The argument over whether to fight in Libya had many aspects to it – ideology, national interest, diplomacy, military calculation. But the most important divide in the western world was temperamental. The Libyan debate pitted the hotheads against the ditherers. The leaders of the hotheads are Nicolas Sarkozy, president of France, and David Cameron, the prime minister of Britain. The ditherer-in-chief is Barack Obama, the US president, backed up by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. Read more