Responsibility to Protect (interests). The Case of NATO Intervention in Libya
Abstract
The Libyan regime was intervened in 2011 by NATO, after being accused of preparing a “massacre” against its own population. This intervention, led by France and the United States, was made in the name of Responsibility to protect, according to a UN mandate urging its members to use “all necessary means” to avoid “widespread and systematic attacks on the civilian population”. Was this intervention, in fact, driven by moral values and the responsibility to protect the Libyan population? The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that NATO´s intervention resembles a classical “regime change” operation mediated by “material” considerations, and that has little to do with humanitarian considerations. The intervention of NATO would also disrupt the proposals to implement a peaceful change, sweeping away hundreds of thousands of people, making Libya a failed state and provoking the emergence of multiple Islamist armed factions
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