The North Atlantic Treaty Organization And Libya

On March 17, 2011, a month after the beginning of the Libyan revolution, with up to dead 2,000 civilians, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) decided on backing a no-fly zone over Libya and authorized "all necessary measures" to protect civilians. While France, Great Britain, and the United States took immediate military action using air and missile strikes, considerations to hand over military actions to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) emerged within days of the operation. On March 22 2012, NATO agreed to enforce the arms embargo against Libya; 2 days later, it announced to take over all military aspects of the UNSC 1973. On March 31, 2012, Operation UNIFIED PROTECTOR (OUP) began. OUP turned out to be one of NATO's shorter, and seemingly also less controversial, missions. Mandated by both the League of Arab States and the UN as the regime of Colonel Qaddafi was launching assaults on peacefully demonstrating citizens, its aim was to protect civilians from the air and sea.

On March 17, 2011, a month after the beginning of the Libyan revolution, with up to dead 2,000 civilians, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) decided on backing a no-fly zone over Libya and authorized "all necessary measures" to protect civilians. While France, Great Britain, and the United States took immediate military action using air and missile strikes, considerations to hand over military actions to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) emerged within days of the operation. On March 22 2012, NATO agreed to enforce the arms embargo against Libya; 2 days later, it announced to take over all military aspects of the UNSC 1973. On March 31, 2012, Operation UNIFIED PROTECTOR (OUP) began. OUP turned out to be one of NATO's shorter, and seemingly also less controversial, missions. Mandated by both the League of Arab States and the UN as the regime of Colonel Qaddafi was launching assaults on peacefully demonstrating citizens, its aim was to protect civilians from the air and sea. Described as a "war of choice" rather than a "war of necessity," NATO achieved its goals more by accident than by design, according to some critics. The lessons which can be drawn from OUP are both military and political in nature. The overestimation of air power as a result of "no boots on the ground" might be a dangerous conclusion for future cases; the lack of cultural advice very likely prolonged the mission, while the shortcomings in strategic communication gave input to improve an area that is still new to NATO. The operation also highlighted a strategic dimension the Alliance was not ready to perceive -- that the Mediterranean, and its Southern states, is likely to continue being a source of instability for NATO, particularly after the Arab Spring. In legal terms, the Alliance faced an important communication gap between its legal, and therefore military, mandate -- the legal interpretations of UNSCR 1973 made clear that the operation did not seek to topple Colonel Gaddafi's regime, let alone assassinate him. Its aim was solely the protection of civilians in a situation of internal conflict, and, therefore, it conformed to the norm of "Responsibility to Protect." On the political level, heads of NATO member states made contradictory remarks calling for Gaddafi's departure, thereby compromising the clarity of the mission. Last but not least, the aftermath of NATO's Libya operation was not planned at all as the Libyan National Transitional Council firmly rejected any military personnel on the ground, not even UN observers. As the regime's security forces had virtually imploded, Libya's security therefore fell into the hands of the multiple militias which continued to proliferate after the conflict had ended.

When the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings erupted in Africa, in the first two months of the year 2011, with the chant, 'the people want to bring down the regime', there was hope all over the continent that these rebellions were part of a wider African Awakening. President Ben Ali of Tunisia was forced to step down and fled to Saudi Arabia. Within a month of Ben Ali's departure, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was removed from power by the people, who mobilised a massive revolutionary movement in the country. Four days after the ousting of Mubarak, sections of the Libyan people rebelled in Benghazi. Within days, this uprising was militarised, with armed resistance countered by declarations from the Libyan leadership vowing to use raw state power to root out the rebellion. The first Libyan demonstrations occurred on February 15, 2011, but by February 21 there were reports that innocent civilians were in imminent danger of being massacred by the army. This information was embellished by reports of the political leadership branding the rebellious forces as 'rats'.

This book explores ‘lessons learned’ from the military intervention in Libya by examining key aspects of the 2011 NATO campaign. NATO’s intervention in Libya had unique features, rendering it unlikely to serve as a model for action in other situations. There was an explicit UN Security Council mandate to use military force, a strong European commitment to protect Libyan civilians, Arab League political endorsement and American engagement in the critical, initial phase of the air campaign. Although the seven-month intervention stretched NATO’s ammunition stockpiles and political will almost to their respective breaking points, the definitive overthrow of the Gaddafi regime is universally regarded as a major accomplishment. With contributions from a range of key thinkers and analysts in the field, the book first explains the law and politics of the intervention, starting out with deliberations in NATO and at the UN Security Council, both noticeably influenced by the concept of a Responsibility to Protect (R2P). It then goes on to examine a wide set of military and auxiliary measures that governments and defence forces undertook in order to increasingly tilt the balance against the Gaddafi regime and to bring about an end to the conflict, as well as to the intervention proper, while striving to keep the number of NATO and civilian casualties to a minimum. This book will be of interest to students of strategic studies, history and war studies, and IR in general.

The most powerful military alliance in history, NATO shaped the geopolitical contours of the Cold War and continues to structure the contemporary international system. The NATO agreement is reprinted here with speeches and essential historical documents concerning the alliance’s founding and subsequent evolution. Accompanying essays by major scholars discuss debates about NATO’s evolving governance, its role in nuclear politics, and its appropriate mission during and since the Cold War.

"This report documents civilian casualties in the air campaign by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Libya in 2011. NATO says it took extensive measures to minimize civilian harm, and those measures seem to have had a positive affect: the number of civilian deaths in Libya from NATO strikes was low given the extent of the bombing and the duration of the military campaign. Nevertheless, NATO air strikes killed at least 72 civilians, one-third of them children under 18. To date, NATO has failed to acknowledge these casualties or to examine how and why they occurred."--From back cover.