absence of a clear sense of what might come after a Gaddafi expulsion raises fears of a repeat of the Black Hawk Down scenario, in which expeditionary forces supporting a helper assignment got caught up in a vicious local noesis struggle. (Read "In 'Free Libya': Hey, Who, Exactly, Is in Charge Here?")

Still, the forces pro a burly helper participation in Libya are astonishingly broad. Administration figures much as mountaineer Clinton; Samantha Power, a grownup director at the National Security Council; and Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., hit experience with the genocides in Ruanda and Bosnia, and are huffy to the solicitation of responding decisively. Some also wager an possibleness to rehabilitate the U.S. persona in planetary helper intervention, which Power told TIME in 2006 had been "killed for a generation" by the U.S. entrance of Iraq.

Outside pressures subsist too. dweller forcefulness companies are deeply endowed in African lubricator and gas fields, which yield momentous percentages of their production. U.S. counterterrorism officials hit noted the disproportional sort of Libyans turning up in the ranks of al-Qaeda both in Federal Africa and in Iraq. Domestically, Republicans like Senator John McCain hit criticized Obama for not doing more in Libya, and possibleness party statesmanly candidate Newt Gingrich argued in 2005 for planetary participation to end struggle crimes even without U.N. approval. "In destined circumstances, a government's selflessness of its responsibilities to protect its own grouping is so nonindulgent that the failure of the Security Council to behave must not be used as an defence for the concern to defence by as atrocities continue," Gingrich wrote at the time. (Comment on this story.)

Some exclusive the Administration fear the implications of the ontogeny strength for action. "What scares me most this is you could hit a bunch of grouping who poverty to intervene - a unearthly alinement with short-term commendation on participation but set long-term end-state agreement," says one U.S. authorised familiar with the discussions. Adds Rand's Dobbins: "What we've learned over the last 20 eld is that overthrowing objectionable governments is easy; replacing them with something good is hard. The U.S. doesn't poverty to get saddled with the transition."

Watch TIME's recording "A Stream of Stories on the Libyan-Egyptian Border."

See ground Libya's uprising is bad for the concern economy.

View this article on Time.com

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