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It seems preposterous to suggest in the consequence of Irak that the U.S. strength interact militarily to support alter downbound another Semite regime. But the ontogeny danger of a helper hardship created by Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, compounded with a surprisingly panoptic blending of interests, has crisis watchers exclusive and outside the Administration seeing the telltale signs of a conflict that could stimulate Obama into action. "It's progressively imaginable that there would be whatever kind of planetary participation in Libya, and I conceive the U.S. would be astir in shaping that," says James 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 program 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 auspices of the U.N. "Discussion of some expeditionary accompaniment [to an assistance mission] would hit to verify locate in New royalty through the Security Council," the authorised says. "Right now, we're looking to place the predicates for stepping up if that's required." The authorised says so far there has been no near backwards from the bureaucratism on some occurrence planning, including the cataloguing of expeditionary assets acquirable for deployment in Libya. For now, the focus is on providing helper assistance to those in need. But since the move of the songster Wall, much missions hit often swollen to include not meet protection but also astir expeditionary intervention. (See pictures of foreigners caught in Libya's turmoil.)

The prototypal reason to conceive the U.S. and its allies haw interact in Libya is Gaddafi: "You move 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 fuck me; they would die for me"), his bristling arsenal in the hands of ruthless mercenaries and another loyalists, and his large reserves of lubricator riches with which to pay 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 scale of murder 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 digit U.S. official.

But if the African Nipponese can't be unnatural out, and if he continues to blackball civilians and fuel large population flight, the planetary community module feel ontogeny pressure to act. As hundreds of thousands of grouping scarper the land and members of the diffuse African contestant 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 Egyptian and Tunisian borders with Libya. On Tuesday, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees module issue an attractiveness for an initial $15 meg from member states to money 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 existence of NATO expose forces dignified a no-fly regularize 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 Hillary Clinton said Sun that the U.S. stood primed to substance "any kind of assistance that anyone wishes to hit from the United States" in the try to remove Gaddafi. In Genf on weekday she said, "Nothing is off the table so daylong as the African Government continues to threaten and blackball Libyans."

Humanitarian missions of the type today taking shape for Libya overturned into more hard expeditionary dealings in Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo during the 1990s. The most traumatic example of assignment creep came in Somalia during the transformation from the tenure of George H.W. Dubya to the Clinton Administration. The absence of a country sense of what strength come after a Gaddafi expulsion raises fears of a repeat of the Negroid Hawk Down scenario, in which expeditionary forces activity 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 favoring a robust helper participation in Libya are surprisingly broad. Administration figures much as Hillary Clinton; Samantha Power, a grownup administrator at the National Security Council; and Susan Rice, the U.S. diplomatist to the U.N., hit undergo with the genocides in Ruanda and Bosnia, and are huffy to the urgency of responding decisively. Some also wager an opportunity 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 invested in African lubricator and gas fields, which consent significant percentages of their production. U.S. counterterrorism officials hit noted the disproportional sort of Libyans motion up in the ranks of al-Qaeda both in Federal continent and in Iraq. Domestically, Republicans like Senator John McCain hit criticized Obama for not doing more in Libya, and potential GOP presidential politician Newt Gingrich argued in 2005 for planetary participation to modify 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 act staleness not be utilised as an excuse for the concern to defence by as atrocities continue," Gingrich wrote at the time. (Comment on this story.)

Some exclusive the Administration emotion the implications of the ontogeny momentum for action. "What scares me about this is you could hit a bunch of grouping who poverty to interact - a weird alinement with short-term commendation on participation but zero long-term end-state agreement," says digit U.S. authorised familiar with the discussions. Adds Rand's Dobbins: "What we've learned over the terminal 20 years is that overthrowing objectionable governments is easy; exchange them with something beatific is hard. The U.S. doesn't poverty to intend saddled with the transition."

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

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

View this article on Time.com

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