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After seeing enough laudatory comments stemming from Michael Lewis’ Obama’s Way, I am minded to look back at what we won, and lost, when we undertook to intervene in the Libyan civil war, as well as come to a better balance on the outcomes.
One may consider that the bottom line may be that we wound up saving lives in Libya. The conduct of the intervention, characterized by NATO’s minimal footprint, was as nearly textbook perfect a mission accomplished as a modern intervention can get. Lewis’ article cites the old-guard versus the new, and that the “ghosts of 800,000 Tutsis” haunting Obama’s younger advisors, specifically Samantha Powers. A perfectly valid point to make. The recent killing of US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens in Benghazi notwithstanding, narrowly speaking, the intervention was a stunning success for Western diplomacy and arms. As I wrote at the time:
I’d forgo my purity and hopes for international law (recognizing the coalescing political realities) as well as take my chances on a terrorist attack in the future, but not for a no-fly. If we’re going to flaunt international law like this, if we’re probably going to bomb anyway, I’d be more in favor of simply eliminating Gaddafi’s air force and mechanized units with a quick, decisive bombing campaign, than in putting airmen at risk day after day enforcing a no-fly with the risk of tragic accident, escalation and changing political winds.
Casualties in Libya were mercifully, thankfully few, however those are not the only casualties caused by the intervention, and this needs to be recognized right now. One such casualty stands out: as an emerging international norm, The Responsibility to Protect has all but died (as I predicted at the time that it would), and the international community is effectively ignoring R2P. I never expected to receive confirmation of this so quickly, but the ongoing tragedy in Syria is as directly connected to the intervention in Libya as the disaster in Mogadishu led to the Rwandan Genocide. On at least three occasions the United Nations Security Council rebuffed efforts to authorize a similar intervention is a conflict which has by now claimed thousands of lives.
Why such a sea change? Because edits at the last minute made to UNSC Resolution 1973 containing language allowing all measures “necessary” to fulfill the resolution’s mandate provided a loophole through which two US Marine troop ships and a battle carrier group could sail through with the French air force flying overhead. After which, it was only a matter of time the Sarkozy-Cameron-Obama troika announced that their intention was regime change rather than stick to the terms of the mandate. Now, a New U.N. bloc finds constraining the West preferable to restraining Syria.
It was never within the troika’s power to declare Gadhafi’s regime illegitimate. Even more ridiculous is this attempt by sixteen US Senators to do the same, and what this underlines is the lack of progress toward implementing the R2P norm and building the necessary international structure to do so. What should have been a finding by a world body, such as the Security Council or International Court of Justice on the legitimacy of the Gadhafi regime has degenerated into another pretext to employ armed forces.
That the NATO troika went ahead with disregard for R2P and the agreements made in the Security Council are now being paid for by the people of Syria. This needs to be admitted. The Responsibility to Protect needs to be formalized, and above all, the sovereignty bloc needs to be shaken up to get them moving.
It’s time.
4 Comments
Your link to what I presume is a definition of “responsibility to protect” is verrrrryyy slooow.
If you’re going to base the rest of your piece on something the reader isn’t likely to be familiar with, may I suggest you define it within the piece, rather than expecting the reader to go to a link?
I don’t know the phrase, despite a fairly sophisticaed knowledge of “foreign affairs.” Perhaps you are used to writing for folks who already have a deep knowledge of your terms, but in this case, you are making it harder for your readers to take your point.
(I can guess you mean something like nations have a responsibility to protect foreign diplomats, but could be entirely wrong.)
I guess I’m not the only one who isn’t sure of what the point is here. What I DO know, however, is how US foreign policy re: the “Third World” works and how related decisions are made. Sure, every situation is different and there are always variations to the formula, but the basics are actually not very complicated and they certainly apply to the US/NATO attack on Libya:
1. A brutal dictator being supported by US imperialist commissars for the sake of “regional stability” (definition: a geopolitical arrangement engineered to meet the interests of the Western corporate investor class) has committed the sin of disobedience or has become a liability due to an unmanageable popular revolt.
2. US imperialist commissars Issue a transparently hypocritical self-righteous declaration claiming that America has always been on the side of “the people” and that we have always loved democracy and that we are willing to selflessly sacrifice this-that-and-the-other in order to restore freedom and justice to the oppressed from sea to shining sea blah blah etc etc.
3. US imperialist commissars order American military forces and/or willing mercenaries to subvert and destroy any local movement advocating actual democracy and a path of independent social and economic development because said movements refuse to make the needs of Western corporate elites a priority. Thus begins the detaining, torturing, murdering and bombing of as many people as necessary for as long as it takes to make sure that another brutal and corrupt despot willing to sell out his country to the American Monster assumes power.
4. Rinse, lather, repeat.
Fair enough. I’ll change the link to this:
http://responsibilitytoprotect.org/ICISS%20Report.pdf
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is the widely known statement of principles which incorporates the notion that it is the duty of states to protect the lives, dignity and rights of its citizens, and includes the idea the failure to do so may be recognized as the forfeiture of sovereign protections under international norms and as such, it is the first attempt to refine the definition of state sovereignty in a major way since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Language found in the Obama administration’s justification (ie: remarks on legitimacy) both in public and in the Security Council are based on the language and ideas found in the document itself.
R2P was conceived and spearheaded by Canada. A series of conferences held worldwide over the period of several years resulted in the final report I link to (again):
http://responsibilitytoprotect.org/ICISS%20Report.pdf
On 14 September 2009, the report was accepted by the UN General Assembly, on what some countries stressed was a “procedural” basis.