domestic politics such as striving for regime change has long been an uncomfortable one.
This is why one of the principle objections to the 2001 report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty concerned the widened potential for abuse that may accompany any relaxing of the general prohibition on force contained in Article 2(4) of the Charter. This view was most clearly expressed by Venezuela in the case of Libya; Venezuela argued that the R2P would merely serve the interests of the powerful by granting them more freedom to intervene in the affairs of the weak without necessarily increasing global cooperation in response to humanitarian emergencies. Most scholars on the
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2011 Libyan conflict agree that the UN-backed NATO activities in Libya would not have been necessary were they not geared towards assassinating Gaddafi.
This explains why O’Connell (2011) asserts that the military intervention was a failure despite the outcome. While some regard the coalition intervention that began on 19 March 2011 in Libya as a success, she labels the tens of thousands of deaths and injuries a ‘tragedy’.
In her view, which this study shares, when such casualties occur owing to a military intervention that was not necessary, the intervention is a failure. The appraisal of the application of R2P in Libya in chapter Four of this study revealed that the UNSC was unable to establish any concrete reason why a military intervention should be imposed on Libya as the first resort; this says much about a global organisation that seeks to promote peace and lends credence to the claims of scholars who refer to the intervention as resource-driven and/or an imperialist intervention.
While the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt succeeded in part because protestors claimed ownership of the uprisings and the regimes’ opponents understood the importance of non- violence and self-reliance during confrontation with the state, the Libyan crisis was pre- determined by the Western allies. It is the opinion of this researcher that the call for democracy in Libya was one of the most demeaning things the UN allowed to be done under its umbrella. For many decades, the UN relied on authentic democratic ideals rather than resorting to the very means employed by the dictators to rule their people, such as the killing of more than 50,000 civilians by a UN-endorsed force within a period of two weeks. If killing the civilian population was the UN/NATO interest in Libya, in what way are the activities of these two global organisations better than the Gaddafi’s threat to go house-to-house in Benghazi to end the rebellion unless fighters laid down their arms?
The interveners failed at the outset to demonstrate that the intervention would not involve high numbers of casualties. This was because bombing began within hours of the UNSC vote without any option for peaceful negotiations or diplomatic jockeying. These were clear indications that neither the Security Council nor the states involved in the intervention were focused on restoring peace and establishing democracy, but on destroying Gaddafi. The UN/NATO’s morbid obsession to end the life of Gaddafi explains why no explanation was given of how a no-fly zone or bombing would protect civilians in Benghazi or elsewhere.
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According to Weiss et al. (2011) and Bellamy (2011) the intervention in Libya was anything but a last resort. Sanctions, including an arms embargo, had hardly been put in place when the bombs began to drop. There was no attempt to use peaceful means to protect civilians such as gaining safe passage out of Benghazi. The coalition—NATO, UNSC and the rebels—
became the fighting arm of the rebellion, installing a rebel group as a democratic regime amidst serious questions about their intentions and capabilities. This was the reason why the apostolic vicar of Tripoli called the decision to bomb and the failure to employ peaceful means ‘immoral’ (Weiss et al., 2011). The Arab League which changed its position and called for restraint, insisted that it was however, reprehensible for crusaders of democracy who invaded a sovereign state to ignore all calls for a peace process and instead remain hell bent on installing the rebels. The UN-backed enthronement of the rebels was a desperate move to dethrone Gaddafi and ensure the destabilisation of the national security of Libya, not to improve the level of security and peace, as the UN Charter authorised.
Despite the inadequacies of the UNSC Resolution 1973, the record of military intervention during the last several decades is one of almost unbroken failure if either the human costs or the political outcomes are taken into proper account. Such interventionary experiences in the Islamic world during the past 50 years have made it impossible to sustain the burden of persuasion that would be needed to justify an anti-regime intervention in Libya in ethically and legally persuasive ways. This is why Weiss et al.(2011) assert that the coalition’s decision was focused on necessity. They ask: if the coalition’s decision for war was not focused on necessity, what explains it? France’s Sarkozy and Britain’s Cameron for example, led the advocacy for intervention. Both faced tough political and economic situations at home. A focus on Libya and a call for humanitarianism could help to deflect attention from the home situation. In addition, Sarkozy had been badly embarrassed by his close ties to the ousted Tunisian Ben Ali. Support for a war in Libya was his image redeeming strategy.
Similarly, US UN Ambassador Susan Rice was part of the Clinton administration during the Rwanda genocide when the US supported the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers. Her references to Rwanda appear to be an attempt to remedy that past failure. Other members of the administration who joined Rice’s call for intervention have long academic records supporting the R2P (Weiss et al., 2011: 15). The R2P as administered in Libya has been associated with promoting the resort to military force as an acceptable approach to extremely
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serious problems, discouraging thinking about creative, peaceful alternatives with a better chance of success.
Another aspect of the failed intervention in Libya may well be the further undermining of the prohibition on force. Moreover, the coalition went beyond anything authorised by the Security Council likely undermining the authority of that body, too. This was due to its secret interest in oil gains flowing from intervention in Libya. Weiss et al. (2011) believe that protection of civilians is a humanitarian imperative but the intervention in Libya was always about controlling Libya’s oil despite all the high-blown rhetoric surrounding it. In this sense, Gaddafi may have died but this cannot lead to the conclusion that the coalition-led pro- democracy revolution was a success. The successful revolutions of the Arab Spring and elsewhere have been non-violent ones free from R2P calamities.
5.6. The national security of states versus the UNSC responsibility to