Foreign interventions - When to hold and when to fold

The Economist has a useful review of a recent publication focusing on the issue of intervention - perfect for our consideration of human rights. The book in question is Can Intervention Work? by Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus, published by W.W. Norton, 2011 (236 pages):

CAN we intervene in foreign countries and do good? Can we stop wars and genocides and get rid of evil dictators? Can we then build modern, democratic states that thrive in our wake? The answer depends on who you ask. An anti-Qaddafi Libyan will have nice things to say about NATO’s role there right now. But you will get very different views from an Afghan, an Iraqi, a Bosnian or a Kosovar.

Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus are well placed to pose and answer these questions. Before Mr Stewart became a Conservative MP, he was a deputy governor of two Iraqi provinces. He also walked across Afghanistan and wrote a bestseller about the experience. Mr Knaus, a political economist, runs the European Stability Initiative, a Berlin-based think-tank founded in Sarajevo in 1999, which has been particularly influential in the Balkans.

The book is structured as two essays with a lengthy joint introduction. Mr Stewart has written a colourful account of his time in Afghanistan and his failed attempts to stop what he sees as a self- defeating build-up of ambitions, troops and plans. He skewers gobbledygook notions of bringing Afghans accountable governance and Western-style rule of law. It is not that he is against such things, but that he doubts the ability of foreigners to impose it all. He cites a pragmatic admonition from English Mountain Rescue: “Be prepared to turn back if conditions turn against you.”

Writing about Bosnia, Mr Knaus deploys heavy artillery in arguments that he has made before. Intervention there has been a stunning success, he says, given the state of Bosnia at the end of its devastating war in 1995. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have returned, not a single intervening soldier was killed (after the war), and today’s problems are of the conventional political sort, not the kind that herald another war. Not only does Bosnia enjoy free and fair elections, but also it has relatively little crime. Mr Knaus argues that the only missteps came from assumptions held by those like Lord Ashdown, when he was de facto governor of Bosnia, that well-meaning envoys could behave like imperial viceroys, sacking elected yet obstructive leaders at will.

From rather successful interventions, defined as Bosnia and Kosovo, the authors convey an important lesson: that is, the experience garnered in one place is generally not much use elsewhere. Bosnia was a success because the intervention came as part of the 1995 Dayton peace agreement, which ended the war and which all the exhausted sides committed themselves to. In Kosovo the vast majority of its people—ethnic Albanians, nearly all of them Muslims—were very grateful for what they saw as their America-led liberation from the Serbs. Mr Knaus also argues that the United Nations war-crimes tribunal was vital as a form of closure and for removing from the political scene characters such as Ratko Mladic, a Bosnian Serb general now on trial for genocide in The Hague.

So, does intervention work? As any Bosnian peasant may tell you, “maybe yes, maybe no.” It depends on the circumstances and requires modest ambitions. Muddle through with a sense of purpose, says Mr Knaus. Do what you can, where you can and no more, agrees Mr Stewart. In policy terms that sounds a bit like “yes” to Libya, “no” to Syria and so on.

Hitchens: Mladic the Monster

Our failure to respond to the Serbian atrocities prolonged the slaughter....

... Or so Christopher Hitchens asserts in today's Slate magazine article (excerpt follows):

I suppose it is possible that the arrest of Gen. Ratko Mladic is as undramatic and uncomplicated as it seems and that in recent years he had been off the active list and gradually became a mumbling old derelict with a rather nasty line in veterans' reminiscences. His demands would probably have been modest and few: the odd glass of slivovitz in company with a sympathetic priest (it's usually the Serbian Orthodox Church that operates the support and counseling network for burned-out or wanted war criminals) and an occasional hunting or skiing trip. Though there is something faintly satisfying about this clichéd outcome—the figure of energetic evil reduced to a husk of exhausted banality—there is also something repellent about it.

....

At times like this, we are always reliably reminded of what John Quincy Adams said about the risk to the United States of going "abroad in search of monsters to destroy." The monstrous character of Mladic and his movement needed no exaggeration. To this day, a lot of people do not understand how much misery and chaos and suffering it purposely inflicted. But the monstrous nature of his power and reach was paradoxically and enormously exaggerated—not by those who wanted to confront it, but by those who did not! This meant that the whole nightmare was needlessly prolonged and the expense of concluding it greatly increased. On whatever basis the post-Tito Yugoslavia was to be reconstituted, there was one that was utterly impossible as well as unthinkable: a "Greater Serbia," whereby smaller republics and their populations were forcibly cut to fit the requirements of a dictatorial tailoring. It will one day seem incredible that the NATO powers did not see this right away and continued to treat Slobodan Milosevic as a "partner in peace," thus opening the road that led straight to Srebrenica and the murder of people ostensibly under our protection.

Srebrenica is one of the best-documented atrocities in modern history. We have everything, from real-time satellite surveillance (shamefully available to the United States even as the butchery was going on) to film and video taken by the perpetrators, including Mladic himself. The production of this material in court will, one hopes, wipe any potential grin from his face and destroy the propaganda image of the simple patriotic man at arms. Whatever our policy on monsters abroad may turn out to be, at least we should be able to recognize one when we see one.

Food for thought vis à vis the notion of humanitarian intervention....

Economist: Responsibility to protect - The lessons of Libya

Outsiders had good reason to intervene in Libya. But their cause may suffer from it.

So fears The Economist newspaper today in a useful article reviewing the ongoing intervention in Libya by NATO forces:

For those who back muscular humanitarian intervention, both the words and deeds of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi provided absolute moral clarity. “Come out of your homes, attack [the opposition] in their dens,” he told his supporters on February 22nd. He called the protesters “cockroaches” and “rats” who did not deserve to live: language chillingly reminiscent of the broadcasts of Radio Mille Collines, which spurred on the perpetrators of Rwanda’s genocide in 1994.

As he spoke, his forces had set their sights on Benghazi, their adversaries’ stronghold. According to Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group, government forces had already killed 233 people in the preceding week. A bloodbath beckoned, in a city of 700,000 people. The United Nations Security Council invoked a fateful formula, urging the regime to meet its “responsibility to protect” its people. On March 17th the council, “expressing its determination to ensure the protection of civilians”, ordered air strikes.

That set the stage for the first full-blown test of a principle that the UN adopted in 2005 and has been refining since. The doctrine of “responsibility to protect” (R2P) holds that when a sovereign state fails to prevent atrocities, foreign governments may intervene to stop them. Human-rights advocates say it saves lives. Sceptics see it as too easily misused to be useful: a cover for imperialism, or even an incentive to kill (because even if a massacre is not looming, an unscrupulous warlord might be tempted to engineer one against his own people to spur outside support).

Previous uses of R2P have been solo ventures. In 2008 Russia used it to justify attacking Georgia, and France cited it after the cyclone in Myanmar, implying that humanitarian aid might have to be brought in by force if the regime persisted in stonewalling (it backed down). But before this year, no mission had been authorised by the UN Security Council that so explicitly cited the new principle.

At first it looked likely that the doctrine would either triumph or die in Libya. But two months and thousands of air strikes later, war’s messy reality has merely hardened views on both sides. On one hand, the decision to go to war was made in good faith at a time when the risk of massacres seemed real. As Mats Berdal, a professor at King’s College London, points out, the world’s leading powers had good reason to think they were “avoiding a Srebrenica”—the massacre of Bosnians which UN forces failed to avert in July 1995.

But as the war drags on and NATO strikes more widely, sceptics also feel their case has been bolstered. “For those of us who feared that R2P was just a warrant for war, our fears have been vindicated,” says David Rieff, an advocate-turned-critic.

Responsibility to protect gained ground after ghastly mass killings in the late 20th century, including massacres by the Khmers Rouges in Cambodia in the 1970s; the use of chemical weapons in Iraq in 1988; and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. In 1999 NATO unleashed an air war, without a UN blessing, to stop a Serbian campaign in the province of Kosovo. It argued that the need to protect civilians was an overwhelming moral imperative. The UN gave a sort of retrospective blessing by endorsing an international tutelage for the territory, led by Bernard Kouchner, a French pioneer of humanitarian intervention.

But the terrible civil war in Iraq that followed America’s invasion in 2003—portrayed as intervention against tyranny—shrivelled support for the doctrine. A possible result of that may have been hesitancy in intervening to stop the Sudanese government’s genocide in Darfur.

Seeking to restore liberal hawkishness’s good name, a group led by Gareth Evans, a former Australian foreign minister, pushed the UN’s 60th anniversary conference in 2005 to endorse the idea that the world has a “responsibility to protect” civilians. Eventually 150-plus countries agreed to allow armed intervention through the Security Council “should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”

So much for the theory. What about the practice? Colonel Qaddafi provided an all-but-unique test. Regional leaders loathed him and readily dumped him. The Arab League’s support for the intervention stopped Russia and China wielding their vetoes. And the concentration of the rebels in the east, combined with flat desert terrain, at first made the regime’s forces easy bombing targets. “The stars were well and truly aligned in the Libya case,” says Mr Evans. “All the criteria were satisfied.”

The immediate goal of protecting Benghazi from massacre was achieved within days. Having destroyed Libya’s air defences, Western bombers and missiles pummelled the advancing troops into a speedy retreat.

Harder decisions followed. Libya’s army continued to shell other rebel-held cities, and its snipers were plainly targeting civilians. Protecting all Libyans, not just those in the east, would require the end of Colonel Qaddafi’s rule—an outcome that both Western and Arab governments had already called for. NATO stepped up its military campaign, bombing retreating columns as well as advancing ones, and attacking command-and-control centres frequented by Colonel Qaddafi and his family. On April 30th an air strike killed one of his sons. The line between curbing atrocities and an air war for regime change blurred—though a land operation is ruled out, for the moment.

Both sides of the debate will eagerly cite Libya the next time mass murder seems imminent. It shows that a modest dose of air power can save lives; but also that the rhetoric of civilian protection can be stretched to justify a creeping mission. Power politics decides which lives get saved, and which policy aims triumph.

Mr Rieff decries a “two-tiered system of interveners and intervened upon”, where the “old imperial powers” make the rules. But which powers exactly? The Libyan vote passed only because non-Western Russia and China withheld their Security Council vetoes: all but unimaginable until recently. Both countries are now getting cold feet, claiming misuse of the resolution’s elastic language. For different reasons Mr Evans bemoans excess zeal too: he wants to preserve the purity of R2P, and fears an interpretation that allows for “all-out aggressive war”. A lot rides on this war—and not just for the Libyans.

Gareth Evans: Hypocrisy and War (R2P)

Gareth Evans, former Australian Foreign Minister and author of Responsibility to Protect, writes usefully, eloquently and at length on the principles behind R2P in an article syndicated today (text follows—and yes, you should read it!):

All the world hates a hypocrite. When states preach virtues they do not practice, or set lower hurdles for allies, trading partners, or co-religionists than they do for others, irritation and non-cooperation are the least they can expect. International policymaking is a hardheaded, cynical business, but tolerance for double standards has its limits.

Russia discovered that when it invoked the “responsibility to protect” doctrine to try to justify its 2008 invasion of Georgia. Democracy promotion by the United States and the European Union generates ridicule when it extends only to elections producing winners found palatable, as Gaza’s vote for Hamas in 2006 did not. Nuclear-weapons states keep learning the hard way that strengthening the non-proliferation regime is a tough sell when they drag their feet on disarmament.

And the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is a gift that keeps on giving to the world’s malcontents: embracing the Security Council only when you get your way, but ignoring or undermining it when you don’t, is no way to promote a cooperative rule-based international order.

But in the real world, how consistent is it possible to be in responding to genocide and other mass atrocities, treaty breaches, border violations, or other serious trespasses against international law? To demand that every case that seems to look alike be treated alike might set the bar impossibly high, and certainly runs the risk of becoming hostage to critics – like those who attack the intervention in Libya – who assert that if you can’t act everywhere, you shouldn’t act anywhere.

The hardest cases, always generating the strongest emotions, involve the coercive use of military force. Why strike in Libya but not in Darfur – or in Yemen, Bahrain, or Syria? If military intervention in Libya and Côte d’Ivoire were correct decisions, why wasn’t the Iraq invasion in 2003, given Saddam’s many crimes? What credence can the responsibility to protect have when we know that however bad things get in Tibet, Xinjiang, or the Northern Caucasus, military action against China or Russia will always be off limits?

Former US President George W. Bush famously did not “do nuance.” Nor do most of the world’s foreign-policy pundits. But nuance is exactly what is required. And there are tools for applying it in the five tests of legitimacy for the use of force – in any context, not just mass atrocity crimes – recommended by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the High Level Panel he appointed to advise the 2005 World Summit on reforms to the global security system.

These guidelines have not yet been formally adopted by the General Assembly or the Security Council, and remain only background noise in current international debates. But their practical utility, combined with long philosophical pedigree, justifies much greater visibility.

The first test is seriousness of risk: Is the threatened harm of such a kind and scale as to justify prima facie the use of force? The risk of an imminent civilian bloodbath was as real in Benghazi and Abidjan last month as it was in Rwanda in 1994. By contrast, there was no such imminent risk in Iraq in 2003, though there certainly had been a decade and more earlier for the country’s northern Kurds and southern Shiites.

The current situations in Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria are on the cusp: ugly, but smaller in scale and perhaps retrievable by pressure short of military action (of which the US and its allies could usefully apply much more).

The second test is whether the primary purpose of the proposed military action is to halt or avert the threat in question. Libya passes, as would most other recent cases: had oil – or regime change – been the primary motivation, the Arab League and the Security Council would never have endorsed military intervention. Russia, by contrast, found it hard to find any takers for its assertion that civilian protection was the primary rationale for its South Ossetian adventure in 2008.

The third test whether every non-military option has been explored and found wanting. Libya again followed the textbook: Resolution 1970 applied targeted sanctions, an arms embargo, and the threat of prosecution at the International Criminal Court to concentrate Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s mind on civilian protection. Only when that failed did Resolution 1973 embrace the military option. In Iraq in 2003, lesser options had far from run their course, which is arguably true now in Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria.

The fourth test is one of proportionality: Are the scale, duration, and intensity of the proposed military action the minimum necessary to meet the threat? As military stalemate looms in Libya, there will be a growing temptation to stretch the UN’s legal authority – and the moral and political support that goes with it – to the breaking point, and NATO is now close to that line. It must not cross it if it wants to preserve its own credibility, and the world’s capacity for intervention in similar conscience-shocking cases.

The final, and usually toughest, legitimacy test attempts to balance the consequences: Will those at risk be better or worse off? This was always the showstopper in Darfur: any attempted invasion of Sudan would have been disastrous for the two million displaced people, and would have re-ignited the country’s even deadlier north-south conflict.

This test explains the effective impunity of China, Russia, or any other major power; however badly it behaves internally, any attempted invasion would trigger a much larger conflagration. Resolving Libya’s agony will take more than military action. But, as in Côte d’Ivoire, it is hard to argue that the use of force will cost more lives than it will save.

Steering a course between double-speak and necessary selectivity is hard. But, when examined against the right criteria, cases that initially look alike are often very different. Even when they’re not, a higher principle surely comes into play. When our common humanity is under threat, even if we can’t do everything we should, shouldn’t we at least do what we can?

Libya, Côte d'Ivoire: Sarkozy's motives under intense scrutiny

Analysts disagree on what drives France's interventions in Afghanistan, Libya and Ivory Coast

The Guardian today has an interesting article looking at the analyses of possible motivation behind France's new-found urgency to intervene around the world:

As French forces take part in three different wars for the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic, President Nicolas Sarkozy is under intense scrutiny at home and abroad over the motives for his foreign military expeditions.

With 4,000 French troops still in Afghanistan, French warplanes having fired the first shots in the western intervention in Libya, and with French tanks moving through the streets of Abidjan at the climax of Ivory Coast's civil war, there is little doubt that France's relationship with the rest of the world is on a new and more assertive footing.

What is less clear is whether the expeditionary surge is the result of a considered plan or a response to circumstances; whether it is driven by geopolitical factors or domestic political considerations.

An important consideration to make is whether any humanitarian intervention can be entirely altruistic—this article makes a refreshing change from the usual examinations of either American or British motives in foreign intervention. Somewhat predictably, opinion is divided:

At home, Sarkozy has been accused of using war for domestic ends. Mustapha Tossa, a French-Moroccan journalist wrote on the news website lepost.fr: "This sudden passion of Nicolas Sarkozy for military operations raises numerous questions: over and above the political explanation that suggests the president of the Republic wants everyone to forget the failings in the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, suspicious voices are raised suggesting he wants to use international [affairs] to conquer what he has lost at home."

Jean-Marie Le Guen, a Socialist MP said: "There is a little bit of [George] Bush in Mr Sarkozy", adding that the president had "a habit of using force before politics without truly taking into consideration the current and future political consequences."

Richard Gowan, an analyst at New York University's Centre on International Cooperation argued, however, that rather than hurtling into a third conflict, Sarkozy had been excessively cautious in Ivory Coast.

"I don't think you can say the French approach has been zealous. The French tried to avoid firing a shot," Gowan said. He pointed out that in 2008, Sarkozy overruled his then foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who wanted to send troops to eastern Congo. This time, Gowan said, the ghosts of the past could not be ignored.

"However much he might be criticised for acting, the consequences for inaction would have been much worse. To be accused of colonialism is one thing. To be accused of a second Rwanda is quite another."

Telegraph: UN air strikes show West's new appetite for military action

An article published yesterday in The Telegraph by NY correspondent Jon Swaine demonstrates that any textbook is only truly up-to-date on the day it is submitted to the publisher:

The UN air strikes in Ivory Coast suggest Libya was no fluke: the West's appetite for military action has recovered robustly from the diplomatic trauma of the Iraq war.

After a brief honeymoon following the successful mission to protect Kosovo in 1999, it seemed the Blairite era of "liberal interventionism" had been buried along with tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

The chaos after the steamrollering of the UN Security Council by Tony Blair and George W. Bush in 2002-03 seemed likely to usher in a new period of isolationism.

Barack Obama swept to power in 2008 on a wave of anti-war sentiment, while David Cameron entered Downing Street last year insisting that the West "can't drop democracy from 40,000ft".

Yet the past three weeks have found the council – this time with a less noisy Anglo-American wing – willing to pass stunningly powerful resolutions allowing missile strikes against murderous leaders.

Both resolution 1973 on Libya and resolution 1975 on Ivory Coast give external forces the authority to take "all necessary" measures to protect civilians from violence – practically a carte blanche.

A Western diplomat at the UN last night said the resolutions showed members were taking seriously the "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine, adopted in 2006, promising "timely and decisive action" against atrocities.

"TV pictures and the threat of humanitarian catastrophe have made people not want to wait for massacres to happen, as in Rwanda," he said, in language strikingly reminiscent of the Blair-Clinton era.

The diplomat said that crucial in both cases had been the endorsement of action by the respective regional authorities – on Libya, the Arab League and on Ivory Coast, Ecowas and the African Union.

"It's very difficult if you're Russia or China to say 'no' if the Arabs and the Africans themselves are saying 'yes'," he said.

Also important has been the belligerence of Paris. The site of the Chirac-era "Non!" has become gung-ho, ensuring military – and symbolic – backing from the European mainland.

While Mr Obama has stayed almost invisible, the domestically embattled Nicolas Sarkozy has taken personal "ownership" of both interventions, rushing out his statements before anyone else.

It may not last. "There will be a price to pay for rushing these things through," the diplomat said. "The Indians are very unhappy and agreed only reluctantly."

But for the time being, the "something must be done" attitude of the late 1990s – and talk of a single-willed "international community" – has made a surprise return to New York's Turtle Bay.

UN (and France) move to stop another bloodbath in Ivory Coast

Humanitarian intervention seems to be firmly back on the agenda these days—first NATO and a few Arab partners in Libya, now France and the UN working together in the Ivory Coast. The Independent this morning has a convenient summary of developments overnight:

The United Nations and France joined the offensive to dislodge Ivory Coast's presidential pariah Laurent Gbagbo last night, launching air strikes against forces loyal to the man who has refused to cede power after losing an election.

The battle for Abidjan took on an unprecedented international aspect as the UN responded to days of attacks against its peacekeepers by stretching its mandate to protect civilians to the maximum with a show of force. ...

... In what appeared to be a premeditated move to support the forces of Mr Ouattara, France quickly authorised its military to join in the UN campaign. Last night, the attack was intensified with rockets fired at targets close to Mr Gbagbo's official residence in Abidjan.

Ivory Coast's rival presidents have been locked for days in a violent stand-off in the commercial capital, with hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped amid the fighting.

The sudden escalation came after diplomats in New York confirmed warnings by the UN's special representative to Ivory Coast, Choi Young-jin, that peacekeepers were planning to use "air assets" to fire back at Gbagbo forces who have wounded 11 UN personnel in recent days.

An especially strongly worded resolution passed last week by the UN Security Council condemned "in the strongest terms the recent escalation of violence throughout the country which could amount to crimes against humanity". The unanimous resolution also stressed the Council's "full support" for the UN peacekeeping force in Ivory Coast "to use all necessary means to carry out its mandate to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence... including to prevent the use of heavy weapons against the civilian population."

 Read the rest of the article in an effort to gain good insight into this developing current example of outside intervention motivated by humanitarian concerns.

New Statesman: Ethical dimensions of interventionist foreign policy

John Stuart Mill (lived 1806-1873)

Jason Cowley in today's New Statesman has an excellent article pointing up the dangers inherent in the idea of liberal intervention—such as we have seen in Libya today.

Cowley suggests that an essay by the key liberal thinker John Stuart Mill, first published in 1859, offers keen insight into the thinking behind the west’s UN-backed air strikes...

Offering an argument against this particular intervention, Cowley joins the long-dead Mills in doubting the necessity, the utility and the altruism in going to war against the Gaddafi regime:

The art of successful foreign policy is the art of measuring competing objectives; of knowing when to intervene (as in Kosovo in 1999 and Sierra Leone in 2000) and when not to (Iraq in 2003). Under Tony Blair, liberal interventionism itself became a kind of absolutist dogma. For Blair, there was a "moral obligation" to intervene "to make the world better". Emboldened by the success of his action in Sierra Leone to defeat the militias that had laid waste to an entire nation, and the Nato-led assault on Serbia during the Kosovo war, Blair wrongfully supported the Americans in their illegal war in Iraq. The inconsistencies of his positions abounded. Why intervene in Iraq and not in, say, Iran or Darfur? Similarly, why now should we intervene in Libya and not in Yemen, where civilians are being murdered by an autocrat every bit as repugnant as Gaddafi?

Perhaps we should turn to the great liberal philosopher J S Mill for help. In 1859, writing against the backdrop of the Crimean war, the Indian mutiny and the construction of the Suez Canal, Mill published an essay titled "A Few Words on Non-intervention", still one of the best I have read on the subject. Mill was not opposed to all foreign adventurism. As a servant of imperialism, he believed in the "civilising" mission of the British empire, but he set limits on when a state should intervene in the internal affairs of another, especially during a civil war or revolt. Mill was conscious that any foreign intervention would be viewed from the outside as an act not of humanitarianism, but of cynical self-interest. It's all about the oil! He believed that if a people did not have "a sufficient love of liberty to be able to wrest it from merely domestic oppressors, the liberty which is bestowed on them by other hands rather than their own, will have nothing real, nothing permanent".

Mill continued: "When the contest is only with native rulers, and with such native strength as those rulers can enlist in their defence, the answer I should give to the question of the legitimacy of intervention is, as a general rule, No."

No people, Mill thought, "ever was or remained free, but because it was determined to be so . . . If a people - especially one whose freedom has not yet become prescriptive - does not value it sufficiently to fight for it, and maintain it against any force which can be mustered within the country, even by those who have the command of the public revenue, it is only a question of how few years or months that people will be enslaved."

Unlike in Sierra Leone, where militias were supported by an outside agent - the Liberian warlord Charles Taylor - or Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians were struggling against the aggression of a Greater Serbia, the struggle of the Libyan rebels is against a native ruler. How long would they have been prepared to continue the freedom fight? We shall never know, because of the haste with which the western powers have rushed to intervene as they seek to police the earth, ghosts orbiting forever lost.

A useful article, providing important reasoned balance in the current intervention debate and the practical application of liberalism as an approach to global politics. Take the time to read the whole piece!

Economist Daily Chart: Behind the Big Push (Libya)

France and Britain led the diplomatic push for military action against Libya. The Arab League's vote, on March 12th, to call on the United Nations to enforce a no-fly zone was crucial in securing international legitimacy. The Americans were initially hesitant but were eventually won around. So much is familiar to observers of the unfolding Libya story. But what of the other diplomatic players? Why did China and Russia, both of whom are traditionally hostile to military intervention in sovereign affairs, abstain in the UN Security Council vote authorising action? Why did David Cameron work so hard to bring the South Africans on board? And just what are the Turks up to? The Economist's interactive map explains:

Guardian Comment: Kosovo - a template for disaster

David Gibbs in The Guardian's Comment is Free section argues today that the idea that Kosovo is a model for humanitarian intervention in Libya is based on a series of myths...

This is important reading for us as the NATO bombing of Serb forces in Kosovo to protect ethnic Albanians in the late 1990s is often cited as a successful example of humanitarian intervention. Current events in Libya are heightening the debate over the use of the R2P (Responsibility to Protect) doctrine. There are also long-held concerns as to just how effective just air power can be in resolving issues over the long term.

An introductory excerpt:

As they weigh up whether to support the attack on Muammar Gaddafi's regime, some western commentators are taking comfort from the 1999 Nato air war against Serbia, which is widely viewed as a successful humanitarian mission that protected Kosovans from Serbian aggression. Moreover it was done at low cost to the intervening powers, who suffered no combat casualties. And ultimately it led to the ousting of Serbia's villainous leader, Slobodan Milosevic. The Libya intervention, it is hoped, will have a similarly positive outcome.

In reality, Kosovo presents little basis for optimism with regard to Libya. Its success is based on a series of myths.

Guardian: A no-fly zone over Libya? The case for and against

As the UN Security Council currently debates the issue, Julian Borger in a balanced article appearing in The Guardian today looks at the arguments for and against implementing a no-fly zone over Libya.

Definitely worth a read for our most current example of (possible) intervention! Particularly useful for those studying Global Issues is the article's exploration of arguments concerning the notion of ‘humanitarian intervention’ and R2P, while providing some historical background as to how the doctrine developed.

Guardian: Soft power best way for West to intervene in Libya

Simon Tisdall in today's Guardian reviews the various "hard power" options open to a West confronted by growing evidence of the Libyan regime's treatment of protesters and rebels. In his opinion, none are satisfactory, leading to a conclusion is the only viable alternative that will have long-term and less-damaging (to the West) results...

Hard power possibilities: no-fly zone; targeted missile strikes; arms drops to rebels; covert operations (including special forces)...

The remaining, simpler options are easily the best – and easiest to choose. They include co-ordinated international diplomatic efforts to talk to opposition leaders, build personal and political ties with the Benghazi council, advise on organisation and outreach as rebel-held territory expands, and help create a roadmap towards a post-Gaddafi, democratic future. Soft power options also involve stepping up immediate humanitarian relief operations and evolving plans for long-term development assistance.

....

Meanwhile, spreading the word that western countries are there to help, not to take over or subvert the revolution, is vital. Gaddafi has been using propaganda to great effect. A media counter-offensive is overdue. Such methods take longer and are less dramatic than other options. And they must sometimes be combined with "hard power", for example to protect humanitarian transport corridors with air power. But because they are non-confrontational and must be negotiated they have a greater chance of achieving lasting change.

This represents a useful article for A-Level students trying to understand the difference between "soft" and "hard" power in the modern world.

Read the whole thing.