Libyan Civil War, Term Paper Example

In early 2011, a wave of popular protests swept the Arab world, toppling dictatorial regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, and sparking a civil war in Libya.

The Libyan conflict began with a popular protest: on February 15-16, 2011, Libyan police forcefully dispersed a sit-in protest demanding “the release of a lawyer representing the families of prisoners gunned down in a Tripoli prison in 1996” (France-Presse, “Revolt”, para. “February 15-16”). The next day, demonstrators on the popular social networking site Facebook called for “’A Day of Rage’ against Muammar Qaddafi’s regime” (France-Presse, para. “February 17”). Thereafter, events escalated quickly, as a wave of protest became the groundswell of a popular uprising: in five days, the demonstrators had seized control of the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, the country’s second-largest (Kirkpatrick and El-Naggar para. 1). In those five days alone, protests swept Libya, reaching all the way to the capital of Tripoli (para. 1). Also on February 20 came reports that Gaddafi was using mercenaries from other African nations to bolster his own security forces, in a crackdown that was already claiming a considerable body count (France-Press “Revolt” para. “February 20”).

Even as the uprising gained momentum in those February days, Gaddafi’s regime was undermined from within by high-level defections: France-Presse reported that “Libya’s envoy to the Arab League says he quit to ‘join the revolution’”; the next day, February 21, “Tripoli’s ambassador to Delhi [India]” and “a diplomat in Beijing” also defected (“Revolt” paras. “February 20”-“February 21”). As early as February 23, Black reported that “damaging defections by senior regime figures and key military commanders and units” were leaving Gaddafi “increasingly isolated” (para. 1). According to Libyan and Arab sources, “the biggest blow to Gaddafi so far… [was] the defection of his interior minister and veteran loyalist, Abdel-Fatah Younes al-Obeidi, who called on the army… to ‘serve the people and support the revolution and its legitimate demands’” (para. 6). Moreover, tribal groups, notably “tribes in the Azzintan and Nalut areas” in the west of the country, also deserted Gaddafi (para. 5). According to Black, “Benghazi and much of the east of the country have now been lost to the government”, with protests erupting in Misurata, Libya’s third-largest city, located in western Libya on the Gulf of Sirte (between Tripoli and Gaddafi’s own birthplace, the town of Sirte) (para. 3). Black wrote that “violence was reported in Sebrata and Zawiya… also in western Libya and closer to Tripoli” (para. 3).

An increasingly-beleaguered Gaddafi responded with promises of retribution: he would “execute his enemies and fight to the ‘last drop’ of his blood,”; he would “purge Libya ‘house by house’ and ‘inch by inch’” (Barker paras. 1-2). Meanwhile, Barker wrote, rebels in the west of the country were actively destroying all symbols of the hated dictator, even as reports from the east indicated that “government troops have openly defied the regime and joined the protestors in raising the old pre-Gaddafi Libyan flag” (paras. 3-5, 7). The dictator’s efforts to put down the uprising with military force by bombing Benghazi were set at naught when “the crew bailed out of the aircraft after taking off from Tripoli” (para. 8).

By early March, however, the initially meteoric success of the resistance was quickly giving way to a tooth-and-nail struggle between the rebels and Gaddafi’s paramilitary security forces and African mercenaries (NewsCore para. 7). The death toll continued to mount as “battles between troops loyal to… Gaddafi and rebel forces seesawed back and forth in both eastern and western parts of the country” (para. 7). On March 6, NewsCore reported that “at the same time as renewed fighting erupted, the self-proclaimed national council—the opposition’s newly formed government—held its first formal meeting in… Benghazi” (para. 9). The rebellion now had the beginnings of its own government, and not a moment too soon: although M&C New reported on March 11^th that the rebels “claimed victory in the northern central town of Ras Lanuf”, “there were reports that Gaddafi’s troops were staging a counter-attack and that the fight for the town… was far from over” (paras. 1-2). Within days came reports that Gaddafi’s forces had reversed many, even most, of the rebels’ gains: on March 13^th France-Presse reported that “Libyan rebels… retreated from another key town [Brega] under heavy shelling… as Moamer Khadhafi loyalists swept closer towards the main opposition-held city of Benghazi” (“Gaddafi” para. 1). With the recapture of Brega, Gaddafi’s forces were poised to strike at Ajdabiya, “the last rebel-held town before Benghazi”, and from Ajdabiya “there is also a straight desert road to the oil port of Tobruk” (paras. 7-8).

But just when Gaddafi seemed poised to stamp out the rebellion and restore his grasp on power, NATO intervened, bombarding Gaddafi’s emplacements and imposing a no-fly zone. As Abbas reported on March 19^th, even as “Gaddafi’s troops… pushed into the outskirts of Benghazi,” French president Sarkozy “said an operation supported by France, Britain, the United States and Canada, and backed by Arab nations, was halting air attacks by Gaddafi’s forces and would continue unless the Libyan leader ceased fire” (paras. 1, 4). Gaddafi was quick to denounce this as “’colonial, crusader’ aggression” and issue a renewed call to his supporters to take up arms in order “’to defend the independence, unity and honor of Libya’” (paras. 4-5). The stated aim of this allied intervention was to halt Gaddafi’s attacks on civilians, in accordance with a resolution of the UN Security Council (Golovnina and Georgy sec. “Necessary Means” paras. 1-2). In the words of British Prime Minister David Cameron, “’Colonel Gaddafi has made this happen… We cannot allow the slaughter of civilians to continue’” (para. 3). U.S. President Obama also stated that the intervention was “’an international effort to protect Libyan civilians’”, and that the U.S. was “acting in support of allies, who would lead the enforcement of a no-fly zone to stop Gaddafi’s attacks on rebels” (“U.S. Says” paras. 3-4). Moreover, President Obama repeatedly insisted that “’we will not deploy any U.S. troops on the ground’” (para. 4). Indeed, France and the UK, rather than the U.S., took “a lead role in pushing for international intervention in Libya” (para. 1).

These, then, are the three key players in the Libyan Civil War: Gaddafi and his loyalists, the resistance, now led by its National Council in Benghazi, and the NATO effort. The Libyan dictator has made it amply clear that he will do literally anything to cling to power and destroy the resistance: as seen, he has already tried massacres. The resistance’s interim National Council, on the other hand, has articulated its “vision for rebuilding the democratic state of Libya”, a plan that calls for “a modern, free and united state”, with legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, suffrage for all Libyans of voting age, political, religious and cultural pluralism, and guaranteed freedom of expression (Guardian paras. 1-9). Although NATO’s stated aim was the protection of Libyan civilians, and not the overthrow of Gaddafi per se, on March 7^th Fisk reported that the U.S. had “asked Saudi Arabia if it can supply weapons to the rebels in Benghazi” (para. 1). On June 29^th, Pineau and Irish reported that “France provided weapons, munitions and food to Libyan rebels in the Western Mountains in early June to prevent troops loyal to Muammar Gaddafi from overrunning the region” (para. 1). Clearly, the allied powers have an active interest in not only bringing the conflict to an end, but also assuring that it ends with the downfall of Gaddafi’s regime.

The international relations theories of neorealism, neoliberalism, and neoconservatism offer widely-divergent analyses of the Libyan conflict. A cardinal tenet of Waltz’s neorealism is that systems, such as political systems, “are composed of a structure and their [own] interacting units” (Elman 13). According to Waltz, “political structures have three elements: an ordering principle (anarchic or hierarchical), the character of the units (functionally alike or differentiated), and the distribution of capabilities” (Waltz, ctd. in Elman 13). From the neorealist perspective, the ordering principle of the international system is “anarchy, and the principle of self-help means that all of the units remain functionally alike” (13). This leaves but a single structural variable, namely the “distribution of capabilities, with the main distinction falling between multipolar and bipolar systems” (13). For Waltz, the conventional Realist explanations of a Hobbesian human nature and “state interests in a condition of anarchy” were inadequate: his argument was that it was “the international system itself which compels states to preserve their security by constantly building up their power” (Burchill, ctd. in Daddow 94).

This neorealist emphasis on state security by means of the constant accrual of power suggests a ready analysis of the Libyan conflict on many levels: for Gaddafi, the preservation of his regime (by any measure a despotic and repressive one), necessitated coercive, repressive measures. Faced with a groundswell of popular opposition sweeping his country, and undermined by high-profile defections from within his regime, the Libyan dictator responded by rallying his supporters and attempting to quash the resistance with massacres. For the neorealist, NATO’s intervention might demonstrate the neorealist concept of state competition: either states “calculate how to act to their best advantage”, or they fail to do so and are “selected out of the system” (Elman 13). Another state behavioral paradigm is the concept of established norms: “states can decide to follow norms because they calculate it to their advantage or because the norms become internalized” (13). Gaddafi’s Libya has long been seen as a ‘rogue state’, with the dictator’s support of terrorism—notably the “bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie Scotland in 1988” (News-Basics para. “Qaddafi and Terrorism”). Gaddafi has competed in ways that have left him isolated—at least until his about-face after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, when “he publicly renounced terrorism, and paid nearly $3 billion to the families of the Pan Am 103 victims” (para. “Qaddafi and Terrorism”). His heavy-handed response to the rebellion gave the allied powers the rationale they needed to seek his downfall; however, mindful of painful lessons in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. was careful to stress its own supporting role, and promised not to send in ground troops—thereby seeking advantage against Gaddafi without engendering the risks of another protracted ground war in the Islamic world.

Neoliberalism offers points of similarity to neorealism, with its principles of states as the “primary units of analysis”; the concept of states as “rational-unitary actors”, and the anarchical international system (Leonard 76). However, there are three other foundational principles of neoliberalism: the idea that “complementary interests exist among states, therefore cooperation is possible”; that “relative gains are conditional”, and that “hegemony is not a necessary factor for cooperation” (76). The main difference, as Leonard explains, is that “realist thought is a power-based theory, while neoliberalism is interest-based” (76). As Daddow explains, the cardinal advance of neoliberalism over conventional liberalism was “the concept of international regimes”, not only “international organizations such as the EU but also… the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)… more basic international economic agreements that helped shape and regulate state behavior” (p. 97). For neoliberals, these international regimes and institutions “not only facilitate co-operation but help states make more rational choices about the outcomes of their cooperation because states involved in these institutions are both less likely and less able to cheat by reneging on commitments” (98). A key principle here is the concept of absolute vs. relative gains: for the neorealist, “the relative place of states within the international system” is truly foundational to any consideration of state behavior (98). Put another way, “states will be wary of cooperating if they fear other states may benefit more than they do” (98).

For the neoliberal, the Libyan Civil War demonstrates these international regimes consummately. Gaddafi’s reluctance to abide by international regimes during the 1970s and 1980s can be readily explained by referencing Cold War politics: he engaged in asymmetrical warfare with his terrorist attacks as a means of securing a relative place for Libya in the international system, one that would keep it out of the entangling orbits of either major superpower, the U.S. or the USSR. Gaddafi’s actions against his own people violated key tenets of international regimes on the rights of citizens and the acceptable uses of force by governments and, given his long-standing history, it is small wonder indeed that NATO has sought to aid the rebellion against him. The allies, by contrast, demonstrate the neoliberal concept of an international regime: cooperation in the interests of removing a dictator who has long been a thorn in the collective side of the West and of other Arab leaders, especially the Saudi royals—given that Gaddafi attempted to kill the Saudi king Abdullah in 2010 (Fisk para. 1).

Finally, neoconservatism, a “strictly American” theory of international relations, consists of both “a power strand and a moral strand”: as Rhoades explains, the neoconservatives argue for “the maintenance of American power” in a unipolar world system—and to this they add the moral argument that this state of affairs is good for the world (14, 17-19). For neoconservatives, American power carries with it the responsibility to “face down the international ‘nasties,’ if for no other reason than because we are the only nation that can” (19). For the neoconservative, “only the Western powers have the moral capacity to responsibly police the globe” (19). From this, it might seem that the Libyan intervention is a neoconservative’s dream scenario: the U.S. and its allies facing down yet another rogue dictator, a dictator attempting to brutally quash a popular pro-democracy movement, no less. The Libyan intervention would seem to accord with the most foundational tenets of neoconservatism: the moral responsibility that the U.S. has to take action against a tyrant in order to secure democracy. However, the Libyan intervention is not the kind of U.S.-led, largely unilateral enterprise that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq under George W. Bush were: it is multilateral, and neoconservatives distrust multilateralism intensely (Rhoades 22). Moreover, it comes at a time when the economic and military capabilities of the United States are already severely strained, due to the recession and the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, for the neoconservative, the NATO intervention is not an effective demonstration of American power acting in the capacity of benevolent hegemon: rather, it is an acquiescence to multilateralism, a tacit sign of American weakness that bodes ill for an Americo-centric international order.

Over the course of the summer, the Libyan Civil War was largely considered a stalemate, a situation unpalatable to neoliberals, neorealists, and neoconservatives alike (Humphrey para. 1). Since late July, however, new reports indicate that the resistance may be recovering its momentum, with advances “along the Nafusa Mountains, west of Misrata, and even into Brega” in the east (para. 1). Still more recently, Al-Jazeera reported a “two-pronged (rebel) offensive in Western Libya”, with promising signs that the rebels may be able to sever Gaddafi’s supply lines (paras. 1-5). Al-Jazeera also reported indications that Gaddafi’s forces may be weakening, while popular support for the rebellion within Gaddafi-occupied areas remains strong (para. 10). And according to Beatty, “an imprisoned Libyan army colonel who surrendered to the rebel forces two months ago” said that Gaddafi’s regime “is riven with division and in the process of collapse” (para. 1). All of these signs point to the triumph of the Libyan rebels and Gaddafi’s ouster: Gaddafi has lost many key bases of support, many high-ranking officials, much of his offensive capabilities and no small amount of his country. It seems increasingly likely that the Libyan people will finally succeed in overthrowing their long-reigning tyrant.

Works Cited

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