The humanitarian argument for military intervention was the most publically acknowledged and media-fueled argument in western countries. The proponents consisted of the French and British political leaders, and initially reluctant, Obama and Clinton, with a supportive media on their side (Chivvis, 2014: 50). The humanitarian argument consists of international states having the moral and legal responsibility to protect and promote the human rights of citizens in a country when their state does not or cannot protect their basic human rights and thereby loses its sovereign right (Bush et al. 2011: 358).
This narrative was embodied in the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine, adopted in 2005, which was not vetoed by China or Russia in the Security Council, coming as a surprise to many (Bellamy and Williams, 2011: 827). According to Kasaija (2013: 127) supporters of the argument found legitimacy in the backing and push for the intervention from the regional actor, the Arab League. NATO leaders along with western media employed very loaded jargon that portrayed the situation in Libya as detrimental in a very one-sided manner, where the rebels were portrayed as saviors of human rights and the Gaddafi regime as human rights violators (Bush et al., 2011: 113).
The NATO intervention was arguably the direct result of the Gadaffi’s televised but under-researched threat to create a massacre in Benghazi, which influenced the international community to protect the civilians from the “murderous” Gaddafi (Kuperman, 2013). The construction of Gaddafi as the enemy and western states as protectors of Libyan civilian’s rights provided the basis for the argument, however the argument has many flaws in terms of its motivations and outcomes.
Pro-interventionist political leaders used the moral argument of humanitarian intervention and the legal and legitimated argument for the support of the intervention. However, their argument was weak in its construction and outcomes. Although legally the NATO no-fly zone was validated by the UN Security Council, in practice the NATO had fallen victim to mission creep (Tripathi, 2011). Western NATO powers shifted their focus from “protecting civilians” to regime change at the expense of civilians through exceeding the UN mandate (Kuperman 2013: 135).
Beyond the legal legitimacy argument, evidence of regional support is also limited and inaccurate. Although the Arab League was initially supportive of Resolution 1973, NATO had completely sidelined the African Union (AU) because they did not support military intervention (de Waal, 2011). Additionally, a recent report published in 2016 by the British House of Commons has outlined large cracks in the humanitarian rationale behind the intervention. According to their findings, much of the rhetoric surrounding Gaddafi’s violence and violations of human rights was hyperbolized and not backed up by intelligence (House of Commons, 2016). Very little media and political sources were involved in corroborating the allegations of human rights atrocities caused by the pro-government forces and hardly any attention was paid to the human rights violations of the rebels (House of Commons, 2016: 14).
Not only was the intelligence limited and false, the humanitarian argument was also hypocritical. For example, during the “Arab Spring”, the US supported the governments in Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, turning a blind eye to humanitarian violations of these governments on so-called “dissidents” whilst labelling Libya a humanitarian crisis (Bush et al. 2011: 358). According to Brauman (in Dominguez and Pitt-Rashid, 2012) the intervention was a “humanitarian coup d’état.” Western military intervention according to Bricmont (2006) is a form of humanitarian imperialism that uses the discourse of human rights and protection to further imperial ideals. Bricmont (2006: 21) referred to it as the “Trojan horse of western imperialism” and argued that this was also the case for Libya (Bricmont, 2011).
The primary concern of the western intervening powers is not humanitarian but rather a concern for their own imperial geopolitical and economic interests that are under threat (Bush et al., 2011: 364).
