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251. Introduction

Author:
James Pattison
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
The NATO-led intervention in Libya, Operation Unified Protector, is noteworthy for two central reasons. First, it is the first instance in over a decade of what Andrew Cottey calls “classical humanitarian intervention”— that is, humanitarian intervention that lacks the consent of the government of the target state, has a significant military and forcible element, and is undertaken by Western states. Not since the NATO intervention in 1999 to protect the Kosovar Albanians from ethnic cleansing has there been such an intervention. To be sure, since 2000 there have been some robust peace operations that fall in the gray area between classical humanitarian intervention and first-generation peacekeeping (such as MONUC, the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo). But, even if these operations were to some extent forcible, they had the consent of the government of the target state.
Topic:
United Nations
Political Geography:
Libya, Kosovo, and Albania

252. Civilian Protection in Libya: Putting Coercion and Controversy Back into RtoP

Author:
Jennifer Welsh
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
As noted by other contributors to this roundtable, the response of the international community to civilian deaths in Libya—and the threat of further mass atrocities—is unusual in two key respects. First, Security Council Resolution 1973 authorized “all necessary measures” to protect civilians without the consent of the “host” state. The Council's intentions, and actions, could not be interpreted as anything other than coercive. Second, in contrast to other crises involving alleged crimes against humanity (most notably Darfur), diplomacy produced a decisive response in a relatively short period of time. Both of these features suggest that many analysts of intervention (including myself) need to revise their previously pessimistic assessments of what is possible in contemporary international politics.
Political Geography:
Libya

253. Libya and the Responsibility to Protect: The Exception and the Norm

Author:
Alex J. Bellamy
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
The Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) played an important role in shaping the world's response to actual and threatened atrocities in Libya. Not least, the adoption of Resolution 1973 by the UN Security Council on May 17, 2011, approving a no-fly zone over Libya and calling for “all necessary measures” to protect civilians, reflected a change in the Council's attitude toward the use of force for human protection purposes; and the role played by the UN's new Joint Office on the Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect points toward the potential for this new capacity to identify threats of mass atrocities and to focus the UN's attention on preventing them. Given the reluctance of both the Security Council and the wider UN membership even to discuss RtoP in the years immediately following the 2005 World Summit—the High-level Plenary Meeting of the 60th Session of the General Assembly that gave birth to RtoP—these two facts suggest that significant progress has been made thanks to the astute stewardship of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is personally committed to the principle. Where it was once a term of art employed by a handful of likeminded countries, activists, and scholars, but regarded with suspicion by much of the rest of the world, RtoP has become a commonly accepted frame of reference for preventing and responding to mass atrocities.
Topic:
United Nations
Political Geography:
Libya

254. The Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention in Libya

Author:
James Pattison
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Wars and interventions bring to the fore certain ethical issues. For instance, NATO's intervention in Kosovo in 1999 raised questions about the moral import of UN Security Council authorization (given that the Council did not authorize the action), and the means employed by interveners (given NATO's use of cluster bombs and its targeting of dual-use facilities). In what follows, I consider the moral permissibility of the NATO-led intervention in Libya and suggest that this particular intervention highlights three issues for the ethics of humanitarian intervention in general. The first issue is whether standard accounts of the ethics of humanitarian intervention, which draw heavily on just war theory, can capture the prospect of mission creep. The second issue is whether epistemic difficulties in assessing the intervention's likely long-term success mean that we should reject consequentialist approaches to humanitarian intervention. The third issue concerns selectivity. I outline an often overlooked way that selectivity can be problematic for humanitarian intervention.
Political Geography:
Libya and Kosovo

255. "Leading from Behind": The Responsibility to Protect, the Obama Doctrine, and Humanitarian Intervention after Libya

Author:
Simon Chesterman
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Humanitarian intervention has always been more popular in theory than in practice. In the face of unspeakable acts, the desire to do something, anything, is understandable. States have tended to be reluctant to act on such desires, however, leading to the present situation in which there are scores of books and countless articles articulating the contours of a right—or even an obligation—of humanitarian intervention, while the number of cases that might be cited as models of what is being advocated can be counted on one hand.
Political Geography:
Libya

256. RtoP Alive and Well after Libya

Author:
Thomas G. Weiss
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
With the exception of Raphael Lemkin's efforts on behalf of the 1948 Genocide Convention, no idea has moved faster in the international normative arena than “the responsibility to protect” (RtoP), which was formulated in 2000 by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). Friends and foes have pointed to the commission's conceptual contribution to reframing sovereignty as contingent rather than absolute, and to establishing a framework for forestalling or stopping mass atrocities via a three-pronged responsibility—to prevent, to react, and to rebuild. But until the international military action against Libya in March 2011, the sharp end of the RtoP stick—the use of military force—had been replaced by evasiveness and skittishness from diplomats, scholars, and policy analysts.
Political Geography:
Libya

257. The new politics of protection? Côte d'Ivoire, Libya and the responsibility to protect

Author:
Alex J Bellamy and Paul D Williams
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
The international responses to recent crises in Côte d'Ivoire and Libya reveal a great deal about the UN Security Council's approach to human protection. The Council has long authorized peacekeepers to use 'all necessary means' to protect civilians, in contexts including Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Burundi and Côte d'Ivoire. But Resolution 1973 (17 March 2011) on the situation in Libya marked the first time the Council had authorized the use of force for human protection purposes against the wishes of a functioning state. The closest it had come to crossing this line previously was in Resolutions 794 (1992) and 929 (1994). In Resolution 794, the Council authorized the Unified Task Force to enter Somalia to ease the humanitarian crisis there, but this was in the absence of a central government rather than against one—a point made at the time by several Council members. In Resolution 929 (1994), the Security Council authorized the French-led Operation Turquoise to protect victims and targets of the genocide then under way in Rwanda; this mission enjoyed the consent of the interim government in Rwanda as well as its armed forces. In passing Resolution 1973, the Council showed that it will not be inhibited as a matter of principle from authorizing enforcement for protection purposes by the absence of host state consent. Although its response in Libya broke new ground, it grew out of attitudes and processes evident well before this particular crisis. Most notably, the Council had already accepted—in Resolutions 1674 (2006) and 1894 (2009)—that it had a responsibility to protect civilians from grave crimes, and this was evident in a shift in the terms of its debates from questions about whether to act to protect civilians to questions about how to engage.
Topic:
Security, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
Paris, Libya, United Nations, Balkans, Netherlands, Rwanda, Alabama, Ninewa, and Lower Dir

258. The new politics of protection? Côte d'Ivoire, Libya and the responsibility to protect

Author:
Alex J Bellamy and Paul D Williams
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
In March 2011, the UN Security Council authorized the use of force to protectcivilians in Libya. This was the first time that the Council has ever authorized theinvasion of a functioning state for such purposes. International society's relativelydecisive responses to recent crises in Côte d'Ivoire and Libya has provoked significantcommentary, suggesting that something has changed about the way the worldresponds to violence against civilians. Focusing on these two cases, this articleexamines the changing practice of the UN Security Council. It argues that we areseeing the emergence of a new politics of protection, but that this new politics hasbeen developing over the past decade. Four things are new about this politics ofprotection: protecting civilians from harm has become a focus for internationalengagement; the UN Security Council has proved itself willing to authorize theuse of force for protection purposes; regional organizations have begun to play therole of 'gatekeeper'; and major powers have exhibited a determination to workthrough the Security Council where possible. However, the cases of Côte d'Ivoireand Libya also help to highlight some key challenges that might halt or reverseprogress. Notably, states differ in the way they interpret mandates; questions arebeing asked about the UN's authority to act independently of specific SecurityCouncil authorizations; the overlap of regional organizations sometimes sendsconflicting messages to the Security Council; and there remains a range of difficultoperational questions about how to implement protection mandates. Withthese in mind, this article concludes with some suggestions about how the futurechallenges might be navigated in order to maintain the progress that has been madein the past decade.
Topic:
Security and United Nations
Political Geography:
Libya

259. Was Iraq an unjust war? A debate on the Iraq war and reflections on Libya

Author:
David Fisher and Nigel Biggar
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
This article is based on a debate held on 22 March 2011 at Chatham House on 'Was Iraq an unjust war?' David Fisher argues that the war fully failed to meet any of the just war criteria. By contrast, current coalition operations in Libya are, so far, just. This is a humanitarian operation undertaken to halt a humanitarian catastrophe that is taking place, with wide international support, including authorization by the UN Security Council. Nigel Biggar argues that the fact that the invasion and occupation of Iraq suffered from grave errors, some of them morally culpable, does not yet establish its overall injustice. All wars are morally flawed, even just ones. Further, even if the invasion were illegal, that need not make it immoral. Regarding Libya, Biggar notes the recurrence of conflict over the interpretation of international law. He wonders how those who distinguish sharply between protecting civilians and regime change imagine that dissident civilians are to be 'kept' safe while Qadhafi remains in power. Against those who clamour for a clear exitstrategy, he counsels agility, while urging sensitivity to the limits of our power. What was right to begin may become imprudent to continue.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, and Libya

260. Germany as a Geo-economic Power

Author:
Hans Kundnani
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Washington Quarterly
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Berlin's March 2011 abstention on the UN Security Council vote on military intervention in Libya has raised questions about Germany's role in the international system. By abstaining on Security Council Resolution 1973, Germany broke with its Western allies and aligned itself with the four BRIC countries: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Whether or not the decision signals a weakening of what Germans call the Westbindung, it illustrates the strength of Germany's ongoing reluctance to use military force as a foreign-policy tool even in a multilateral context and to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe. Over the past few years, as the number of German and civilian casualties has increased in Afghanistan, the German public has become more skeptical about the mission of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in particular and about the deployment of German troops abroad in general. Like Germany, other EU member states such as France and the United Kingdom are cutting their defense budgets, but Germany shares few of their aspirations to project power beyond Europe.
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Russia, China, India, Libya, Brazil, Germany, and Berlin