All necessary measures? The United Nations and international intervention in Libya

Abstract

In this slim book, Ian Martin, the first United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) to Libya, evaluates the international response to the 2011–2 conflict and the international community's responsibility for Libya's subsequent instability. All necessary measures? relies heavily on Martin's personal recollections, but the book is more than a memoir: it offers a thoughtful assessment of the short-term factors that led to Libya's current predicament. The book does not address intra-Libya dynamics in great depth, focusing instead on the positions and roles of key international players. It will therefore be of primary interest to scholars of International Relations, conflict mediation and state-building. The book is structured around a series of questions, which Martin is likely to have reflected on repeatedly over the last decade: Was a military intervention necessary? Did NATO exceed its mandate to protect civilians and seek regime change? Was a successful negotiated transition between Gaddafi and the rebels possible? Should there have been a peacekeeping mission after the conflict? Were the first post-conflict elections held too soon? The result is a highly illuminating account of the thinking and constraints of the period, though it is also somewhat defensive. For example, Martin rightly argues that the scattershot approach of Libya's transitional administration, the National Transitional Council (NTC), to funding in the informal security sector was highly destabilizing. He also notes that the unconditional unfreezing of Libyan assets facilitated this damaging spending. However, he largely absolves the international community of responsibility and concludes that ‘any attempt through the [UN] Security Council to control the use of the assets would have been hugely resented in the context of late 2011’ (p. 145).