The War On Libya & The Responsibility To Protect

The moment you realise that you’re agreeing with those who’ve angered you to a point where spittle forms at the corners of your mouth as you’ve disparaged them as ‘crazy,’ and ‘imbeciles,’ is disquieting to say the least.

As the war drums started ringing their ominous tattoo in the corridors of the United Nations last week, it was with a great sense of confusion I watched as everyone I always agree with commentators, friends & Twitterati alike, cheered for a No-Fly Zone to be instituted over Libya. To put it plainly, as the Left started sounding like the Neo-Con war-mongering right. And when those I most vehemently disagree with started to express the opinion I held, that military intervention in Libya is a bad idea, well then I was truly disturbed.

Of course, it didn’t take much scratching beneath the surface to see that any agreement I had with the likes of the ANCYL was nothing but superficial, I do not believe that the “imposition of a No-Fly-Zone in Libya is meant to impose the West's takeover of Libya, because of its Oil endowments.”

In fact, to say – which I must admit I did a lot of on Twitter thanks to the brutality of 140characters – that I am against the military incursion in Libya, is misrepresentation of my opinion. Anyone who cast my lot with those who felt that foreign intervention in any form was wrong could hardly be blamed after the number of times I tweeted opinions similar to that.

In fact, for those holding that opinion, there is centuries of precedent. Since the advent of the nation-state, a states sovereignty being supreme has been a central notion in international relations, with the United Nations even entrenching that notion in their charter.

Of course all are entitled to their opinions, and as such I’d say, if not outright immoral, that position is at least amoral.

Again, that’s not a new idea. In 1948, two years later, recognising this, the United Nations espoused the first condition under which a state’s sovereignty could be impinged upon with it’s Genocide Convention.

Of course, what Gaddafi has done and continues to do despite his second declaration of a ceasefire in Libya is not genocide. Despite this, the vicious & brutal repression of a people seeking freedom from under the thumb of a dictator with a suspect handle of his mental faculties is near on just as odious. However, I still have my objections, or to be more precise, concerns.

My concerns with the Libya intervention are entirely on a point of principle; namely that military interventions on the grounds of humanitarian intervention though a principle fully and properly developed, is not applied equally.

In 2000, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) was founded and in 2001 released a report with the paradigm-shifting notion that the issue of humanitarian intervention should not be framed as a question of a ‘right to intervene,’ but rather as a ‘responsibility to protect.’

The UN took notice of ICISS’s report with an outcomes document which stated nations had a responsibility to protect their nations from “genocide, war crimes, ethic cleansing and wars against humanity” and by failing to do so made it the responsibility of the international community to do so. This report was ratified by all member states of the UN. However, the point where the problem became apparent was that this ratification was not legally binding.

In yesterday’s debate on Libya before the House of Commons, David Cameron called the decision of the international community to intervene in Libya a “breakthrough” and set a “precedent” in that it was the first time the UN had intervened in a nation based on the responsibility to protect.

If only this were true.

When asked if the international community is not intervening in Yemen, why should they in Libya, Cameron replied that “just because you cannot take action everywhere that does not mean you should not act where you can,” going so far as to quote Sadie Smith when she characterised that as the “why should I tidy my bedroom when the world’s such a mess theory of foreign policy.”

Cameron is right, failure to act in Yemen – and it is a failure – does not preclude action in Libya. However, his reply ignored the elephant in the room. It’s not so much a question of if they can intervene in Yemen – or Cote d’Ivoire and Bahrain for that matter – but a matter of do they want to? For as long as the ICISS’s report is not legally binding, guiding the United Nations where and when they have a responsibility to protect, the ‘why,’ question will continue to dog this and any other action the United Nations decides to take based on a responsibility to protect.

I may not agree that “war is a continuation of diplomacy,” but I am not anti-war. At times war has it’s place and is needed, and as Niall Ferguson wrote, “Make no mistake. Whatever the wording of the United Nations Security Council resolution, the United States (and the other allies) is at war with the Libyan government.” Though I agree that this is a necessary and just war, I am amongst the many who have been trying to answer the ‘why’ question, not at all believing that it’s out of an altruistic wish to protect the citizens of Libya.

If we believe that Human Rights are universal to all people, regardless of borders, we cannot deny that the international community has a responsibility to protect in certain instances and this is one. I wish I could fully support the action in Libya, to be frank, Gaddafi is an evil madman and I desperately want to. However, the only way all questions regarding what the ‘true motives’ behind this and other humanitarian interventions will be ended is if the application of a responsibility to protect is uniform, and that will only happen once the ICISS recommendations are made legally binding.

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For an in depth look at Humanitarian Intervention, ICISS and it’s report I recommend this Council of Foreign Relations paper: “The Dilemma of Humanitarian Intervention.”

The images for this post are of the USS Stout, launching a Tomahawk Missile from the Mediterranean on the 19^th of March and Obama receiving a secure briefing on the situation in Libya in Rio De Janeiro on the 20^th.

They're taken from AFRICOM’s flickr photostream which I'd also reccomend.

The 3rd & Final Leaders Debate: My Take

Last night saw the 3^rd and final debate in the run-up to the British polls last night between the top 3 party’s leaders, Nick Clegg for the Liberal Democrats, David Cameron of the Conservative Party and embattled incumbent, Gordon Brown for Labour. The general topic was the economy and much to my surprise I have to say I found it to be a rather entertaining and stimulating exchange.

I really had no idea what to expect when the debate started, sure I had read the articles on the first two debates which generally had found Clegg to have bested Brown and Cameron in this form of electioneering thus accounting for the reported upswing in Lib-Dem’s in recent polls. The only knowledge and experience I’d had regarding debates was (as most people have) the American model. Whilst this generally followed the ‘town-hall debate’ format of American debates, with questions being taken from the audience, where the British departed from their American counterparts was in the manner in which questions were answered. Whilst in the American debates this format is generally marked with seemingly disingenuous, ‘I feel your pain,’ plaintive answers lightly skirting over the actual issues, at least two of the debaters, Brown & Cameron took the opportunity to actually go into the nuts and bolts of their respective policies. Clegg, however, was patently out of sorts, displaying his and his party’s naivety and unpreparedness to govern.

The looming spectre of “BigotGate,” which had occurred just the day before, was, I will admit, one of the main reasons I chose to watch after ignoring the first two debates. However, any expectations for a full on attack by either Clegg or Cameron were thwarted with Clegg and Cameron choosing to take the higher ground on what essentially was a non-issue. In fact, the only blatant reference to the gaffe came from Brown himself who in his opening statement said, “There’s a lot to this job (the Prime Ministership) and as you saw yesterday I don’t get all of it right,” which I felt brought a sense of much-needed finality to the issue in an appropriately apologetic tone before swiftly moving along.

Nick Clegg, whilst he in my opinion failed in the debate, the one message which he was able to successfully put across, was how the blame for the muck and mire that the United Kingdom found itself in today could be squarely placed at the feet of both Labour & Tory, and as far as I saw, there was no response to that claim from either Cameron or Brown. Despite the fact that his main message was put across successfully, Clegg took quite a battering from both Cameron & Brown who took this opportunity to show the Lib Dem manifesto for what it is, a collection of unfeasible idealism. He was particularly hammered on Lib Dems’ call for an amnesty for illegal immigrants that had been in Britain for over ten years, with Cameron & Brown coming extremely close to outright ridiculing the proposal. Personally of all the zany policies, that Clegg put forward, the most nonsensical was his housing policy. Exactly how he expects to compel private owners and builders of blocks apartment blocks to start building family sized apartments instead of the studio apartments with the market has a demand for, I don’t know. The one positive in his housing policy which he didn’t speak on too much, choosing to instead focus on the previously mentioned malarkey was his call, which he admitted was unpopular, for more council housing. Essentially with Clegg, form for him was his strong point, he channeled the best of US political debate style, appeals to emotion and broad (read vague) statements when it came to actual policy.

Cameron was the one candidate I was probably most interested to hear. Reason being, of the three candidates and parties, his was the one I had paid the least attention to. My reasoning for not bothering to listen or read up on the Tory manifesto was supported right from the moment he answered his first question. Despite all the promises of a ‘new Conservative Party,’ he espoused the exact same liberal-economic policies that Conservatives in the UK (and their Republican counterparts in the United States) have been selling since at least the eras of Thatcher & Reagan. “Smaller government is the way to go, government has to cut the deficit as government cannot stimulate the economy etc.” In these claims one could immediately see, that there was no new Conservative Party, a point which Brown repeatedly hammered, though how effective he was in relaying that message, I’m not too sure. A rather humorous moment for me with Cameron was his blatant attempt to capture some of that Obama-magic. His policy (and Brown’s it would seem) regarding financial regulation mirrors that of President Obama’s and after explaining his policy, in case you had missed that it was a near mirror of Obama’s Cameron stated, “we agree with President Obama’s plan…”

Gordon Brown explained his party’s policies extremely well, being able to respond to the critiques and attacks of Cameron & Clegg. However, this is where the problem with Brown comes in. Unlike Cameron & Clegg, who were very good at their delivery and thus had a number of easily remembered moments with Brown, there are no such moments. There are only two quasi-exceptions to this. His opening statement which is only memorable as being the only mention of BigotGate and when I felt he scored points not through anything he said, but because he stood back and allowed Cameron & Clegg to bicker between themselves when they were answering the immigration question.

Ultimately, I am a believer in substance over form and that is why I felt that this debate went to Brown, followed by Cameron then Clegg trailing a very distant third. However, the main poll that was being circulated both on television and on Twitter after the debate, YouGov’s poll, gave the win to Cameron by 41%, followed by Clegg with 32% and Brown trailing far behind with 25%. What to make of these numbers, I truly don’t know. What to expect on election-day, again I don’t know.

However, many seem to be returning to the belief that we can expect Cameron to be Prime Minister either through aligning with Lib-Dem as Brown charged or one or some of the smaller fringe parties. My take on this possible scenario is this. Clegg is an idealist, but at the end of the day he is a liberal idealist and though he may now eschew Labour for ‘betraying’ liberal ideals as one analysis prior to the debate argued, I cannot see, how the Lib-Dems would be able to explain to their electorate, that they chose to align with the ultimate enemy, Conservative A scenario I could see playing it is a Clegg Prime-Ministership. What would occur is Brown would resign after Labour placed 3^rd position in the election and the Labour leadership would go to Clegg proposing a Lib-Dem led coalition. This would scupper any chances of a Conservative led coalition government (made up of the smaller parties). Lib Dems if they failed to do this, would ultimately have to answer to their extremely liberal base as to why they failed to stop a Conservative government.

Ultimately though, I don’t have a crystal ball to look into because despite what the analysts say, having a politics degree doesn’t mean you can tell what’s going to happen. The only thing I can say for a certainty is this. Keep your eyes glued to the UK, exciting times are ahead and anything could happen.