Our Changing Globe

Archive for the ‘Libya’ Category

Scholars and Experts Analyze RtoP in the Wake of Rebel Gains in …

icrtopblog.org8/31/11

The narrative surrounding RtoP and the Libya case is both complex and nuanced. Those that tout Libya as an RtoP test-case, or even a success story, see a strong need for assistance from the international community in the …

e-IR Publishes Essay Collection on RtoP: Challenges and …

icrtopblog.org11/22/11

e-IR, an online international relations resource, published an online essay collection on 21 November on the challenges and opportunities for the responsibility to protect (RtoP) in light of the recent UN-mandated, NATO-led …

Even a cursory reading of many articles on this site will reveal that I’m far from being an Obama fan, but since military intervention in Libya I’ve found myself defending him.

That said, I think his two week dithering caused the unnecessary deaths and injuries of thousands and has made Qaddafi’s overthrow far more difficult.

Had a no-fly zone been established three weeks earlier as the French and British wanted, then the rebels would most likely now be in control!

What is The Responsibility To Protect?

The responsibility to protect (RtoP or R2P) is a norm or set of principles based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege, but a responsibility.

RtoP focuses on preventing and halting four crimes: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing and the responsibility to protect can be thought of as having three parts.

1. A State has a responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing and or mass atrocities.

2. If the State is unable to protect its population on its own, the international community has a responsibility to assist the state by building its capacity, which can mean building early-warning capabilities, mediating conflicts between political parties, strengthening the security sector, mobilizing standby forces, and many other actions.

3. If a State is manifestly failing to protect its citizens from mass atrocities and peaceful measures are not working, then the international community has the responsibility to intervene at first diplomatically, then more coercively, and as a last resort, with military force.

In the international community RtoP is a norm and not a law.

RtoP provides a framework for using tools that already exist such as mediation, early warning mechanisms, economic sanctioning, and chapter VI powers to prevent mass atrocities.

Civil society organizations, States, regional organizations, and international institutions all have a role to play in the enactment of RtoP and the authority to employ the last resort and intervene militarily rests solely with United Nations Security Council and the General Assembly.

How did The Responsibility To Protect come about?

The Canadian government established the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) in September 2000

Libya

The diplomatic process to build a consensus about intervention was complicated, and it involved protracted negotiations among multiple parties.

The military outcome in Libya still remains somewhat uncertain, but the decision to intervene in my mind was the correct once since the situation definitely fell and continues to fall within the mandate granted by RtoP.

RtoP was never intended to be a license to go after every misbehaving dictator, but it certainly applies to those committing mass atrocities, i.e. genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.

Qadaffi’s own security forces and the mercenaries he imported from Mali, Niger, Chad, and other sub-Saharan African countries have plainly used indiscriminate force against civilians, and have massacred hundreds and perhaps thousands of Libyans at the time of writing.

There have also been gross violations of human rights, the laws of war, and humanitarian law, such as using live ammunition against peaceful protesters, employing civilians as human shields, and denying relief to affected populations.

And on February 22, Qaddafi even pledged to “cleanse Libya house by house” of anti-government protesters, and later promised to “have no mercy and no pity” in Benghazi, both of which subsequently caused U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to comment, “We have every reason to fear that, left unchecked, Qadaffi will commit unspeakable atrocities".

Even in the face of such atrocities however, RtoP envisions military action as a last resort, and only after diplomatic efforts and sanctions have failed.

But Operation Odyssey Dawn fully meets RtoP’s standards, because before authorizing military intervention, the international community took numerous other steps to dissuade Qaddafi from committing further atrocities, including imposing an arms embargo, a travel ban, and an asset freeze; condemning Libya within, and ejecting it from, the UN Human Rights Council.

Many critics, such as former UN ambassador John Bolton and Kori Schake, who is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, have strongly and in my opinion correctly criticized the administration’s dithering on the sidelines, and it appeared that it was pressure from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and National Security Council member Samantha Power’s that finally convinced Obama to get off of the sidelines.

Successful Intervention

One key aspect of any successful intervention is clarity of political goals and quick decision making and in these respects, the United States’s dithering over Operation Odyssey Dawn’s aims is truly disturbing.

In early March, the Obama administration signaled multiple times that it wanted full regime change in Libya after which Obama then stated in a March 19 address that the United States would not use force “beyond a well-defined goal, specifically, the protection of civilians in Libya".

The Cause Must Be Just

In a seminal Foreign Affairs article in 2002, Gareth Evans, who was then president and CEO of the International Crisis Group, and Mohamed Sahnoun, who was special adviser on Africa to the UN secretary-general, argued that any military intervention to support RtoP must satisfy six principles:

The cause must be just.

The intentions of the interveners must be pure.

The use of force should be a last resort.

It should be sanctioned by the Security Council.

It must be undertaken with proportional means.

It should have reasonable prospects of success.

The imposition of the no-fly zone in Libya and the allies subsequent actions meet the first five of the above criteria, and only time will tell if the sixth will be met.

Even though the U.S. has the world’s largest military,

and the biggest GDP,

(the EU is not a county)

it is:

1) Pleading with Russia to help with Iran.

2) Cozying up to Gadhafi and Chavez.

3) Ignoring pleas for help from Iranians that want to overthrow a savage regime.

4) Staying silent about China’s human rights abuses.

5) Leaning on Israel.

Why is America doing all of the above and much more too?

Because it is has not developed its plentiful energy resources, and is therefore becoming increasingly dependent on outside loans and oil with every tic of the clock.

The United States is running a projected $2 trillion annual deficit, while adding to an existing $11 trillion national debt, meaning that America is getting poorer, whilst its enemies are getting richer.

Russia is now the world’s second largest oil exporter, and it’s cash rich and just waiting for a new energy crisis to hit, after which it will attempt to regain much of its former influence.

Iran, Libya and Venezuela are all major oil exporters, so it’s lunatic leaders are allowed to verbally attack the United States in New York from the UN platform, and whilst Obama warmly hugs Chavez, he treats Netanyahu as if he has swine flu.

China is America’s largest foreign creditor, financing its growing budget shortfalls at an increasing rate of interest, and it now believes it has the right to question the U.S. as to how it intends to finance the proposed health bill.

America Needs To Develop Its Oil And Coal Resources

Obama is correct to encourage the development of alternative energy sources, and in wanting to curb America’s imports of oil which would not only bring down the global price of oil, but also lessen its dependence on rogue regimes, but much time will be needed to reach a new age of non-carbon fuels

America therefore needs to better exploit its existing oil and coal ,and recent large finds in North Dakota, Alaska, California, and off the Gulf Coast suggest that America could fairly easily win back its independence, and end the need to fawn and cringe before countries that hate it.