Just as Secretary Gates had said, enforcing a no fly zone in Libya requires an attack on Libyan military assets, specifically air defense systems, in the initial phase. These attacks are now underway. There had been a good deal of debate over the wisdom of this action over the course of the uprising in Libya. But once the Arab League came out in favor of a no fly zone and the Security Council approved the measure, it became a question of when rather than whether to launch attacks. There is now of course a veneer of legality for the action, given the UN approval, the stance taken by the Arab League, and the participation of token Arab States in the coalition. But the consequences of the action remain difficult to predict.
Many observers are already saying that the action has come too late and may therefore be unsuccessful. The hidden agenda behind such statements is that the goal is regime change and, if Gaddafi doesn’t fall, further action would be justified. My personal assessment is that there is a glaring double standard in play. If Libya, then why not Yemen and Bahrain? The answer is obvious of course; it is a question of alliances. Bahrain is an ally for the West and action against the regime there would result in the strengthening of the Shiite majority and shift power in the region toward Iran. Such is the moral bankruptcy of realpolitik. But a more subtle concern is how this military intervention may affect the political trends within the Arab revolution that began in Tunisia and until now has been secular, democratic and culturally progressive. With Western powers bombing an Arab country once again and inflicting civilian casualties (which ostensibly is what the UN decision intended to prevent), there is bound to be negative reaction on the Arab street.
The broader question that we need to examine is the question of ‘the responsibility to protect.’ Debates have taken place in the UN and books have been written on the issue, but we now have a tangible case through which we can consider both the process and the consequences of accepting ‘R2P’ as a guiding principle in international affairs. The balance of this article examines just this question.
First let’s consider the process. Should international law govern political events that are internal to a recognized nation state? China, Russia and other countries have adamantly answered negatively in the past, although in this case they chose silence over exercising a veto. What this detail tells us is that the process of decision making is flawed; approval or rejection of proposals to intervene is based upon the balance of interests and alliances within the Security Council and not upon an established legal procedure. Most of us have difficulty supporting Gaddafi; he is a buffoon as well as a tyrant. So it is not so terribly surprising that he garnered little support during the debate in the Security Council. But surely, if the UN intends to establish R2P as a legally binding principle, there should be a broader exchange of views leading toward a consensus opinion and followed by a written legal document to govern future decisions. The framework for such a process is not in place and without such a framework all future decisions will similarly be ad hoc. This is not a prescription for international justice.
A second relevant question is whether the decision process belongs within the Security Council or elsewhere. The problem with the Security Council is that it is dominated by major powers who wield veto rights. This state of affairs is a legacy of the founding of the UN after WWII. Given the developments in world affairs and the trend toward a multi-polar context, it is high time that the UN charter be amended. As a first step, membership in the Security Council should be revised to include all G20 nations and to cancel all veto rights. Decisions could then be taken through majority vote (or perhaps enhanced majority). And again these votes should be exercised following a legal argument presenting the case based upon an approved framework of international law. All those in favor of R2P please speak up and insist that the UN immediately initiate discussion toward establishing legal precedent along the lines I am suggesting here. All those who claim to support R2P, but who refuse to allow such amendments to UN process, will be unveiled. In actual fact what they favor is conditionality in the enforcement of R2P. The condition is that the target country should be a candidate for regime change and for the extension of the West’s influence. Otherwise, as in the case of Bahrain, the internal conflict is to be overlooked.
There are two subsidiary issues that demand examination within my proposed framework. First, what role should nations within the region play in the decision process? In the present case the Arab League recommended the no fly zone for Libya, but failed to mention either Yemen or Bahrain. The Arab League recommendation clearly influenced the UN decision. It seems unlikely to me that Russia and China would have remained silent without the endorsement of the Arab League. But the Arab League itself is a group of semi-democratic and dictatorial regimes which evidently have their own interests in mind. One might also ask why the Arab States did not intervene themselves or ask the UN to approve such an intervention. This question leads into the second subsidiary issue: Once the UN approves intervention in the internal affairs of a country, who should enforce the decision and how?
The R2P principle suggests a UN mandate to police the world. But the UN has insufficient means to enforce decisions itself. Hence the US, as always, exercises the role of the world’s police force. But it is inappropriate in principle for any one country to play such a role. In any case policing the world is an entirely different concept to what we see unfolding today. The coalition (largely dependent upon US military assets) is engaging in an air attack on Libya and the US has announced that it will not send ground forces. Gaddafi’s forces have already gained the upper hand on the ground, so how is the air attack going to successfully protect civilians in Libya? Simple: it is not! There can be no protection without a police force on the ground. This last observation brings us back to Secretary Gates’ earlier objection and reveals a fundamental problem in establishing a role for the UN in policing the world. There are simply too many military assets available across the world to permit a policing role without first launching a high tech military assault. The vast proliferation of arms in the world is a legacy of the cold war and the influence of the military industrial establishment. There cannot, I would therefore argue, be a successful and just R2P policy without first successfully implementing a global disarmament program. Yes R2P has its merits, but first we need to reform the UN charter and dramatically reduce arms across the global community.
Your article makes a lot of sense and holds a lot of weight in regards to improvements to R2P in the future; however, in the current situation, do you believe that the UN should not take any action? R2P is decided on a case by case basis based on specific criteria laid out. The current situation in Libya falls under these criteria. So either the UN decides to intervene and hopefully improve the situation in Libya OR the UN verbally chastises Gadaffi and more innocent people die every day. R2P, in its essence, is good and just. It may have it’s problems and improvements are needed, BUT to stand on the sidelines knowing full well what is happening is simply wrong.
Actually I am not arguing against r2p. I do insist however that there must be a framework that is objective and that is enforced by an empowered UN and not by nations that disguise imperial designs behind a pretension to protect. Again why not invade Bahrain and change the regime there?
Until there is an empowered UN which acts within an agreed framework, there will be powers that exploit opportunities while ignoring other conflicts that are equally deserving of intervention to protect the innocent.
The over-riding issue for the US is that its president has launched a way without
any consultation whatsoever with the US Congress, which under the Constitution
has the power to decide whether to go to war. Rep. Kucinich says that Obama
has committed an impeachable offense, and he surely has. However, the castrated and impotent Congress will never again stand up to the executive branch in defense of Congress’ powers. The US has entered the age of the caesars.
The UN Security Council has put itself and others in a difficult spot over Libya. This is because it has mandated those of its Member States who are operational in and around Libya to take all necessary measures to protect civilians, when the avowed policy intention of so many of them is in fact regime change. France, the UK and the USA to name three of the governments most involved in military action, have all in different ways said so. Just to be clear, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Channel 4 News last night that he saw no future in a partitioned Libya, and did not expect others at today’s international summit in London to see it as a desirable outcome. So what we are witnessing and many are celebrating is surely a UN-mandated operation expressly designed by those planning and implementing it (whatever the actual intentions of those who voted for it), to help lever Gaddafi from power. This may well result in a political vacuum, in a fragile state whose political institutions are inadequate to deal with this kind of massive change, and thus the distinct possibility of further conflict in the months and years after he’s gone.
Of course, it looks clear that proportionally more violence against civilians is being conducted by Gaddafi’s forces than by the opposition. So, for now at least, it’s easy for NATO and its members to justify a military action which so far is entirely targeting one side in Libya’s civil war, in terms of UN SCR 1973. I’ve limited knowledge or understanding of the nature of the Libyans and Libyan groups taking part in the uprising, so no way to know how likely they are (whether now, fighting against Gaddafi, or later in a possible future fight among themselves) to commit atrocities against civilians. On the basis of the news currently emerging, they seem to be conducting themselves more decently than Gaddafi’s people. So intervening on their side seems virtuous. But it’s important to look at this on a longer-term and a wider canvas.
I’m personally an agnostic on the question of whether the international military intervention is the right thing to do, simply because I have insufficient knowledge of Libya to be able to estimate the most likely results of such an action over the medium and longer term. And after the revelations of Coalition ignorance about the Iraq they decided to invade, and the lack of forethought about what to do about the crockery they were about to break, I’m somewhat afraid that the UN and its Member State governments also lack the detailed intelligence to enable them to make an informed assessment of what might happen next in Libya. But I certainly back the principle of the international community intervening militarily under its Responsibility to Protect, provided the justification for doing so is based on solid intelligence that allows it to fulfil the requirements of a just war.
A Just War – jus ad bellum – paraphrasing St Thomas Aquinas and others, is one which is waged with legitimate authority, with just cause and “right intention”. It must be likely to result in the restoration of law and order and the conditions for the fulfilment of human rights; it must be a last resort; and it must be fought proportionally. Finally, it must have a high probability of success: be winnable in the shortest possible time causing the minimum amount of harm.
We can of course be wary of a set of rules drawn up by the mediaeval Catholic Church to provide its secular co-establishment – the kings and princes of mediaeval Europe – with a religious justification for their military exploits. Nevertheless, jus ad bellum was not entirely cynical in its origins, has evolved over the intervening centuries, and continues to provide a basis on which to consider the ethical dimensions of something – waging war – which will always be a predominantly political enterprise.
The difficulty in the case of the international engagement in Libya is obvious. Its legitimacy is in doubt, since it appears to be premised on a confusion: on the one hand, the UNSC – the supreme authority – has mandated operations to protect civilians; on the other, the governments with authority over NATO forces have declared that their policy goal is Gaddafi relinquishing power. Sophistry aside, it’s hard to separate the one goal from the other.
The actual political goal of the action therefore seems to be regime change. Can this be considered Right Intention? I’d say yes, given the Gaddafi regime’s record of poor governance and abuse of rights – and its own flagrant abuse of the rules for waging war, jus in bello : proportionality, distinction between military and civilians, and military necessity. But with one caveat: will the regime that replaces Gaddafi be significantly better than his regime, and will that improvement be worth the death, suffering and damage incurred? On balance, the answer seems likely to be yes.
However, it also behooves us to look at this on a wider canvas. Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is still very new. It says that:
“Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it…
“… The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity…”
R2P was adopted as a text by the UN General Assembly in 2005, which may well be seen by historians in the future as a critical point in the evolution of global governance to rival St Thomas and his Just War ideas. But it will take time for this principle to become a genuine part of international doctrine. For that, the R2P needs to be cited in important decisions, and a body of precedence in its use needs to be accumulated, so that decision makers in the future – be they heads of state making decisions about how to treat their citizens, or internationals deciding whether to intervene on behalf of those whose governments fail to protect them – have an operational framework to go by.
Libya is perhaps the first time R2P has been invoked so publicly, on such a scale, and used within the UNSC to justify a major military action. So the way it is framed and the way it plays out take on an importance even greater than the well-being of Libyans; affecting the well-being of future populations whose governments fail to live up to their responsibility. Getting it wrong may mean years of delay in turning R2P into a doctrine that’s widely accepted and provides legitimacy to protect civilians elsewhere, and in the future.
I understand that it’s naïve to think we can divorce weighty decisions like suspending the sovereignty of a UN Member State, from issues of realpolitik. Nor is this blog an argument against the international action in Libya. But we must be wary of the kind of dishonesty inherent in the international system, which allows powerful Member States to lead the way in persuading the UN-SC to mandate violent action against a regime which those same States have already declared needs changing, using the language of R2P.
In Iraq, the arguments about invasion hung mainly on two hinges: getting the UN’s blessing, and the presumed existence of WMD. What was too often missing in public discourse was a frank discussion about the real objectives and plans. This would have allowed people to make an informed political and ethical judgement. The righs and wrongs got lost in the fog of sophistry. In the future, if we are to evaluate the rights and wrongs of international intervention being proposed under R2P, it is of utmost imprtance that the language used to frame and justify the intervention is as honest and frank as possible, both at the UN and in the parliaments and public discourse of those doing the proposing. It seems a pity that this lesson hasn’t yet been learned; or that the system and culture of international governance still makes frankness such a rare commodity.
(from http://www.philvernon.net )
Phil Vernon’s article on Libya and the responsibility to protect is a thoughtful and balanced argument that does, in my opinion, contribute to the debate. Essentially he is arguing in favour of the establishment of R2P within international law. He takes the concept of a just war and the General Assembly’s adoption of R2P in 2005 as the starting point and then argues in favour of the development of an international legal doctrine through precedent. Such a process is indeed the manner in which laws develop and become established within regions of the world where the law is based upon the English tradition (i.e. law based on precedence as opposed to civil code). But as Mr. Vernon points out there are problems here that need to be discussed.
Initially the world observed the encouraging signs of popular uprisings across the Arab world that unseated dictators in Tunisia and Egypt. When this Arab revolt extended into Libya however, the Gaddafi regime turned its guns and aircraft on the rebels. Then when the Arab League came out in favour of a ‘no fly’ zone, the scene was set for a Security Council resolution. As Mr. Vernon points out in the case of Libya there are already indications that the major powers who both pressed for the UNSC decision and are carrying out the military action against the Libyan army appear to have a motive which goes well beyond the mandate of the SC decision. Hence the precedent in support of R2P that one might hope to establish via the UN SCR with respect to Libya may well prove to be a poor case to promote the concept and its equitable use in future.
I would take this caution one step further. While I agree that establishing principles of international law to override the sovereignty of nation states in defence of human rights represents a lofty goal, there is a serious problem in trying to do so within the current structure of the United Nations. Although the UN preamble exalts principles of inalienable human rights, as Mark Mazower demonstrates in his book on the history of the UN, the real aim in setting up the UN was to permit the major powers (the victors of WWII) to maintain hegemony across the world. Admittedly the UN has evolved from that inauspicious beginning, but power in the UN remains with the Security Council and more precisely with the five permanent members who enjoy veto rights. The US, the UK and France happen to be such privileged states; the UK and France are of course former colonial powers and the US under George W. Bush invaded Iraq under false pretences and the dubious doctrine of preventive war. This history matters and these three nations are the main combatants in the Libyan operation. The players involved in Libya today are not appropriate to the purpose of setting a precedent for R2P.
David Hillstrom
I am a student . I have a quastion. please answer. some of the experts say libya case shoed that r2p isnt vali because in 1973 resoulution it hadn’t been mentiont and NATO attacket libya whitout notice to r2p