Leadership Quote by William Hague

“Time is not on Gaddafi’s side” is the kind of sentence politicians love because it sounds like a law of physics while doing the work of policy. Hague isn’t describing a clock; he’s trying to bend one. In early 2011, with Libya in revolt and Western governments edging toward intervention, the coalition’s biggest vulnerability was impatience: publics and parliaments wanted to know how this ends, what it costs, and whether it turns into another open-ended war. Hence the loaded setup: “People ask about the exit strategy.”

Hague flips that anxiety like a judo move. By insisting “it’s Colonel Gaddafi who needs an exit strategy,” he reframes the central question from Allied plans to the dictator’s inevitability. The phrase doesn’t just assign responsibility; it assigns inevitability. “Exit strategy” becomes a euphemism for surrender, exile, or removal, and by attaching it to Gaddafi, Hague reduces the West’s role to applying “pressure” rather than choosing escalation.

The subtext is coercive diplomacy presented as moral momentum. “Pressure will only mount” is both promise and warning: promise to rebels and international audiences that resolve is hardening; warning to regime insiders that loyalty is a depreciating asset. The meticulous time-boxing, “days and weeks,” reassures skeptics that action won’t drift, while quietly signaling that harsher measures (sanctions, isolation, possibly force) are queued up. It’s confident language designed to make Gaddafi’s fall feel less like a decision and more like the weather rolling in.