welcome back to hardball. is it possible that moammar gadhafi will hold on to power in libya? what if he stays in office despite all the support for the rebels and all the bombing? how long could that last? robin wright is a joint fellow at the institute of peace, and david mack has served in many posts, including an early assignment interacting with gadhafi himself. he s a scholar at the middle east institute right now. thank you, robin, and mr. ambassador. the same question to both of you, i guess. could gadhafi hang on indefinitely? robin first. i find it very unlikely, the man is squeezed economically and physically, politically, militarily. this is a country with a rather small military, somewhere around 10,000, a small population, 6 1/2 million.
area. who would take him? i think that s a big part of the end game here. he ain t going unless he has some place to go. and if he doesn t go, we have to keep fighting him. well, the military clearly plays a critical role as it did in tunisia and egypt. and the military said they would not fire against their own people. in libya they have. is there a question at some point, someone who has close enough access to him to do something? i think this situation is more unpredictable than any other place. let me go to mr. ambassador mack, could he survive indefinitely until we stop thinking about him? not indefinitely, but he ll be there longer than we would like, longer than president sarkozy and the french foreign minister think he ll be there. but he ll be gone long before he imagines that he will be. because as robin has suggested, he s going to be under a tremendous amount of pressure, but the he ll stay.
significant revenues are going to be going to gadhafi. however, he probably has got a lot of money with him and gold with him in libya. he can probably continue to pay off some of the people that he depends upon. so i m not sure that he ll have the wherewithal to last for many months. but he certainly is going to last for many weeks, or at least he has the capability of doing that. the no-fly zone is not going to remove him. it s going to be the other tools, sanctions, isolation, and as robin suggested, the pressure of his children. and gadhafi himself might be happy to be a martyr. but like any other father, he s going to be concerned about the future of his sons and daughters. interesting stuff. thank you for all of that intelligence. both of you, robin wright and david mack. sarah palin may have hit a
welcome back to hardball. is it possible that moammar gadhafi will hold on to power in libya? what if he stays in office despite all the support for the rebels and all the bombing? how long could that last? robin wright at the institute of peace, and david mack has served in many posts, including an early assignment interacting with gadhafi himself. he s a scholar at the middle east institute right now. thank you, robin, and mr. ambassador. the same question to both of you, i guess. could gadhafi hang on indefinitely. robin first. i find it very unlikely, the man is squeezed economically and physically, politically, militarily. this is a country with a rather small military, somewhere around 10,000, a small population, 6 1/2 million. he is now facing the mightiest
because of the sanctions or because they re held by the rebels? i think a combination of both of those factors is going to make it very, very unlikely that significant revenues are going to be going to gadhafi. however, he probably has got a lot of money with him and gold with him in libya. he can probably continue to pay off some of the people that he depends upon. so i m not sure that he ll have the wherewithal to last for many months. but he certainly is going to last for many weeks, or at least he has the capability of doing that. the no-fly zone is not going to remove him. it s going to be the other tools, sanctions, isolation, and as robin suggested, the pressure of his children. and gadhafi himself might be happy to be a martyr. but like any other father, he s going to be concerned about the future of his sons and daughters. interesting stuff. thank you for all of that intelligence. both of you, robin wright and ambassador david mack. sarah palin may have hit a low. i don