Gaddafi and Grotius: Some Historical Roots of the Libyan Intervention

Abstract

It is increasingly well understood that concepts of ‘humanitarian intervention’ and the ‘responsibility to protect’ enjoy a long and rich history. Nevertheless, it is surprising how plainly the arguments offered by states seeking to justify intervention in Libya in 2011 echo those used by theologians, jurists, and philosophers to justify intervention in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Those advocating intervention in Libya drew not just on the language of ‘human rights,’ that emerged relatively recently, but on a wider and much older range of idioms and ideas to make their case. In this article, I identify three key arguments that were employed by states in support of the intervention and I demonstrate their parallels with three principal arguments that have been advanced to justify intervention in response to tyranny since the sixteenth century. The three arguments are: the need to protect ‘innocents’; the need to hold ‘tyrants’ to account; and the need to defend the will of a sovereign people. After exploring each argument, I conclude by noting that the claim often heard today, that intervention is under certain circumstances a responsibility rather than merely a right, also has deep roots in early modern thought.

From Protection to Policing: Military Air Power and the Governance of Humanitarian Crises, 1992-2011

“…58 Seemingly useful focal points such as the "State", or international phenomena like "globalisation" or humanitarianism, must be disaggregated into a series of governance techniques which are immanent to their objective. 59 Doing so requires identifying the assemblages that makes such action possible. Looking at humanitarian intervention following the Cold War it becomes clear that this practice is immanent to a particular objective, the management of internecine conflict, and operates as a site of materially influenced politics in its own right.…”

“…01 (2010): 54. 59 A useful discussion of the disaggregation of the State can be found in: Mitchell Dean, Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society, 2nd ed. (London, UK: Sage, 2010), 102-104; On global governmentality and globalization see: Wendy Larner and William Walters, Global Governmentality: Governing International Spaces (New York, NY: Routledge, 2002).…”

“…58 Yamashita, drawing heavily on the philosophy of Lefebvre, develops a typology of humanitarian space based on its operational principle. 59 The problem with both approaches is that the material nature of the spaces, the technology used to realise them and along what lines, and how their enactment marked an 56 McQueen, Safety Zones, 4-5. 57 Ibid., 7.…”

“…58 As for the forceful delivery of aid, the BTF noted that UNPROFOR lacked the resources to realise this policy, which would likely lead to UN casualties and undermine relief efforts in the region. 59 Using air power to help aid convoys "blast through" to Sarajevo and the eastern enclaves would create more violence and invite retributions against UN peacekeepers, in turn threatening the delicate international consensus supporting UNPROFOR-the force, after all, was not equipped for combat and required both the acquiescence of the various 56 factions and the appearance of neutrality. 60 In one instance, Powell argued clearly that the humanitarian goals of the Administration and the use of military force was incompatible because "the relief effort would stop if we used force before a settlement."…”

“…Speculation exists that NATO and the UN had intelligence suggesting the violent deportation of Kosovar Albanians would follow military action, but such reports were ignored, not fully understood, or interpreted in an idealised way: Judah, Kosovo, 240-241; Ignatieff, Virtual, 96. 59 Ignatieff,Virtual,41. use as a means of policing conflict is only understandable in socio-material terms. The air power policing model and the technology employed in service of it created an assemblage that could be mobilised and deployed, but which made the suffering of those it was supposed to protect indiscernible.…”