The cauldron

The cauldron grabs readers’ attention from the outset. On the acknowledgements page there is a tribute to all those who contributed to the ‘success’ of Operation Unified Protector (OUP) in Libya in 2011. Those who feel that the Libyan intervention has been a disaster will be propelled into the text in search of an explanation. Rob Weighill was successively Director of Plans and Director of Operations at NATO's Joint Force Command in Naples, which conducted most of the military campaign. His contention is that NATO in Naples rigorously stuck to the mandates set out in the Security Council Resolution 1973 to impose an arms embargo and to protect the civilian population from the brutality of the Gaddafi regime. He and Florence Gaub forcefully deny that NATO became an instrument of regime change. Much of the book is a very readable reconstruction of the whole Libyan saga, from the onset of disturbances in mid-February until OUP was ended on 31 October. The authors have relied heavily on BBC Monitoring Reports—a reminder of the excellence of that service. Interspersed in the narrative is the occasional glimpse behind the arras at Naples. Although doubtless restricted in the detail he can reveal, Weighill provides a credible picture of a command desperately trying to develop its skills on Libya with all the inbuilt incoherence with which NATO has to cope: the discrepancies between ‘national’ and NATO tasking; the limited access to the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence feeds; the caveats imposed by individual member nations, etc. In the case of Libya, this latter was exacerbated by France's insistence that political control should lie outside NATO in the hands of a Contact Group

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