NATO’s Intervention in Libya: A Humanitarian Success?

Abstract

On 17 March 2011, the United Nations authorized military intervention in Libya to protect civilians, responding to violence between government forces and opponents that had erupted the preceding month. Two days later, NATO initiated the intervention, including establishing a no-fly zone and launching aerial attacks on government forces. After seven months of NATO intervention, Libyan rebel forces conquered the country and killed the former authoritarian ruler, Muammar Gaddafi, in October 2011. Immediately, Western media and politicians praised the intervention as a humanitarian success for having averted a bloodbath in Libya’s second largest city, Benghazi, and helping replace the dictatorial Gaddafi regime with a transitional council pledged to democracy. Based on this ostensible success, many experts now cite Libya as a model for implementing the so-called ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P). Before embracing such conclusions, however, it is important to conduct a more rigorous assessment of the net humanitarian impact of NATO intervention in Libya.

© 2012 by the author. Thanks to Mathew Smith for the bulk of the primary research, and Julieta Cuellar for preliminary research, while both were undergraduates at the University of Texas at Austin. Thanks also to the discussants and audiences who provided helpful comments on earlier versions of this work at three venues: the Erasmus University International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague; the Oxford University Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict in the UK; and the annual convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities at Columbia University. Funding to support this research was provided by the Policy Research Institute of the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin.