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Stalemate in Libya May Not Be The End

Four lessons of Libya may be drawn by now. The first has been known for years: “humanitarian intervention” is a pernicious concept which provides the equivalent of the “Polish army attack” on the Gleiwitz radio station to a would-be aggressor. It undermines the concept of collective security and it undermines international law as a system […]

Four lessons of Libya may be drawn by now. The first has been known for years: “humanitarian intervention” is a pernicious concept which provides the equivalent of the “Polish army attack” on the Gleiwitz radio station to a would-be aggressor. It undermines the concept of collective security and it undermines international law as a system of commonly respected norms that are binding upon all states. Its arbitrary nature is evident in the failure of its most vocal practitioners to invoke it when the violator is too powerful (e.g. North Korea subjecting its people to famine and terror), or too insignificant (various African despots, in Sudan, Congo, etc.), or considered a partner (NATO ally Turkey’s war against the Kurds in the 1980s and 90s took the lives of at least 30,000 civilians). Far from being “moral,” humanitarian intervention is inherently a tool of situational morality. ~Srdja Trifkovic

The arbitrariness of the Libyan intervention has been one of its defining features, but what hasn’t been emphasized enough is its potential to subvert any and all norms governing relations between states. The principle of state sovereignty is something that could only be seen as a major problem by people who have enjoyed so many decades of general peace. Instead of being satisfied with the relative lack of international warfare, interventionists have to keep finding new reasons to initiate wars, and at some point this disrespect for other states’ sovereignty may end up affecting allies more significant than Georgia. Believing that it is acceptable and even mandatory to attack another state on account of its internal conflicts is truly dangerous. It is a constant invitation for the U.S. to enter conflicts it has no reason to join, and it creates an opening for many other governments to exploit when it suits them. In practice, such interventions make it harder for small and weak states to preserve their territorial integrity, and it invites larger and stronger states to exploit their neighbors’ weaknesses and divisions to their advantage.

I would like to believe that Dr. Trifkovic is correct that the U.S. can be extricated from this blunder, and it may be that a de facto partition of Libya is now the least of all evils, but I find it hard to believe that France, Britain, and the U.S. could go this far and then settle for a cease-fire that leaves Gaddafi in place. When confronted with similar stalemates in the past, interventionists have pushed governments towards escalation. As the rebels’ position continues to deteriorate slowly in the east, they may be willing to accept a cease-fire, but it’s not clear that Sarkozy or Obama can politically afford to have launched such an inconclusive war.

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