This book explores the contradictions in Britain’s humanitarian and military intervention in Libya and Syria, beginning with the Arab spring in 2010. The book assesses the contradictions between the expressed humanitarian intentions of British military interveners and the impact of their actions on the putative beneficiary states. It demonstrates that, as a result of foreign intervention, both Libya and Syria were rendered non-functional as unitary nations and suffered extensive harm to their people and infrastructure. To evaluate the effectiveness and credibility of humanitarian warfare, the author conducts a thematic analysis of debates on Libya and Syria in the House of Commons. The book provides a detailed study of intentions and motives expressed by Members of Parliament, of consequent British state actions and their outcomes, and of MPs’ reactions to outcomes. It provides ample evidence of duplicity, insincerity, indifference to harm, and ulterior motives for violence that undermine moral claims and support the argument that, although humanitarian warfare may be possible, the leading Western activist states (Britain, France, and the USA) are poorly qualified to carry it out. Illustrating a systemic failure of strategy and accountability in British foreign policy, this book will be of interest to scholars and graduates of Humanitarian Studies, International Relations and Military Studies.

This book offers the first book-length explanation of the UN’s politics of selective humanitarian intervention. Over the past 20 years the United Nations has imposed economic sanctions, deployed peacekeeping operations, and even conducted or authorized military intervention in Somalia, Bosnia, or Libya. Yet no such measures were taken in other similar cases such as Colombia, Myanmar, Darfur—or more recently—Syria. What factors account for the UN’s selective response to humanitarian crises and what are the mechanism that drive—or block—UN intervention decisions? By combining fuzzy-set analysis of the UN’s response to more than 30 humanitarian crises with in depth-case study analysis of UN (in)action in Bosnia and Darfur, as well as in the most recent crises in Côte d’Ivoire, Libya and Syria, this volume seeks to answer these questions.

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.

This book critically analyses the 2011 intervention in Libya arguing that the manner in which the intervention was sanctioned, prosecuted and justified has a number of troubling implications for the both the future of humanitarian intervention and international peace and security.

A unique collaboration providing an analysis of the conflict in Syria, focusing on the integration between legal and political studies.

Examines the complex ethics and politics of humanitarian interventionSince the Cold War, humanitarian interventions have transitioned through a range of stages. These 12 essays focus on the challenges associated with interventions, conflict and attendant human rights violations, unmitigatedand systematic violence, state re-building, and issues associated with human mobility and dislocation. Each chapter is linked to the rest through three defining themes that permeate the book: the evolution of humanitarian interventions in a global era; the limits of sovereignty and the ethics ofinterventions; and the politics of post-intervention: (re)-building and humanitarian engagement.

Responsibility to Protect: Research, bibliography, background. Supplementary volume to the Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty

This book offers a novel and contemporary examination of the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) doctrine from an international legal perspective and analyses how the doctrine was applied within the Libyan and Syrian conflicts as two recent and highly significant R2P cases. The book dissects each of R2P’s three component pillars to examine their international legal underpinnings, drawing upon diverse legal frameworks – including the laws of the UN, laws of international organisations, human rights law, humanitarian law, criminal law, environmental law, and laws of State responsibility – to extract conclusions regarding existing and emerging host and third-State obligations to prevent and react to mass atrocity crimes. It uses this legal grounding to critically examine specific aspects of the Libyan and Syrian R2P cases, engaging with some of the more traditional debates surrounding R2P’s application, most notably those that pertain to the use of force (or lack thereof), but also exploring some of the less-researched non-military methods that were or could have been employed by States and international organisations to uphold the doctrine. Such an analysis captures the diversity in the means and actors through which R2P can be implemented and allows for the extraction of more nuanced conclusions regarding the doctrine’s strengths and limitations, gaps in enforceability, levels of State support, and future trajectory. The book will be of interest to scholars and students in the field of international law and human rights law.

A series of humanitarian tragedies in the 1990s (Somalia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Kosovo) demonstrated the international community's failure to protect civilians in the context of complex emergencies. They were the inspiration for two norms of protection, Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and Protection of Civilians (POC), both deeply rooted in the empathy that human beings have for the suffering of innocent people. Both norms have achieved high-level endorsement: R2P from the 2005 World Summit and its Outcome document (Art. 138-140) and POC from a series of Security Council resolutions. The two norms of protection were instrumental in adopting the Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973 (Libya) and 1975 (Cote d'Ivoire) in the year 2011. Both norms raise concerns of misinterpretation and misuse. They both are developing--sometimes in parallel, sometimes diverging, and sometimes converging--with varying degrees of institutionalization and acceptance. This process is likely to continue for some time, with successes and failures enhancing or retarding that development. This book engages in a profound comparative analysis of the two norms and aims to serve policymakers at different levels (national, regional, and UN), practitioners with protective roles (force commanders, military trainers, strategists, and humanitarian actors), academics and researchers (in international relations, law, political theory, and ethics), civil society, and R2P and POC advocates.

'The Responsibility to Protect' provides a comprehensive view on how this contemporary principle has developed and analyzes how to best apply it to current humanitarian crises.