The current events in Libya, including reports of ethnic cleansing, the use of torture by the current government, and most recently the decision by the NGO Doctors Without Borders to suspend operations in the nation, stand as a stark condemnation of the NATO-led effort to expel former leader Muammar el-Gaddafi. This is especially true given that the justification for the effort was the protection of civilian lives, a duty that seems to have been forgotten today, even by those who were most vocal during the conflict.
While some may argue that there are always winners and losers in any civil conflict, the decision to intervene and, in direct defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 1973, to become active participants on the side of the rebels, was supposedly motivated by the need to enforce the UN resolutions mandating the protection of Libyan civilians. By defining the overriding goal of the mission as protection, rather than a simple military objective, NATO's goals became far more than a simple military victory.
However, it is also plain that NATO's responsibility to protect (R2P) Libyan civilians did not end after the fall of Gaddafi. By setting up the conditions for his fall, since it was NATO airpower that ultimately defeated Gaddafi, not the rebels, NATO and the nations advocating intervention bore full responsibility for the consequences. Most importantly, they bore responsibility for the safety and well-being of all civilians, not just those on the side of the rebels.
And this is where the true scope of NATO's failure to adhere to the R2P doctrine becomes plain. After all, if the threatened attacks on Northwest Libya's Misrata were enough to declare that action was required, what about the ethnic cleansing of the Northwestern town of Tawergha?
It cannot be said that such events were unpredictable, as many Libyan specialists warned from the start that this conflict was far more complex than the version that France, Britain, and the US were describing.
Even without their warnings, civil wars always leave one side at the mercy of often-vengeful victors. Given Libya's fraught history of ethnic and tribal tensions, it is inconceivable that NATO did not realize what was happening. Rather, it is likely that NATO and those backing them simply did not wish to present their citizens with the specter of yet another long-term and open-ended troop deployment.
Interventions into civil wars are always dangerous and unpredictable. At best, they require long-term involvement by peacekeeping forces, while at worst they can devolve into a savage ethnic conflict with no easy resolution. The simple fact that even today, peacekeepers remain in the nations of the former Yugoslavia should make that lesson plain enough.
The fact that NATO was willing to enter into the conflict, and yet unwilling to carry on its longer-term responsibilities to secure the peace and protect the civilians, winners and losers alike, largely discredits the doctrine of R2P. The opposition to similar intervention in the Syrian crisis is a sign of just how badly the doctrine of R2P has been discredited by the West's Libyan adventure.
The abandonment of the citizens of Northwest Libya's Bani Walid and Tawergha strengthens the argument that the R2P doctrine was nothing more than a convenient casus belli, allowing France, Britain, and the US to remove a leader seen as untrustworthy, rather than for any higher reason of morality or civic duty.
The implications of the radical expansion of the "just causes" for war represented by the Libyan interpretation of R2P are grave in their import. The fact that nations that pose no threat to their neighbors might face military action by other powers under the cover of protecting their civilian populations essentially rewrites the traditional understanding of both warfare and national sovereignty.
More importantly, we have seen in Afghanistan, Somalia, and even in post-war Iraq the bitter consequences that can rise from the creation of a power vacuum. By making R2P the justification for overthrowing a government, but failing to engage in the far more difficult and long-term process of helping give rise to a legitimate replacement, NATO has largely discredited the doctrine it sought to justify.
The author currently holds a Master's Degree in history, specializing in the social and political movements surrounding the Abolition of the British Slave Trade.
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