French President Nicolas Sarkozy has warned all Arab rulers that they risk Libya-type intervention if they cross a certain line of violence against their own people. ~EU Observer

When confronted with the vastly worse humanitarian crisis unfolding in Ivory Coast, supporters of the Libyan war repeat some version of the standard line, “we can’t intervene everywhere, but where we can, we must.” On the one hand, Libyan war supporters accept that giving Libya priority over more serious humanitarian and political crises elsewhere is basically arbitrary and dependent on special circumstances. Libya’s humanitarian crisis, while serious, is not exceptional, nor does it actually demand outside intervention justified under the “responsibility to protect,” but it is an opportunity that is too good to pass up. One might say that the Libyan civil war is a crisis that humanitarian interventionists can’t let go to waste.

At the same time, advocates of the “responsibility to protect” intend for the attack on Libya to deter other authoritarian regimes from resorting to violence against protesters, which implies that there is a willingness to intervene in like manner again and again if necessary. Intervening in Libya will aid protesters in other countries, so we are told, because other governments will conclude that the risks of violent crackdown are too great. Sarkozy is explicitly saying that Libya is just the first of many such interventions:

Every ruler should understand, and especially every Arab ruler should understand that the reaction of the international community and of Europe will from this moment on each time be the same [bold mine-DL]: we will be on the side of peaceful protesters who must not be repressed with violence.

As Sarkozy understands, the reaction “from this moment on each time” will not be the same, and it cannot be the same. The “responsibility to protect” doctrine is not nearly so broad as what Sarkozy is making it out to be here. Sarkozy is expanding what the doctrine means to encompass every instance of regime violence by the military against the population. This is not only an impossible doctrine, but it is one that directly undermines the doctrine of the “responsibility to protect” by applying it to numerous situations for which it was never intended. Pledging intervention in reaction to every instance of regime violence makes a promise that Western governments and the U.N. will never be able to keep.

International political conditions may permit a Kosovo or Libya once every so often, but such actions are fortunately rare. Indeed, the one credible defense Libya interventionists have for choosing Libya as the test case for the “responsibility to protect” is that conditions for intervening anywhere else are supposed to be worse and that Libya is the only crisis that currently commands sufficient international consensus. In other words, it becomes much harder to defend the Libyan war as a precedent-setting, norm-enforcing action when one of the chief arguments in favor of the Libyan intervention (as opposed to focusing on different, more important crises) is that most other crises have too many other complicating factors to permit intervention.

The danger from all of this talk of setting a precedent is that some people around the world might just be foolish enough to take it seriously. Sarkozy can issue warnings to “every ruler” all he likes, but we should all understand that neither he nor any of the other governments now intervening in Libya will be able or willing to challenge every ruler who resorts to violence. Indeed, Gbagbo seems to be taking advantage of the focus on Libya to escalate the conflict in Ivory Coast. The Libyan intervention itself has been sudden, confused and controversial enough that many of the participants will be less inclined to plunge into the next crisis. Other authoritarian governments are taking some solace that Libya will sour Western governments on this sort of intervention for several years or even longer. Samantha Power once lamented that Iraq had killed the possibility of humanitarian intervention for a generation, but the arbitrary and ill-conceived way in which Obama has involved the U.S. in Libya seems likely to make such intervention even more politically toxic in the future. The war to revive humanitarian interventionism may very well end up discrediting it for a long time, which means that there isn’t much chance that it is going to set a meaningful precedent. As far as I can see, that means that the central ideological argument for this war is utterly false.

That doesn’t mean that protest movements won’t start expecting outside help. Such movements are bound to be encouraged by international intervention in Libya, and they are going to confront their governments in the hope that other governments will protect them. When that happens, Sarkozy’s high-flown rhetoric will be nowhere to be found, and Sarkozy himself may well be out of power after elections next year, but the false promise of protection will lead to new uprisings and brutal crackdowns. Because there is no broad public consensus in support of humanitarian interventionism in any of the Western countries engaged in the Libyan war, there is not going to be any continuity in policy, nor will there be anything like consistency in applying these principles. Even if there is a “successful” intervention in Libya, there will likely be many other uprisings inspired by the Libyan intervention that will be crushed without much outside protest.

Update: Westerwelle has rejected Sarkozy’s position:

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle says it is “dangerous” to threaten military action against other autocratic Arab leaders after, a clear swipe at Sarkozy, my colleagues in Berlin tell me.

“I am very concerned by the latest public remarks, including from European partners, that we are not just talking about Libya but also about other Arab leaders,” Westerwelle tells a Berlin radio station.

“I warn against having a discussion in Europe about the possibility of military intervention everywhere in North Africa or the Arab world where there is injustice.

“I see this as a really dangerous discussion with difficult consequences for the region and for the Arab world as a whole.”