Barack Obama and David Cameron both entered office as avowed sceptics of military intervention. Mr Cameron declared that you can't "drop democracy out of an aeroplane at 40,000 feet", while Mr Obama, in reference to Iraq, argued that the US could not "impose a military solution" on "someone else's civil war". Yet that is precisely what the US and the UK are now attempting to do in Libya. The pretence that the Nato coalition is merely patrolling the no-fly zone over the country has been abandoned in favour of an unambiguous pursuit of regime change. The imminent deployment of Apache helicopters confirms that what was initially presented as a limited, protective action has morphed into a war of aggression.

In a leader published on 28 March, we warned of the dangers of mission creep and predicted that the air strikes, rather than leading to the fall of Colonel Gaddafi, would result in a protracted civil war. And so it has proved. Yet the coalition still lacks anything resembling an exit strategy. It could break the stalemate through the deployment of ground troops, or it could seek a negotiated, peaceful settlement. But at present
it is unwilling to consider either option. Mr Obama and Mr Cameron have vowed not to leave Libya until UN Resolution 1973 has been "completely complied with". Yet this stated aim is compatible with the survival of Gaddafi in power.

In the meantime, the cost of the war is exceeding all initial estimates. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, told the House of Commons that the cost of military operations against the colonel would be "in the order of tens of millions of pounds, not hundreds of millions". But research by Defence Analysis suggests that the intervention will cost the UK as much as £1bn if it continues into the autumn. The Chancellor's apparent willingness to fund an expensive war makes a mockery of his previous claim that "the cupboard is bare".

In spite of all this, Mr Obama and Mr Cameron have not lost their appetite for intervention. In a joint newspaper article to mark the US president's state visit to the UK, the two leaders wrote: "We are reluctant to use force but when our interests and values come together we know that we have a responsibility to act." The disastrous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq should have taught them not to make such bold claims about the utility of military force. Moreover, it is precisely the absence of western intervention that has enabled the success of the Arab spring. The popularity of the protest movements reflects their nationalist and autonomous character. Regime change in Tunisia and Egypt was brought about by ordinary people, not by foreign bombs.

The tedious debate over whether the relationship between the US and the UK is "special", "essential", or merely “businesslike" should not be allowed to obscure the importance of these matters. A bloody decade of war and occupation has left the world neither freer nor safer. It is incumbent on the west to forge an alternative approach. If Mr Obama and Mr Cameron are to succeed where their respective predecessors failed, they must turn their back on an age of intervention and put their faith in the people of the Middle East instead.