European Student Think Tank

There is no doubt that Muam­mar al-Gadaffi is a bru­tal dic­tator, given the way he has made war against his own people, bomb­ing them with mil­it­ary planes and heavy artil­lery. The only thing a true dic­tator fears is los­ing his power, thus from the start of his regime on the first of Septem­ber 1969 he has heav­ily sub­sid­ized prices of gas­ol­ine and diesel fuel to levels of 10 cents per liter in the hope of keep­ing his people happy and thank­ful of his lead­er­ship. But things have now changed and Gadaffi’s worst fears may well come true now that his people have rebelled against him.

After the revolu­tion  in Tunisia, other Arab nations fol­lowed suit. These rebel­lions turned out to be a peace­ful trans­ition towards an as yet uncer­tain future, but even the slight­est glim­mer of hope is worth striv­ing for. The Libyan revolu­tion, how­ever, turned out to be a dis­play of mil­it­ary power against the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion. After at first being suc­cess­ful in their attempts to con­quer Libyan cit­ies, and there­fore strongly oppos­ing any west­ern mil­it­ary inter­ven­tion, the army of Gadaffi retali­ated, caus­ing the oppos­i­tion to retreat and sub­sequently ask­ing the West for help. Finally, a no-fly zone was cre­ated to pre­vent the bomb­ing by Gadaffi of his own people.

No-fly zone
There have been a num­ber of no-fly zones in the course of his­tory. One example is the Iraqi no-fly zone, span­ning the north­ern and south­ern part of the coun­try, from 1991 to 2003. This no-fly zone never res­ul­ted in its impli­cit goal of remov­ing Sad­dam Hus­sein from office. Another example is the 1999 Kosovo inter­ven­tion. This mil­it­ary inter­ven­tion on human­it­arian grounds, led by NATO, con­sisted of bomb­ing oper­a­tions from the air. Since all the lead­ers of NATO, then Brit­ish Prime Min­is­ter Tony Blair excep­ted, declared that a ground war was not an option, this temp­ted Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milo­sevic to endure the bomb­ing. This is pre­cisely what Gadaffi is doing in Libya now.

Ground war
UN Secur­ity Coun­cil res­ol­u­tion 1973 does not ulti­mately oppose a ground war, it does how­ever grant no author­iz­a­tion to a for­eign ‘occu­pa­tion force’. It was prob­ably the hope and expect­a­tion of the coali­tion that Gadaffi would dis­ap­pear from office after being con­fron­ted with over­whelm­ing mil­it­ary power and an advan­cing oppos­i­tion. This will most likely prove to be an illu­sion. The wars in Iraq, in Viet­nam and the Kosovo war have thought us that a war can­not solely be won from the sky. The United States have begun to real­ize this. So, when US Gen­eral Ham, leader of the coali­tion until NATO took over, he announced that the US are now con­sid­er­ing the usage of ground troops in Libya. I believe that a ground war will prove to be inev­it­able, since Gadaffi will not be per­suaded to leave by bomb­ing alone. He has already begun to place mil­it­ary install­a­tions in densely pop­u­lated areas, where the NATO coali­tion is less likely to bom­bard. It seems that a swift ground oper­a­tion aimed at the pur­pose of remov­ing Gadaffi from office will be needed.

One of the reas­ons Gadaffi is unlikely to leave vol­un­tar­ily or to go into exile, is that the Inter­na­tional Crim­inal Court(ICC) has ordered for him to be pro­sec­uted. Even though it’s a  mor­ally just decision, this has lim­ited the dip­lo­matic options of per­suad­ing him to abdic­ate, since every nation that has recog­nized the ICC will be obliged to turn Gadaffi over to the court. It would be wise to recon­sider this decision once the con­flict is over.

Arm­ing the oppos­i­tion
Another mat­ter is the ques­tion of arm­ing the Libyan oppos­i­tion. The rebels them­selves have asked the west repeatedly for weapons and there have been sporadic reports about cov­ert  weapons dis­tri­bu­tion by the CIA. A large part of the nations that form the coali­tion have pub­licly announced that they will not arm the rebels. This seems to be the just course of action. It is doubt­ful that the UN res­ol­u­tion author­izes arms dis­tri­bu­tion, but it is also undesir­able. The 1979-1989 Afghan War involving the Soviet Union, in which the US sup­plied arms to the rebel Mujahideen, has shown that it is never cer­tain that the arms the West sup­plied will not be used by hos­tile fac­tions in a later period.

Human­it­arian inter­ven­tions
One of the most fun­da­mental ques­tions that the West has to ask itself is what it seeks to achieve in the Libyan con­flict. As Win­ston Churchill said: “win­ning the war is easy, end­ing the war is hard”. Even though the US have stated clearly that Gadaffi must leave, the determ­in­a­tion of the European part of the coali­tion and the will­ing­ness to use force to achieve this goal are not yet com­pletely clear. A clear policy is needed to  ensure that the West does not become entangled in every conflict.

Former US Sec­ret­ary of State Henry Kis­singer has stated four prin­ciples regard­ing human­it­arian inter­ven­tion: the prin­ciple being defen­ded (i.e. no bomb­ing of civil­ian pop­u­la­tion) must be uni­ver­sally applic­able, the actions must be sus­tain­able by pub­lic opin­ion, the inter­na­tional com­munity must be involved and the his­tor­ical con­text of the con­flict must be taken into account. In the Libyan con­flict these four prin­ciples are ful­filled and there­fore this inter­ven­tion can be con­sidered as just. The US and Europe can how­ever not play the role of world police­man, and neither should they desire to do so. The removal of Gadaffi and a peace­ful trans­ition towards a demo­cratic gov­ern­ment should be the desired out­come and the hope of the Libyan people.

Related posts:

1. An emer­ging EU Mil­it­ary Indus­trial Com­plex: The EU weapon exports to Libya
   March 1st, 2011
2. Con­sequences of Libyan crisis on the EU’s secur­ity of sup­ply
   March 1st, 2011
3. The polit­ical con­sequences of the Euro-zone crisis for Africa
   Feb­ru­ary 6th, 2012
4. The West­ern Sahara Con­flict: The European Con­tra­dic­tion
   March 29th, 2011
5. The Span­ish Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion under Polit­ical Pres­sure
   Feb­ru­ary 17th, 2013