No Fly Zones
Are They Effective?
Most Americans know what a No Fly Zone (NFZ) is. It is an area where one or more countries enforce an airspace that is to be kept free of military planes. They are targeted towards military fighters, but are occasionally used to prevent use by any type of aircraft.
A Brief History
The United States pushed for the first No Fly Zone created after the Gulf War in 1991. This was the war where the coalition troops pushed Iraq’s troops out of Kuwait, which Iraq attempted to annex. The Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, had his forces pushed back towards Bagdad during the peace negotiations. Coalition forces did not demand a new national leader, but they did demand that the most northern and southern areas were kept free of military actions . These two areas are home to the local populations of Kurds in the north and Shia in the south. As ethnic minorities they had been subject to persecution from the Iraqi government.
The NFZ in Iraq was successful in protecting the minorities. Due to success, NFZs were proposed for other conflict zones. However, the United Nations declared they were illegal without UN support.
The NFZ worked in Iraq in part due of the temporary US hegemony in the military sphere. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United Sates would not be able to cleanse the sky of the USSR’s allies without pushback and possible skirmishes. The NFZ in Iraq was created 1991, just as the USSR dissolved, and the United States could dictate terms for international relations*. What President Bush 1 wanted was a rapid rebuke of territorial land grabs and upholding worldwide consensus for political norms.
Subsequent to Iraq, NFZs were attempted in the Bosnian War and the Libyan Civil war. The NFZ in Bosnia was not very useful at the beginning as NATO organizers counted upwards of 500 incursions and responded, but there were no ground troops associated with it. More killings and offensives on the land changed the “No Fly Zone” into an activate military campaign with bombings.
The UN’s only other approval of a NFZ was in Libya during their civil war. Like the Bosnian experience, this NFZ morphed into an active military campaign.
Therefore, the positive view of No Fly Zones is based on a singular success in Iraq and muddled results elsewhere.
Reasons for Use
There is a simple reason that No Fly Zones are popular. They provide some protection for innocent civilians without any cost to the American people. There is a dollar cost, but very few (American) lives are lost. They are simple to understand and can be managed remotely.
Obsolescence
The No Fly Zone idea is effectively useless now, a victim of its own success. The United States’ was the first country to successfully use drones over the long term. It used these drones as simple remote tools to enforce the MFZ from continents away.
The same drones are now used during combat. Drones can be inexpensively made or purchased. Now they can used not only to observe an NFZ, but to overcome them. Flooding the NFZ airspace with inexpensive drones overwhelms the observer. More recently the offensive capability of even small drones means the cost of enforcing a No Fly Zone is prohibitive.
No Fly Zones were effective for a brief time in history during the last few decades. Progress has made them ineffective just as abruptly.
* The timing of the USSR collapse was fortuitous. The US was lucky to have had George Bush #1 in office. A veteran and politician, President Bush did not try to take too much advantage when other countries were weaker.