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The Times (London), UK
October 22, 2011 Saturday
Edition 1; Scotland
Lessons of Libya
The campaign by Nato against Gaddafi should not be interpreted as a
charter for interventionism, but it was right to protect a captive
population from a terrible fate
Conservatism, wrote Disraeli, disregards Prescription and shrinks from
Principle. There are good reasons that David Cameron has conspicuously
not advanced the defeat of the Gaddafi regime as a broader
justification for military interventionism.
Foreign policy doctrines are impossible to pursue with consistency,
for each case is unlike any other. Intervention in Libya was about
Libya, and the welfare and lives of its citizens. It was not about
Syria or Zimbabwe, where external military intervention against
murderous tyranny is no practical option.
But while the inclination of statesmen to derive broad principles from
specific circumstances should be resisted, this much can be said
reliably. The decision by Mr Cameron to commit British Forces to the
campaign in Libya was brave and right. It protected Libyans from a
regime that threatened wholesale slaughter, preserved the political
space in which protesters throughout the region are demanding liberty,
and enhanced the security of the Western democracies by deposing a
ruler who promoted and suborned terrorism. It was no charter for
interventionism; it was simply a just and necessary intervention.
As Gaddafi met political protest not with accommodation or abdication
but by military assault, The Times urged the British Government to
stop him. We said that "economic sanctions and the freezing of assets
are symbolically valuable but they will not depose a despot who has
supped full with horrors". We wanted Britain and its allies to "show a
determination to remove Colonel Gaddafi, by means of a no-fly zone,
and a willingness to shoot down his planes and arm the rebels". Mr
Cameron, President Sarkozy and President Obama might have decided that
the risks to their respective domestic political positions were too
great to mount a military operation. They resolved otherwise. Nato
decision-makers and the Armed Forces deserve great credit. (Those
officials, it should be recalled, included Liam Fox.) War is terrible
and an accounting of Nato's intervention will surely reveal a greater
human cost than is now known. Almost inevitably, not all of Nato's
airstrikes succeeded. There have been cases of a malfunctioning
missile hitting a civilian area in Tripoli and an accidental strike
against the forces fighting Gaddafi. Yet the sorties against Gaddafi's
forces were mounted with technologies that allowed precise targeting
and were conducted with scrupulous concern for civilian life. There is
a presumption of state sovereignty in international affairs. But
sovereignty is not absolute. The last years of the 20th century were
marked by genocide against the Kurds of Iraq and the Muslim population
of Bosnia, in which intervention by the West carried risks but was
never tried. Belatedly and rightly, Nato did intervene in Kosovo in
1999, when Slobodan Milosevic resurrected the practice known, in an
appalling euphemism, as "ethnic cleansing". Kosovan Albanians suffered
great hardship but were spared the fate of Bosnian Muslims.
There is a sobering history of Western dilatoriness and denial when
confronted with evidence of mass-murderous intent by tyrannies against
their domestic captive populations. Samantha Power, now a member of
the Obama Administration, wrote about it in terrifying detail in an
awardwinning book published in 2003 entitled "A Problem from Hell":
America and the Age of Genocide. Confronted with Turkey's depredations
against the Armenians in the First World War, and the more recent
genocides in Cambodia, Iraqi Kurdistan, Rwanda and Bosnia, Western
officials knew but did not act, and rationalised their inaction.
This time was different. The prospect of genocide was recognised in
time and a terrible future averted. This was a good deed in a weary
world; it will stand to Mr Cameron's credit.
From: Baghdasarian
October 22, 2011 Saturday
Edition 1; Scotland
Lessons of Libya
The campaign by Nato against Gaddafi should not be interpreted as a
charter for interventionism, but it was right to protect a captive
population from a terrible fate
Conservatism, wrote Disraeli, disregards Prescription and shrinks from
Principle. There are good reasons that David Cameron has conspicuously
not advanced the defeat of the Gaddafi regime as a broader
justification for military interventionism.
Foreign policy doctrines are impossible to pursue with consistency,
for each case is unlike any other. Intervention in Libya was about
Libya, and the welfare and lives of its citizens. It was not about
Syria or Zimbabwe, where external military intervention against
murderous tyranny is no practical option.
But while the inclination of statesmen to derive broad principles from
specific circumstances should be resisted, this much can be said
reliably. The decision by Mr Cameron to commit British Forces to the
campaign in Libya was brave and right. It protected Libyans from a
regime that threatened wholesale slaughter, preserved the political
space in which protesters throughout the region are demanding liberty,
and enhanced the security of the Western democracies by deposing a
ruler who promoted and suborned terrorism. It was no charter for
interventionism; it was simply a just and necessary intervention.
As Gaddafi met political protest not with accommodation or abdication
but by military assault, The Times urged the British Government to
stop him. We said that "economic sanctions and the freezing of assets
are symbolically valuable but they will not depose a despot who has
supped full with horrors". We wanted Britain and its allies to "show a
determination to remove Colonel Gaddafi, by means of a no-fly zone,
and a willingness to shoot down his planes and arm the rebels". Mr
Cameron, President Sarkozy and President Obama might have decided that
the risks to their respective domestic political positions were too
great to mount a military operation. They resolved otherwise. Nato
decision-makers and the Armed Forces deserve great credit. (Those
officials, it should be recalled, included Liam Fox.) War is terrible
and an accounting of Nato's intervention will surely reveal a greater
human cost than is now known. Almost inevitably, not all of Nato's
airstrikes succeeded. There have been cases of a malfunctioning
missile hitting a civilian area in Tripoli and an accidental strike
against the forces fighting Gaddafi. Yet the sorties against Gaddafi's
forces were mounted with technologies that allowed precise targeting
and were conducted with scrupulous concern for civilian life. There is
a presumption of state sovereignty in international affairs. But
sovereignty is not absolute. The last years of the 20th century were
marked by genocide against the Kurds of Iraq and the Muslim population
of Bosnia, in which intervention by the West carried risks but was
never tried. Belatedly and rightly, Nato did intervene in Kosovo in
1999, when Slobodan Milosevic resurrected the practice known, in an
appalling euphemism, as "ethnic cleansing". Kosovan Albanians suffered
great hardship but were spared the fate of Bosnian Muslims.
There is a sobering history of Western dilatoriness and denial when
confronted with evidence of mass-murderous intent by tyrannies against
their domestic captive populations. Samantha Power, now a member of
the Obama Administration, wrote about it in terrifying detail in an
awardwinning book published in 2003 entitled "A Problem from Hell":
America and the Age of Genocide. Confronted with Turkey's depredations
against the Armenians in the First World War, and the more recent
genocides in Cambodia, Iraqi Kurdistan, Rwanda and Bosnia, Western
officials knew but did not act, and rationalised their inaction.
This time was different. The prospect of genocide was recognised in
time and a terrible future averted. This was a good deed in a weary
world; it will stand to Mr Cameron's credit.
From: Baghdasarian