Britain, France, and the US ignored Gadhafi’s offer of internationally supervised free elections in Libya. That confirms that the West is not interested in freedom or democracy for Libya, but in its oil wealth.
Gadhafi cannot survive a large NATO assault on Tripoli. Despite broad support, his government is a one-man operation, and unlike the Taliban in Afghanistan, cannot regroup and keep fighting for years. His assets held in the West are vulnerable to seizure. But NATO forces are exhausted, too, and unable to land significant contingents in Tripoli for a prolonged time. Installing a rebel government would cause a protracted civil war, which would break Libya into at least three parts. Realistically, no future ruler of Libya would be more liberal than Gadhafi because Libya is a Bedouin domain with few traces of civilization. More likely, the NATO-supported government will be unstable and maintain links with Al Qaeda in the Maghreb.
This time Russia won’t prevent NATO from attacking Libya, because the Russians were almost certainly promised a chunk of the Libyan oil concessions.
Gadhafi’s only chance to stem the NATO aggression would be to bring the terrorist war into Western cities very soon. And for that he seem to have lost the guts.
