Just War and the Responsibility to Protect

A Critique

Robin Dunford, Michael Neu

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781786991539
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Despite the disasters of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and ever more visible evidence of the horrors of war, the concepts of 'Humanitarian Intervention' and 'Just War' enjoy widespread legitimacy and continue to exercise an unshakeable grip on our imaginations. Robin Dunford and Michael Neu provide a clear and comprehensive critique of both Just War Theory and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, deconstructing the philosophical, moral and political arguments that underpin them. In doing so, they show how proponents of Just War and R2P have tended to treat killing in a way which obscures the complex and often messy reality of war, and pays little heed to the human impact of such conflicts. Going further, they provide answers to such difficult questions as 'Surely it would have been just for us to intervene in the Rwandan genocide?' An essential guide to one of the most difficult moral and political issues of our age.

1 | THE CATASTROPHIC FAILURE OF INTERVENTION IN LIBYA

On 17 March 2011, the United Nations (UN) Security Council adopted Resolution 1973, giving authorisation for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to use all necessary measures short of a foreign occupation to protect the people of Libya from potential bloodshed. It was the first time that the Security Council had authorised military intervention against the wishes of a recognised sovereign ruler for the explicit purpose of protecting people. For supporters, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) was a decisive factor in enabling the intervention (Bellamy, 2015a). Moreover, intervention in Libya was ‘a textbook case of the R2P norm working exactly as it was supposed to’ (Evans, 2012). It was a ‘spectacular step forward’ (Evans, 2012), making it ‘clear to all that the R2P has arrived’ (ki-Moon, 2011). It should be met with a sense of ‘success, vindication, satisfaction, optimism’, for in Libya, R2P ‘unquestionably worked’ (Heinbecker, 2011; Evans, 2012). Similar claims were made long after NATO’s intervention. Ramesh Thakur (2013, 69), a member of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) that gave birth to the R2P, claimed in 2013 that the outcome in Libya was ‘a triumph for R2P’. Two years later still, Alex Bellamy (2015a, 94) argued that the intervention dealt ‘an apparently decisive blow to the claim that R2P has changed nothing’.

In this chapter, we show that such analysis flies in the face of what actually happened in Libya. We begin by looking at the emergence of civil war, juxtaposing the reasons given for intervention with evidence of what was happening on the ground. We then look at the effects of the UN-authorised NATO intervention, showing how regime change quickly became the central aim of the intervention. Subsequently, we examine the overall effects of this purportedly triumphant intervention, looking at death tolls before and after the conflict, the effects of the intervention in prolonging it, the war crimes that were committed on all sides and regional spill-over effects. Finally, we outline the legacy of intervention: a legacy that has left Libya divided and rife with conflict.

The outbreak of civil war

NATO’s intervention in Libya occurred in the context of the Arab Spring. After non-violent civil disobedience had unseated long-standing dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, protest spread to Libya. Citizens in the eastern city of Benghazi rose up against the 42-year rule of Colonel Qaddafi on 15 February 2011. The uprising spread, changing very quickly from protest to full-blown civil war. Rebels gained ground rapidly, taking a number of key Libyan cities and controlling, by 5 March, at least half of the country’s populated areas. But Qaddafi’s forces responded, pushing back the rebels and leaving them isolated in their initial stronghold in Benghazi. It was in this context that the UN Security Council agreed Resolution 1973, authorising the use of ‘all necessary measures’ short of foreign military occupation to protect civilians in Libya (UNSC, 2011).

Narratives of the Libyan intervention often take the following form. Peaceful protest spread to Libya only to be repressed by Colonel Qaddafi’s security forces. The repression was violent and indiscriminate. Indeed, some stories – repeated by then International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo – suggested that Qaddafi had provided Viagra to soldiers in order to use rape as a weapon of war. Speaking to the UN, Navi Pillay, High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that reports indicated that ‘thousands may have been killed or injured’ (UN News, 2011). Worse yet, as Qaddafi was fighting back against the rebels, he (cited in BBC, 2011a) referred to the protestors as ‘cockroaches’; a word previously used in extremist Hutu radio broadcasting to describe Tutsis ahead of and during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Qaddafi promised to ‘cleanse Libya house by house’ to rid the country of rebellion. In the context of these emerging crimes against humanity, and with worries that there would be a bloodbath in Benghazi similar to those in Rwanda and at Srebrenica in 1995, the international community – with the support of regional organisations including the League of Arab States and the Organisation of Islamic Co-Operation – intervened.

This simple narrative of brutal killers, peaceful victims and humanitarian saviours was questioned at the time and does not stand the test of even the slightest scrutiny. First, the infamous Viagra rape claim turned out to be a fabrication developed by rebels in the hopes of inciting external military support (Cockburn, 2011; Kuperman, 2013).¹ Second, the rebels were not solely or exclusively innocent civilian victims. The Libya uprising, despite starting with peaceful protest à la rebellion in Tunisia and Egypt, swiftly turned into an armed uprising, with armed Islamists making up a substantial part of the rebellion. Third, whilst Qaddafi’s words were chilling, they were spoken on 22 February, almost a month before Resolution 1973 and the NATO intervention. In the time between these comments and the NATO intervention, Qaddafi’s forces had retaken a number of cities including Brega and Misrata (Kuperman, 2013). Reclaiming these cities was far from bloodless, but the death toll was significantly lower than Pillay had intimated. In Misrata, for instance, medical facilities documented a total of 257 people killed, including rebels and government forces (Human Rights Watch, 2011). Whilst it is true that weapons were also fired at unarmed protestors, this does not justify the comparisons that were made between Libya and the mass killings that took place in Srebrenica and Rwanda.² Finally, the simple narrative was based on a selective hearing of Qaddafi’s words. When on the verge of launching an offensive to retake Benghazi, Qaddafi (cited in HCFAC, 2016, 14) also said:

Throw away your weapons, exactly like your brothers in Ajdabiya and other places did. They laid down their arms and were safe. We never pursued them at all … whoever hands over his weapons, stays at home without any weapons, whatever he did previously, he will be pardoned, protected.

In sum, there were not grounds to think that a Rwanda- or Srebrenica-like genocide was about to occur (HCFAC, 2016, 14–15). Such perceptions arose only through the ‘very one-sided view of the logic of events’ that had been presented; a view which mistakenly portrayed ‘the protest movement as entirely peaceful’, ‘repeatedly’ suggested ‘that the regime’s security forces were unaccountably massacring armed demonstrators who presented no security challenge’, and picked up, without questioning, ‘false claims or manufactured evidence’ and large exaggerations of the numbers of casualties (International Crisis Group, 2011, 4; Cockburn, 2011).

NATO intervention

In the context of these sensationalised reports, the international community authorised all necessary measures to protect civilians. NATO was to take charge of the intervention. It quickly became clear that this was a mission aiming to reverse Qaddafi’s gains and help the rebels – then on the verge of defeat – to an overall victory. NATO began an intensive bombing campaign against Qaddafi’s forces and military infrastructure, bombing troops even as they were retreating and hence not providing an immediate threat to civilians. Very quickly, the dynamics of the war changed. Rebels – with further assistance from ground troops supplied in the ‘hundreds in every region’ by Qatar, expertise and intelligence provided by British officials, and weapons supplied by France – fought back and gained territory, only to be pushed back in turn by Qaddafi’s forces (Qatar’s military chief of staff, cited in Al Arabiya, 2011; HCFAC, 2016, 16–17; Kuperman, 2013).

NATO repeatedly rejected offers of a ceasefire from the Libyan government. Even before the intervention, Qaddafi had embraced Venezuela’s offer of mediation but Jalil, the leader of the rebel forces, rejected the idea of holding talks (Al Jazeera, 2011). As the UN were discussing military intervention, the African Union was active in seeking to foster peace talks. It had arranged a meeting on 19 March, only for French President Sarkozy to arrange a summit for Libyan people on the same day in a clear snub to the African Union. African Union officials were told that their safety could not be guaranteed if they flew to Libya – by then a no-fly zone – to hold the meeting. Moreover, when the African Union did negotiate a ceasefire to which Qaddafi reluctantly agreed on 31 March, NATO offered no support to the plan, making it clear to the rebels that they could rely on NATO’s backing even in the absence of any willingness to negotiate (De Waal, 2013). Emboldened by this seemingly unconditional support, the rebels continued to reject peace talks.

NATO’s refusal to embrace peace talks led to accusations of “mission creep”. Far from fulfilling a mandate to protect civilians – a mandate that would be be...