Libyan Crisis Research Articles

The purpose of United Nations Security Council practice: Contesting competence claims in the normative context created by the Responsibility to Protect.

Practice theory provides important insights into the workings of the Security Council. The contribution is currently limited, however, by the conjecture that practice theory operates on ‘a different analytical plane’ to norm/normative theory. Building on existing critiques, we argue that analysing practices separately from normative positions risks misappropriating competence and reifying practice that is not fit for purpose. This risk is realized in Adler-Nissen and Pouliot’s practice-based account of the Libya crisis. By returning the normative context created by the Responsibility to Protect to the analytical foreground, and by drawing on a pragmatic conception of ‘ethical competence’, we find that pre-reflexive practices uncritically accepted as markers of competence — for example, ‘penholding’ — can contribute to the Council’s failure to act collectively in the face of mass atrocity. Drawing on extensive interview material, we offer an alternative account of the Libya intervention, finding that the practices of the permanent three (France, the UK and the US) did not cultivate the kind of collective consciousness that is required to implement the Responsibility to Protect. This is further illustrated by an account of the Security Council’s failure in Syria, where the permanent three’s insistence on regime change instrumentalized the Council at the expense of Responsibility to Protect-appropriate practice. This changed when elected members became ‘penholders’. Practice theory can facilitate learning processes that help the Council meet its responsibilities, but only through an approach that combines its insights with those of norm/normative theory.

The Regeni case and Italy’s Mediterranean policy: a turning point?

ABSTRACTThe Regeni case has called into question the traditional Italian foreign policy in the Mediterranean, which has been based on a business-oriented approach and an overall friendly attitude towards the existing governments. Under the pressure of public opinion, Renzi’s executive has been pushed to rethink its current relations to Egypt, traditionally a close partner of Italy, thus weakening the once strong economic, political, and security partnership. This decision has had consequences for the role of Italy in the Libyan crisis, where Egypt supports General Haftar in the East and Italy is the main sponsor of the National Unity Government in the West. The paper argues that the Regeni case had an impact on the overall Italian Mediterranean strategy in the short term. However, it also states that, given that the current transformation has not yet been followed by a radical rethink of the cornerstones of Italian policy in the area, it is unlikely that it will mark the beginning of a fundamental review of Rome’s strategy in the Mediterranean region in the coming years.

Conceptualizing European security cooperation: Competing international political orders and domestic factors

It is commonly argued that political elites in Europe are increasingly acting in accordance with shared norms, identities and practices, thus shaping the character of international cooperation in Europe, not least in the field of security. However, in contrast to such expectations, European security cooperation often displays highly irregular and unpredictable patterns. This article offers a conceptual framework that seeks to make sense of these irregular patterns without refuting the assumption that social institutions in the sphere of international security shape cooperation in fundamental ways. Our point of departure is the observation that European states are embedded in international orders that produce norms and practices that sometimes complement and sometimes compete with each other. We contend that a general situational mechanism traceable through a number of domestic-level factors conditions the propensity of European states to coordinate national security policy. The framework, designed to make sense of the often-irregular patterns of European security cooperation, is illustrated by examples from European states’ response to the 2011 crisis in Libya.

Evolving norms of protection: China, Libya and the problem of intervention in armed conflict

This article examines the influence of civilian protection norms on China’s response to the 2011 crisis in Libya. It argues that Responsibility to Protect—an emerging norm commonly associated with the Libyan case—did not play a major role in China’s abstention on Resolution 1973 (2011) authorizing international intervention in Libya. For China, Responsibility to Protect is merely a concept and could not serve as the basis for intervention. Instead, Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, as a normative foundation for civilian protection endorsed by China, offers a more appropriate lens for understanding China’s vote. Protection of Civilians, however, does not accommodate China’s unprecedented evacuation of Chinese nationals from Libya. This operation proceeded from a third logic of Protection of Nationals Abroad, which poses dilemmas for China’s strict adherence to the principles of sovereignty and non-interference and brings to bear domestic interests and notions of protection.

Libya crisis: Wishful thinking still isn't a viable strategy

ABSTRACTDespite the recent installation of a new, so-called Unity government in Tripoli, unresolved political differences among rival factions and the violence perpetuated by Islamic extremists in Libya suggest any interim stabilization of the country may be short-lived. Declarations that the 2011 intervention in Libya was a success have long been overshadowed by a chorus of critics who argue it created more problems than it solved. Hoping for another casualty-free, short-term intervention is not a realistic option. If the U.S. and regional players wish to right Libya's course, and cement it indefinitely, it will require a major and long-term in-country commitment that few would find politically or fiscally palatable. Diving in deeply or largely staying out appear to be the only real-world choices available.

NATO Burden Sharing in Libya

This study aims to explain the pattern of contributions to NATO’s military campaign in Libya. It combines collective action theory with hypotheses on balance of threat, alliance politics, and domestic constraints in a multicausal framework, which is tested with qualitative comparative analysis. The results suggest novel inferences on the interactions between partisan politics, and the benefits states wish to secure by contributing to a multilateral operation. Contrary to conventional wisdom, parties situated at the left of the ideological spectrum were more inclined to support Operation Unified Protector than parties situated at the right. Whereas left-wing governments participated if they had the resources to contribute significantly to the fulfillment of the protection mandate and either highly valued their alliance with the United States or were not facing imminent elections, right-wing governments only contributed if their countries’ interests were threatened by the crisis in Libya or their participation was critical for the operation’s success.

The misguided and mismanaged intervention in Libya: Consequences for peace

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I critically analyse the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP), as it relates to the responsibility of intervening forces towards the people they claim to protect and the challenges that the situation in Libya now poses in the region and for the African Union (AU). I focus most of my attention on the coercive elements of the RtoP framework (Pillar III). This is the most contested element in the framework. Three questions guide this article: were there legitimate grounds to justify an external intervention in Libya? In the words of Hugh Roberts in Who Said Gaddafi Had to Go, ‘[w]hat if anything has Libya got in exchange for all the death and destruction that have been visited on it’ since 2011? What are the practical implications and consequences of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervention, led by the United States (US), for regional peace? I discuss the problems surrounding the US–NATO intervention, followed by an analysis of the various positions and narratives leading up to the intervention, the framing and justifications provided for the intervention, and an analysis of the AU's proposal for the resolution of the Libyan crisis. I analyse the various debates that took place in the US (Pentagon/White House), at the United Nations, among scholars in the West and in Africa, and among various actors who tried to broker a ceasefire in Libya before and during the intervention. I conclude with a discussion of the implications for regional peace.

«ЦВЕТНЫЕ РЕВОЛЮЦИИ»: ОТ SOFT POWER К ГРАЖДАНСКИМ ВОЙНАМ

The article analyzes the «color revolutions» in Libya, Syria and Ukraine. The authors identify the causes and background of these events, the connection with the «Arab spring». The analysis of internal and external factors impacting on the social and political crisis in these countries are given. It is concluded that exogenous factors have had a significant impact on the devastating crisis in Libya, Syria and Ukraine. The authors emphasize that the «Arab Spring» showed the possibility of mutation of «color revolutions» in the protracted violent conflict. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the «color revolution» in Libya, Syria, Ukraine caused the civil wars in these countries and destabilized entire regions of the world. The article examines the role of the US and the EU in these events; mechanisms to counter the «color revolutions» from Russia’s are proposed.

Is a European Practice of Mass Atrocity Prevention Emerging? The European Union, Responsibility to Protect and the 2011 Libya Crisis

Observers have classified the European Union (EU) as reluctant in its implementation of the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) (Task Force on the EU Prevention of Mass Atrocities, 2013). This contribution revisits that argument by employing a more nuanced interpretation of norm implementation than the binary conceptualisation typically applied. By appraising EU reactions to the 2011 Libyan crisis, we investigate whether a “European practice of mass atrocity prevention” is emerging and if so how this relates—or not—to R2P. We do this by investigating EU practices seeking to protect people from genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity—paying particular attention to the three pillars and four policy areas included in the R2P framework (ICISS, 2001). Our review of EU responses to Libya seeks to unveil whether and if so how EU practice related to mass atrocity prevention in that country rejected, adopted or indeed adapted R2P. The enquiry appraises both how R2P mattered to the EU response and how the Libya crisis affected the Union’s approach to mass atrocity prevention and within it R2P. In this way, the study asks how norms can change practice, but also how practice can change norms. As such, our focus is on the inter-relationship between principles and practices of protection.

From ISIS to ICISS: A critical return to the Responsibility to Protect report

In light of the post-intervention crisis in Libya, this article revisits critically the vision of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) offered in the 2001 report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) – frequently taken as the conceptual bedrock for R2P doctrine. It is argued that the perverse effect of ICISS doctrine is to replace political responsibility with paternalism. The demand that states be made accountable to the international community ends by making states accountable for their people rather than to their people. The argument is developed across five critical theses. These include claims that R2P changes the burden of justification for intervention, that it usurps popular sovereignty in favour of state power, and that it diffuses post-conflict responsibilities. The article concludes that pre-emptive ‘human protection’ efforts risk crowding out questions of systemic transformation, i.e. what kind of an international order we want to live in.

The Correlation Between External and Internal Factors of the Libyan Crisis

Abstract: Nowadays, the region of Middle East and North Africa has become a "testing ground" where the competition between the great powers takes place . The importance of this region is determined by its geopolitical position, concentration of large natural resources, as well as the fact that it represents the greatest threat to the international security - the bases of terrorist organizations, the strengthening role of the group "Islamic State", drug trafficking and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya was one of the most developed and richest countries on the African continent: the crisis events of 2011, which resulted in the overthrow of the government, the murder of Muammar Gaddafi and the crisis in the country. From the viewpoint of the neoclassical realism the Libyan crisis is explored in the article. The causes of the crisis (both internal and external) as as well as the interests of the great powers - the United States of America, France and Britain are analyzed.

Global South solidarity? China, regional organisations and intervention in the Libyan and Syrian civil wars

Why was China responsive to regional organisations’ call for intervention in the case of the Libya crisis, where it supported sanctions and an International Criminal Court referral, and acquiesced to a no-fly zone, but unresponsive to pressure from regional organisations for intervention in the Syria crisis, issuing repeated vetoes instead? Using interviews and other primary data, this article explains the variation by highlighting that China is most responsive to regional organisations when these groups remain cohesive, congregate around the same policy position and when they publicly criticise or isolate China.

The Dog That Didn’t Bark? A Response to Dunne and Gelber’s Analysis of RtoP’s Influence on the Intervention in Libya

In this article I challenge the argument presented by Tim Dunne and Katherine Gelber in ‘Arguing Matters: The Responsibility to Protect and the Case of Libya’ (Global Responsibility to Protect vol. 6, iss. 3, 2014). I argue that the evidence supplied by Dunne and Gelber to support their argument that the Responsibility to Protect played a role in the debate on the international response to the crisis in Libya is based on an unsustainable expansion of what constitutes RtoP language, fails to acknowledge the historical evolution of human rights-orientated discourse, and exaggerates the extent to which references were made to RtoP during the debates preceding Resolution 1973.

Text and Context in the Responsibility to Protect: A Reply to Hehir

This is a reply to Aiden Hehir’s critique of our earlier article published in this journal, in which we analysed international negotiations over the 2011 Libya crisis and argued that the humanitarian norm of protecting civilians was germane in these debates and subsequent United Nations Security Council Resolutions. In the reply we challenge some of Hehir’s allegations as to what was argued in the original article, reaffirm the argumentation framework against which we analysed the data, and summarise the evidence on which we relied.

Kultura i polityka zagraniczna

The Maastricht Treaty includes as the “second pillar” of the European Union a Common Foreign and Security Policy that is designed to improve co-operation in foreign policy, co-operation which has existed informally since 1970. However in recent times (for example, the Libyan crisis), the European nations have not found the single voice that has been expected of them. The article asks for the reasons for the difficulty in improving this policy. As hypothesis a linkage to culture is established, understood as values and attitudes but also memories and remembrances. The article explores the possibility that the differences in the foreign policy are linked with the long life of these elements in the collective mentality.

The problems that Libyan crisis caused for Turkish contractors

<p><em> </em>By obtaining an important position among the world's largest contracting companies, Turkish contractors undertook 7.371 projects worth of $ 274.1 billion in 103 countries from 1972 to 2013. As of March, 2014, this figure reached to $ 277.7 billion. From 1972, the sector beginning its overseas journey in Libya, established trade relations with many countries in 2014.</p><p> Together with 2011 Libyan crisis, many companies had a difficult time and after the end of the crisis, their hopes for stability in the country come an end point. During this period, the sector turning its direction to other markets, managed to come out of the Libyan crisis getting stronger, and with a project worth of $ 26.6 billion, achieved the largest growth. </p><p> In this study, the Libyan crisis and the construction sector were tried to be evaluated together, making them to relate with each other. After analyzing domestic and international development of the construction sector and its place in economics, the state of the industry together with the Libyan crisis was introduced using the data.</p>

Losing control: a principal-agent analysis of Russia in the United Nations Security Council's decision-making towards the Libya crisis

Russia’s behaviour in the United Nations Security Council remains poorly understood. Applying principal-agent insights, this article analyses the Russian abstention towards Resolution 1973, which authorised intervention during the 2011 Libya crisis. Introducing a triangle of delegation, it shows that preferences diverged regarding the means and aims of the intervention. The article also investigates the information asymmetries which characterised the decision-making and indicates that this affected the Russian capacity to control the North-Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which implemented Resolution 1973. It argues that Russia can only effectively control such a UN-authorised intervention by using, or threatening to use, its veto power.

La guerra en Siria y las paradojas de la Comunidad Internacional

From the international law perspective, the three-year conflict in Syria shows a paradoxical result. First, because it is inevitable to compare the rapid decision making process of the United Nations Security Council to intervene militarily in the Libyan crisis of 2011 with its passivity and political blockade in relation to Syria. Furthermore, because only the imminent threat of military intervention in Syria in the fall of 2013 led to the parties involved and their key partners to achieve a chemical disarmament plan in Syria taken by the Security Council partners equally not comparable in their terms, deadlines and compliance to the terms established for Iraq after the first Gulf war. The greatest paradox of the international community lies, however, in the deplorable situation of vulnerability and suffering of the civilian population and the drama of the Syrian refugees. War crimes and crimes against humanity committed by all warring parties whether governmental or not, remain unpunished, given the political stalemate in the Security Council regarding the proposal to refer the Syrian situation to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, despite official condemnations and statements of international human rights institutions.

From stopping to preventing atrocities

The Constitutive Act of the African Union (AU) provides for the right of the continental body to intervene in the face of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. According to its formulation, Article 4(h) intervention entails military force, which is triggered when a target state fails to discharge its duty to protect its population from mass atrocities. Although Article 4(h) is an ambitious statutory commitment to intervene in a member state by the AU, the Libyan crisis in 2011 showed the ambivalence of the continental institution to act in a decisive and timely manner. The AU's failure to invoke Article 4(h) exposed the need for building the capacity and political will to intervene and to interpret Article 4(h). Therefore, the primary focus of this article is on how Article 4(h) should be interpreted. Flowing from the Pretoria Principles, which seek to provide clarity on the implementation of the AU's right of intervention, Article 4(h) should be viewed as a duty rather than a right to prevent or stop mass atrocities. The duty dimension of Article 4(h) derives from the international instruments that AU member states have ratified to prevent mass atrocities. Rather than being a paper tiger, Article 4(h) should be used in a proactive and timely manner as a military option available to the AU to persuade member states to prevent or halt atrocities. As a last resort, military force pursuant to Article 4(h) should aim at protecting the population at risk and pursuing the perpetrators in order to avoid contravening Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations (UN). Although military intervention can save lives in the short term, it cannot necessarily address the underlying, structural causes of atrocities, such as ethnic rivalries, economic inequalities and scramble for natural resources, among others. Therefore, the prevention of mass atrocities should not be equated with, or be seen through the prism of, Article 4(h) intervention alone. The focus should instead be on the entire spectrum of preventive strategies at the disposal of the AU in the face of mass atrocities, including the African human rights system and the African Peer Review Mechanism.

تدخل حلف الاطلنطى فى لیبیا : الدوافع والاهداف

جاء تحرک حلف شمال الأطلنطى السريع نجاه الأزمة الليبية والتى أعقبت احتجاجات 17 فبراير 2011 ضد نظام القذافى ، وعلى الرغم من وجود العديد من المبررات التى بررت تدخل الحلف فى ليبيا کوجود قرار من مجلس الأمن يقضى بالتدخل لحماية المدنيين فى ليبيا ، وکذلک وجود طلب غطاء عربى ومحلى يطالب بالتدخل ، جاء تحرک حلف شمال الأطلنطى السريع نجاه الأزمة الليبية والتى أعقبت احتجاجات 17 فبراير 2011 ضد نظام القذافى ، وعلى الرغم من وجود العديد من المبررات التى بررت تدخل الحلف فى ليبيا کوجود قرار من مجلس الأمن يقضى بالتدخل لحماية المدنيين فى ليبيا ، وکذلک وجود طلب غطاء عربى ومحلى يطالب بالتدخل ، إلا أن هناک العديد من العومانل والدوافع التى تحرک سياسات دول الحلف وحماية مصالحها ، وتتمثل هذه المصالح فى موارد ليبيا النفطية ، وموقعها الجغرافى الاستراتيجى بالنسبة لجنوب أوروبا . کما أن اهداف عمليات الحلف العسکرية لم تقتصر على ما هو منصوص عليه فى قرار مجلس الأمن ، بل تعداه الى أهداف أخرى متمثلة فى اسقاط النظام الليبى . The fast movement of the North Atlantic Alliance towards the Libyan crisis which followed the 17th of February Year 2011 protests against Colonel Al-Kaddafi regime came despite the presence of many justifications which justified the interference of the alliance in Libya such as the existence of the Security Council Resolution which necessitates the alliance interference to protect the citizens in Libya. This is in addition to the existence of a request of Arab and local cover which request the intervention; but there are many factors and motives which moves the policies of the alliance countries and protecting their interests. These interests are represented in the Libyan petroleum resources and its strategic geographical location relative to South Europe. Also, the objectives of the military alliance operations were not limited to what is stated in the Security Council Resolution but exceeded it to other objectives which took the form of the collapse of the Libyan Regime.