Today the world's attention is riveted by the U.N. strikes on Libya and the battle for Benghazi, as that nation's future hangs precariously in the balance. But whatever happens in the coming weeks or months, one thing is clear: The chances of a drawn-out insurgency in Libya are very high.

History offers a number of sign posts that an insurgency will occur. Unfortunately Libya has almost all of them. At this point the political objectives of the government and anti-government forces are irreconcilable. Each side wants total victory—either Qaddafi will retain total power or he will be gone. Both sides are intensely devoted to their cause; passions are high. Both have thousands of men with military training, all imbued with a traditional warrior ethos which Qaddafi himself has stoked. The country is awash with arms. Libya has extensive hinterlands with little or no government control that could serve as insurgent bases. Neighboring states are likely to provide insurgent sanctuary whether deliberately—as an act of policy—or inadvertently because a government is unable to control its territory. North Africa has a long history of insurgency, from the anti-colonial wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to more recent conflicts in Chad, Algeria, and Western Sahara. Where insurgency occurred in the past, it is more likely to occur in the future. All this means that there is no place on earth more likely to experience an insurgency in the next few years than Libya.

What is not clear is whether the coming insurgency will involve Qaddafi loyalists fighting against a new regime or anti-Qaddafi forces fighting to remove the old dictator and his patrons. In either case, a Libyan insurgency would be destructive. Because they take place within the population, insurgencies always fuel refugee problems and humanitarian crises. They provide an opportunity for extremists to hijack one or both sides. And insurgency in Libya would destabilize a region undergoing challenging political transitions.

Unfortunately, there is little the United States can do to prevent an insurgency short of a full-scale military intervention to force Qaddafi's removal. And that isn't going to happen. What Washington can do, though, is begin thinking about how it would respond to insurgency.

Should Qaddafi hang on to power and the coming insurgency pit anti-government rebels against his regime, the United States would first have to decide whether it sought to pressure both sides toward a negotiated solution (something unlikely to happen until they have fought long enough to conclude that outright victory was unlikely) or whether it wanted a rebel victory. If a negotiated settlement was the goal, the United States and its allies would need to provide assistance, advice, and training to the rebels, both to prevent their defeat and to encourage them to avoid attacking civilians and to reject extremists. If a rebel victory was the goal, this sort of help would need to be even more extensive.