imagining the scenario under which Egypt invading Libya would not have been out of the question

As just stated in the preceding post, I think The Telegraph’s suggestion that Egypt move in and take care of Libya is a bit wacky.

But why? Mostly because the current military government here, while very much respected by the vast majority of Egyptians, is a cautious-seeming and largely leaderless group that doesn’t seem to have an especially clear strategic outlook. They may be doing the best they can (let us hope) but they’re at best moving in a kind of step-by-step reformist pragmatism.

But let’s imagine a different Egyptian revolution. On the night of Friday, January 28 Mubarak made his first speech. Many of us hoped, somewhat naively it turns out, that Mubarak would understand the message and resign that night. We were grievously disappointed to hear no such thing from him.

Now, let’s imagine that Egypt had a dashing young charismatic Colonel in the Army, with wide support in the ranks. (Mubarak took special care over the years to eliminate all such figures as they arose, however.) And let’s say that Colonel X had been sufficiently disgusted with that first Mubarak speech that he had simply taken matters into his own hands and had pulled a coup d’état on the 29th and 30th. With the right officer, it might conceivably have worked.

So, Colonel X is now in charge of Egypt from late January. Libyan massacres break out. Colonel X doesn’t even wait for an editorial in The Telegraph to tell him what to do. He says it is Egypt’s duty, as the pre-eminent Arab military power, to protect the peaceful citizens of a neighboring state from their madman of a ruler.

Colonel X sends columns of Egyptian tanks into Libya, perhaps cheered on by the citizens of Benghazi, and perhaps Qaddafi really does flee to Venezuela at that point, assuming they or anyone else would have him.

I have no specific outcome in mind for this story, good or bad. But this would be a rather Nasseresque sort of thing for Colonel X to do, and it would have been greeted with alarm in the Western media, even (or perhaps especially) in The Telegraph. Israel would be on hair-trigger alert at such a sign of military assertiveness by Egypt. And so forth. It seems like a mixed message to first say that Mubarak should stay in power for stability’s sake, and then to demand a foreign military expedition of his successors just a couple of weeks later.