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The disastrous Libya intervention

The disastrous Libya intervention
Published 26 Feb 2015   Follow @SamRoggeveen

University of Texas academic Alan Kuperman, a specialist on humanitarian military intervention, has a scathing essay (paywalled) in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs:

In retrospect, Obama’s intervention in Libya was an abject failure, judged even by its own standards. Libya has not only failed to evolve into a democracy; it has devolved into a failed state. Violent deaths and other human rights abuses have increased severalfold. Rather than helping the United States combat terrorism, as Qaddafi did during his last decade in power, Libya now serves as a safe haven for militias affiliated with both al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). The Libya intervention has harmed other U.S. interests as well: undermining nuclear nonproliferation, chilling Russian cooperation at the UN, and fueling Syria’s civil war.?

Despite what defenders of the mission claim, there was a better policy available—not intervening at all, because peaceful Libyan civilians were not actually being targeted. Had the United States and its allies followed that course, they could have spared Libya from the resulting chaos and given it a chance of progress under Qaddafi’s chosen successor: his relatively liberal, Western-educated son Saif al-Islam. Instead, Libya today is riddled with vicious militias and anti-American terrorists—and thus serves as a cautionary tale of how humanitarian intervention can backfire for both the intervener and those it is intended to help.?

Also in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, an essay co-authored by Interpreter contributor Tom Switzer, who writes with Bates Gill on the deepening of the US-Australia alliance

...for Washington, the U.S.–Australian partnership has become a special relationship with few equivalents in the world. But few outside a small circle of policy elites seem to have noticed.



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