Scribd
Upload
81 views

The Lessons of Libya - Responsibility To Protect

1) The UN authorized military intervention in Libya in 2011 under the doctrine of "responsibility to protect" to prevent an expected massacre by Gaddafi's forces in Benghazi. 2) While the immediate goal of protecting Benghazi was achieved, the intervention increasingly took on the goal of regime change, blurring the line between civilian protection and broader political aims. 3) The Libya intervention has bolstered both sides of the debate around humanitarian intervention - it shows air power can save lives but critics argue the rhetoric of protection can be stretched to justify creeping political missions.

Uploaded by

Dominic Sowa
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
81 views

The Lessons of Libya - Responsibility To Protect

1) The UN authorized military intervention in Libya in 2011 under the doctrine of "responsibility to protect" to prevent an expected massacre by Gaddafi's forces in Benghazi. 2) While the immediate goal of protecting Benghazi was achieved, the intervention increasingly took on the goal of regime change, blurring the line between civilian protection and broader political aims. 3) The Libya intervention has bolstered both sides of the debate around humanitarian intervention - it shows air power can save lives but critics argue the rhetoric of protection can be stretched to justify creeping political missions.

Uploaded by

Dominic Sowa
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 5

The lessons of Libya - Responsibility to protect 6/22/18, 6(07 PM

The lessons of Libya


Outsiders had good reason to intervene in Libya. But
their cause may suffer from it
8 hours ago

Outsiders had good reason to intervene in Libya. But their cause may suffer
from it

https://www.economist.com/international/2011/05/19/the-lessons-of-libya Page 1 of 5
The lessons of Libya - Responsibility to protect 6/22/18, 6(07 PM

Get our daily newsletter

Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks.

FOR those who back muscular humanitarian intervention, both the words
and deeds of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi provided absolute moral clarity.
“Come out of your homes, attack [the opposition] in their dens,” he told his
supporters on February 22nd. He called the protesters “cockroaches” and
“rats” who did not deserve to live: language chillingly reminiscent of the
broadcasts of Radio Mille Collines, which spurred on the perpetrators of
Rwanda's genocide in 1994.

As he spoke, his forces had set their sights on Benghazi, their adversaries'
stronghold. According to Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group,
government forces had already killed 233 people in the preceding week. A
bloodbath beckoned, in a city of 700,000 people. The United Nations
Security Council invoked a fateful formula, urging the regime to meet its
“responsibility to protect” its people. On March 17th the council, “expressing
its determination to ensure the protection of civilians”, ordered air strikes.

https://www.economist.com/international/2011/05/19/the-lessons-of-libya Page 2 of 5
The lessons of Libya - Responsibility to protect 6/22/18, 6(07 PM

That set the stage for the first full-blown test of a principle that the UN
adopted in 2005 and has been refining since. The doctrine of “responsibility
to protect” (R2P) holds that when a sovereign state fails to prevent atrocities,
foreign governments may intervene to stop them. Human-rights advocates
say it saves lives. Sceptics see it as too easily misused to be useful: a cover for
imperialism, or even an incentive to kill (because even if a massacre is not
looming, an unscrupulous warlord might be tempted to engineer one against
his own people to spur outside support).

Previous uses of R2P have been solo ventures. In 2008 Russia used it to
justify attacking Georgia, and France cited it after the cyclone in Myanmar,
implying that humanitarian aid might have to be brought in by force if the
regime persisted in stonewalling (it backed down). But before this year, no
mission had been authorised by the UN Security Council that so explicitly
cited the new principle.

Swamps and fogs

At first it looked likely that the doctrine would either triumph or die in Libya.
But two months and thousands of air strikes later, war's messy reality has
merely hardened views on both sides. On one hand, the decision to go to war
was made in good faith at a time when the risk of massacres seemed real. As
Mats Berdal, a professor at King's College London, points out, the world's
leading powers had good reason to think they were “avoiding a Srebrenica”—
the massacre of Bosnians which UN forces failed to avert in July 1995.

But as the war drags on and NATO strikes more widely, sceptics also feel their
case has been bolstered. “For those of us who feared that R2P was just a
warrant for war, our fears have been vindicated,” says David Rieff, an
advocate-turned-critic.

Responsibility to protect gained ground after ghastly mass killings in the late

https://www.economist.com/international/2011/05/19/the-lessons-of-libya Page 3 of 5
The lessons of Libya - Responsibility to protect 6/22/18, 6(07 PM

20th century, including massacres by the Khmers Rouges in Cambodia in the


1970s; the use of chemical weapons in Iraq in 1988; and ethnic cleansing in
Bosnia. In 1999 NATO unleashed an air war, without a UN blessing, to stop a
Serbian campaign in the province of Kosovo. It argued that the need to
protect civilians was an overwhelming moral imperative. The UN gave a sort
of retrospective blessing by endorsing an international tutelage for the
territory, led by Bernard Kouchner, a French pioneer of humanitarian
intervention.

But the terrible civil war in Iraq that followed America's invasion in 2003—
portrayed as intervention against tyranny—shrivelled support for the
doctrine. A possible result of that may have been hesitancy in intervening to
stop the Sudanese government's genocide in Darfur.

Seeking to restore liberal hawkishness's good name, a group led by Gareth


Evans, a former Australian foreign minister, pushed the UN's 60th
anniversary conference in 2005 to endorse the idea that the world has a
“responsibility to protect” civilians. Eventually 150-plus countries agreed to
allow armed intervention through the Security Council “should peaceful
means be inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect
their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes
against humanity.”

So much for the theory. What about the practice? Colonel Qaddafi provided
an all-but-unique test. Regional leaders loathed him and readily dumped him.
The Arab League's support for the intervention stopped Russia and China
wielding their vetoes. And the concentration of the rebels in the east,
combined with flat desert terrain, at first made the regime's forces easy
bombing targets. “The stars were well and truly aligned in the Libya case,”
says Mr Evans. “All the criteria were satisfied.”

https://www.economist.com/international/2011/05/19/the-lessons-of-libya Page 4 of 5
The lessons of Libya - Responsibility to protect 6/22/18, 6(07 PM

The immediate goal of protecting Benghazi from massacre was achieved


within days. Having destroyed Libya's air defences, Western bombers and
missiles pummelled the advancing troops into a speedy retreat.

Harder decisions followed. Libya's army continued to shell other rebel-held


cities, and its snipers were plainly targeting civilians. Protecting all Libyans,
not just those in the east, would require the end of Colonel Qaddafi's rule—an
outcome that both Western and Arab governments had already called for.
NATO stepped up its military campaign, bombing retreating columns as well
as advancing ones, and attacking command-and-control centres frequented
by Colonel Qaddafi and his family. On April 30th an air strike killed one of his
sons. The line between curbing atrocities and an air war for regime change
blurred—though a land operation is ruled out, for the moment.

Your war is my argument

Both sides of the debate will eagerly cite Libya the next time mass murder
seems imminent. It shows that a modest dose of air power can save lives; but
also that the rhetoric of civilian protection can be stretched to justify a
creeping mission. Power politics decides which lives get saved, and which
policy aims triumph.

Mr Rieff decries a “two-tiered system of interveners and intervened upon”,


where the “old imperial powers” make the rules. But which powers exactly?
The Libyan vote passed only because non-Western Russia and China
withheld their Security Council vetoes: all but unimaginable until recently.
Both countries are now getting cold feet, claiming misuse of the resolution's
elastic language. For different reasons Mr Evans bemoans excess zeal too: he
wants to preserve the purity of R2P, and fears an interpretation that allows
for “all-out aggressive war”. A lot rides on this war—and not just for the
Libyans.

https://www.economist.com/international/2011/05/19/the-lessons-of-libya Page 5 of 5

You might also like