1 00:00:01,190 --> 00:00:09,650 Such a pleasure to see you all. Back to this seminar by Alan Cooperman on NATO intervention in Libya. 2 00:00:10,670 --> 00:00:15,690 Alan has a really interesting take on this particular event. 3 00:00:15,710 --> 00:00:20,780 He's been writing about humanitarian action, about the limits of humanitarian action. 4 00:00:21,350 --> 00:00:27,319 He's an associate professor of public affairs at University of Texas and has been, as some of you know, 5 00:00:27,320 --> 00:00:37,660 at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, where he teaches in his new role in Texas courses in global policy studies. 6 00:00:37,760 --> 00:00:44,150 Also working. I just realised this today, which is of interest to us on nuclear non-proliferation issues. 7 00:00:45,200 --> 00:00:53,059 But I think the books that that some of you may know about and more the focus of his remarks today, the limits of humanitarian intervention, 8 00:00:53,060 --> 00:01:04,700 his book on Rwanda from 2001, and his co-edited book, Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention, Moral Hazard, Rebellion and Civil War. 9 00:01:04,730 --> 00:01:10,610 So today he's talking about this question of whether Libya is a humanitarian success. 10 00:01:10,940 --> 00:01:14,989 So, Alan, welcome very much. I'm sure we'll have lots of questions. 11 00:01:14,990 --> 00:01:19,250 After all, if you want to help you moderate those of you guys, turn it over to you. 12 00:01:19,820 --> 00:01:26,389 Thank you very much. Well, thanks very much for the invitation and the kind introduction. 13 00:01:26,390 --> 00:01:30,860 And thanks to all of you for for coming. 14 00:01:32,270 --> 00:01:39,200 Iraq, of course, is an institute on ethics, law and armed conflict. 15 00:01:39,350 --> 00:01:49,190 And I'm going to say from the outset, I'm not an expert on ethics and I'm not an expert on law. 16 00:01:50,030 --> 00:02:01,969 So why am I here? I'm here because the topic that I'm going to talk about, which is humanitarian intervention, 17 00:02:01,970 --> 00:02:10,750 the responsibility to protect, and specifically in the case of Libya, what were the consequences, 18 00:02:10,770 --> 00:02:19,700 the literal consequences of the intervention that that topic the consequences of intervention 19 00:02:19,700 --> 00:02:28,219 is essential for thinking about the ethics and the legality of of intervention. 20 00:02:28,220 --> 00:02:36,860 So I think that's why I was I was invited. But as I say, my my specific question is going to be what actually happened? 21 00:02:36,890 --> 00:02:47,150 What actually were the consequences of intervention in Libya last year, in 2011, and what are the implications of that? 22 00:02:49,100 --> 00:02:56,210 So there is a common narrative about the NATO intervention in Libya last year, 23 00:02:56,570 --> 00:03:05,210 and it may not be the common narrative in this room, but it is certainly the common narrative in my country, the United States. 24 00:03:05,900 --> 00:03:18,050 And you'll see in our presidential election this year that neither party is going to criticise the intervention in Libya. 25 00:03:18,350 --> 00:03:22,580 The only thing they might say is, well, we should have done it more of it or sooner. 26 00:03:22,880 --> 00:03:37,700 But there is broad consensus that the intervention was a smashing success and the common narrative goes as follows that 27 00:03:38,750 --> 00:03:50,960 what occurred in Libya in early 2011 was that there was initially a peaceful nationwide uprising versus a brutal dictator. 28 00:03:52,580 --> 00:04:02,360 In response to that purely peaceful uprising, that dictator Moammar Gadhafi, killed thousands of peaceful protesters in the first three days. 29 00:04:04,250 --> 00:04:15,200 It was only because of Gadhafi's brutal use of force that the peaceful protesters then switched to an armed rebellion in self-defence. 30 00:04:17,000 --> 00:04:29,870 Gadhafi, then counter counter, retaliated by ordering his security forces forces to launch indiscriminate attacks on civilian residential areas, 31 00:04:30,230 --> 00:04:41,720 both using artillery and using air power after Gadhafi's forces beat back the initial rebellion. 32 00:04:44,300 --> 00:04:47,780 And the rebels were concentrated in the town of Benghazi. 33 00:04:49,070 --> 00:04:54,380 Then Gadhafi threatened a bloodbath in this last town. 34 00:04:55,580 --> 00:05:00,590 And in fact, it was considered likely that. 35 00:05:00,630 --> 00:05:06,300 There would be something happening in Benghazi that would be similar to the Rwandan genocide. 36 00:05:06,750 --> 00:05:10,380 And in fact, this analogy was brought up repeatedly at the time. 37 00:05:14,450 --> 00:05:27,200 At that moment, the U.N. authorised and NATO's implemented a humanitarian military intervention that was solely to protect civilians. 38 00:05:31,480 --> 00:05:40,870 The rebels in Libya who were able to regroup after this humanitarian intervention, 39 00:05:41,170 --> 00:05:50,770 then over the course of several months, were able to defeat Gadhafi because of their nationwide popular support. 40 00:05:51,940 --> 00:05:54,970 And so, in conclusion, when we evaluate this intervention, 41 00:05:55,360 --> 00:06:04,210 the popular wisdom is that the NATO intervention prevented a bloodbath in Benghazi and promoted freedom and democracy. 42 00:06:05,890 --> 00:06:10,750 So as I'm originally from New York and what we would say is, so what's not to love? 43 00:06:14,190 --> 00:06:20,770 Okay. The only problem with this narrative is that is every single aspect of it is false. 44 00:06:24,600 --> 00:06:38,840 Okay. So first of all, a couple of errors in the qualitative characterisation of the uprising and of the intervention. 45 00:06:42,020 --> 00:06:48,440 Did Gadhafi actually target peaceful civilians who are engaged in exclusively peaceful protest? 46 00:06:48,950 --> 00:06:52,190 The answer is no. Okay. 47 00:06:53,030 --> 00:07:00,560 Even though that's the way it was reported at the time in most mainstream Western press. 48 00:07:01,940 --> 00:07:08,990 If you look closer at both contemporaneous press accounts and also retrospective press accounts, 49 00:07:09,260 --> 00:07:20,540 what you find out is that the protesters in the main area of protest at the beginning, Benghazi were violent from the first day. 50 00:07:21,650 --> 00:07:26,930 From the first day. They had firearms. They had petrol bombs. 51 00:07:27,710 --> 00:07:53,290 And they used vehicles as weapons. Secondly, the security forces initially did not resort to force except after protesters used violence. 52 00:07:54,490 --> 00:07:57,730 And so we see this in Benghazi. 53 00:07:58,750 --> 00:08:04,990 We certainly see this in Al-Bayda. We see this in Misrata. 54 00:08:06,010 --> 00:08:16,690 And we see this in Tripoli in every single case in those first two days, from the 17th to the 21st of February. 55 00:08:17,740 --> 00:08:21,280 It was the protesters who resorted to violence first. 56 00:08:23,230 --> 00:08:34,900 Then when Gadhafi's forces did turn to violence in reaction to the protesters, violence, initially, the security forces did not shoot to kill. 57 00:08:35,740 --> 00:08:37,870 And we know this two ways. 58 00:08:38,380 --> 00:08:51,460 First of all, we know this from a U.N. report which interviewed former members of Gadhafi's security forces who had later gone over to the rebel side. 59 00:08:51,640 --> 00:08:56,430 So they had no sympathy for Gadhafi. They weren't trying to they were now his enemy. 60 00:08:56,440 --> 00:08:57,580 They had helped defeat him. 61 00:08:58,150 --> 00:09:06,520 But they said at the time when we were working for Gadhafi, he ordered us to shoot to wound these violent protesters, not to shoot to kill. 62 00:09:07,330 --> 00:09:10,270 The second way we know is from medics, Western medics, 63 00:09:10,270 --> 00:09:18,460 who happened to be working in Benghazi and they said we were getting casualties in those first couple of days that had wounds in the legs, 64 00:09:19,000 --> 00:09:31,030 not wounds in the torso. So we're talking about not very, very discriminate sniper fire that is clearly intended to wound, 65 00:09:31,030 --> 00:09:39,220 not to kill, in order to end these protests without a high loss of life after the first few days. 66 00:09:40,360 --> 00:09:48,400 There was also as as the as the protests became more violent and the rebellion escalated, there was more shooting to kill. 67 00:09:48,610 --> 00:09:59,560 And yet and yet the initial death toll was less than 10% of what was initially reported in Western press. 68 00:10:00,280 --> 00:10:06,640 So as I said, the the accounts at the time said that thousands, 69 00:10:06,790 --> 00:10:16,270 thousands of protesters had been killed in the first three days in Benghazi and eastern cities of Libya. 70 00:10:18,970 --> 00:10:23,020 And this you know what? I tried to figure out why this was. 71 00:10:23,020 --> 00:10:35,300 And it turns out it was a mixture of misinformation and disinformation so that some of this was just innocent misinformation. 72 00:10:35,320 --> 00:10:46,930 There was a French doctor who was working in Benghazi and he saw a few people come into his hospital and many were wounded. 73 00:10:47,080 --> 00:10:48,010 Some died. 74 00:10:48,220 --> 00:10:57,850 And he extrapolated and he said, I would think there must be a thousand dead in Benghazi already and another thousand in the eastern cities. 75 00:10:58,150 --> 00:11:02,100 I think he really believed that his name was Buffet. 76 00:11:02,170 --> 00:11:05,740 You can watch him on YouTube still from back then. 77 00:11:05,830 --> 00:11:12,730 And the only problem is he was wrong. He was wrong in the way we know he was wrong is because doctors, 78 00:11:13,360 --> 00:11:21,130 Libyan doctors in Benghazi and Human Rights Watch later reported that in those first three days throughout the entire country, 79 00:11:22,570 --> 00:11:25,910 less than 250 people were killed. Okay. 80 00:11:26,050 --> 00:11:34,270 So not thousands, 250 instead is a combination of misinformation and disinformation. 81 00:11:34,630 --> 00:11:44,710 There was. There were. There was a concerted propaganda effort by supporters of these rebels to exaggerate 82 00:11:45,250 --> 00:11:52,240 the civilian toll in order to encourage Western intervention on behalf of the rebels. 83 00:11:54,130 --> 00:12:02,950 Moreover, when the security forces did resort to deadly force, this is Gadhafi's forces. 84 00:12:03,580 --> 00:12:08,140 They were not indiscriminate attacks on residential areas. 85 00:12:08,260 --> 00:12:12,670 They were highly discriminate attacks on rebels. 86 00:12:13,180 --> 00:12:17,379 How do we know this? Again, from data provided by Human Rights Watch. 87 00:12:17,380 --> 00:12:21,190 And again, Human Rights Watch is not a great sympathiser of Moammar Gadhafi. 88 00:12:21,190 --> 00:12:24,460 Moammar Gadhafi. Right. They're not his PR team. 89 00:12:24,760 --> 00:12:32,200 They don't like Moammar Gadhafi. And yet even their evidence supports this case that he was not indiscriminate. 90 00:12:32,380 --> 00:12:35,140 He was very discriminate. So in the city of Misrata. 91 00:12:36,100 --> 00:12:50,290 Which is where there was the most intense fighting in the first two months of the on the civil war in Libya in the in the city of Misrata. 92 00:12:51,100 --> 00:12:54,400 Human Rights Watch reported in April 2011. 93 00:12:55,180 --> 00:13:02,440 So almost two months into the war that of all the wounded in Misrata, only 3% were women. 94 00:13:06,120 --> 00:13:08,700 There's about 22 out of 900 and something. 95 00:13:09,870 --> 00:13:19,530 So if you're firing indiscriminately into civilian areas, using artillery, using air power, we know who lives in residential areas. 96 00:13:19,680 --> 00:13:26,970 Half of them are men and half of them are women. So if you really engage in indiscriminate fire, that half of the wounded should be women. 97 00:13:27,330 --> 00:13:29,640 But only 3% of the wounded were women. 98 00:13:29,970 --> 00:13:37,740 And what that meant is that Gadhafi's forces were very carefully, indiscriminately targeting rebels, not civilians. 99 00:13:38,850 --> 00:13:45,960 Moreover, in the city, which was, as I said, it had the highest level of fighting for the first two months. 100 00:13:46,200 --> 00:13:56,040 This is a city of 400,000 people. And in the first two months, 257 people were killed out of a population of 400,000. 101 00:13:57,450 --> 00:14:04,470 Okay. Now we have a one star officer from the British Air Force here. 102 00:14:06,660 --> 00:14:12,030 I think he would agree with me that if you have a city of 400,000 and you have 103 00:14:12,330 --> 00:14:18,180 the ability to fire artillery and you have the ability to launch weapons, 104 00:14:18,240 --> 00:14:24,930 munitions, air to ground weapons from the air, you could probably kill 250 civilians in about 5 minutes. 105 00:14:27,480 --> 00:14:31,860 But Gadhafi didn't kill 257 people in 5 minutes. He killed them in two months. 106 00:14:32,490 --> 00:14:42,149 Right. So he was being extraordinarily careful to avoid civilian casualties as 107 00:14:42,150 --> 00:14:51,300 Gadhafi's forces push back the rebels in about the third week of the civil war. 108 00:14:51,510 --> 00:14:57,000 And I'll show you some some of the progression of the war. He recaptured a lot of the cities, 109 00:14:57,810 --> 00:15:09,209 all of the cities except Benghazi and part of Misrata that the rebels had taken control of after he retook control of these cities. 110 00:15:09,210 --> 00:15:14,310 And how many of them did he commit a bloodbath in zero of them? 111 00:15:14,370 --> 00:15:17,700 Did he commit a bloodbath after recapturing the city? 112 00:15:17,910 --> 00:15:25,020 And yet we were told after he recaptured all of these cities with no black bloodbaths, when he recaptured this last city. 113 00:15:25,380 --> 00:15:30,120 Right. If he if he recaptured this last city, Benghazi, there was going to be a bloodbath. 114 00:15:30,750 --> 00:15:35,910 And this was the rationale for why there needed to be a humanitarian intervention. 115 00:15:36,160 --> 00:15:37,440 Now it's possible, right? 116 00:15:37,490 --> 00:15:45,930 It's possible that after not committing a bloodbath in any other recaptured city, then when he got the last city, he would commit a bloodbath. 117 00:15:46,620 --> 00:15:49,080 Right. I've never committed a bloodbath at a lecture. 118 00:15:51,540 --> 00:16:02,339 It's possible that I will today write possible right past action is the perfect predictor of future action, but it's a pretty good predictor. 119 00:16:02,340 --> 00:16:11,190 I think you folks can can relax even though I'm Texas and I'm not carrying concealed or otherwise. 120 00:16:13,560 --> 00:16:28,710 And finally, when Gadhafi's forces approached Benghazi, this last rebel stronghold, all the Western media reported that he had threatened a bloodbath. 121 00:16:29,400 --> 00:16:32,850 He had threatened civilians. In fact, he had not. 122 00:16:33,060 --> 00:16:38,100 Not only had he not done so, he had explicitly said he would not target civilians. 123 00:16:38,610 --> 00:16:47,160 In fact, he said he wouldn't even target rebels who stopped fighting and he wouldn't target rebels who fled. 124 00:16:47,310 --> 00:16:56,130 In fact, he encouraged the rebels to flee. He said, you have free passage eastward to Egypt and you can gain safe haven in Egypt. 125 00:16:56,790 --> 00:17:02,100 He said the only people we will target in Benghazi are rebels who continue to fight us there. 126 00:17:02,910 --> 00:17:09,690 Okay. What he wanted to do was to recapture this last city with as low casualties as possible. 127 00:17:10,410 --> 00:17:22,790 Right. So that's the first of these two qualitative characterisations that was in the common narrative that is incorrect. 128 00:17:22,800 --> 00:17:25,890 That is, was Gadhafi targeting peaceful civilians? 129 00:17:26,010 --> 00:17:29,230 The answer is no. Full stop. 130 00:17:30,880 --> 00:17:43,060 Now the second question. Was the native intervention to protect civilians. 131 00:17:47,330 --> 00:18:01,630 Well. You know, it's possible that when the U.N. authorised it, they really intended it to protect civilians. 132 00:18:02,170 --> 00:18:14,770 And it is also possible that when Naito decided to implement that intervention two days later, that NATO's intended just to protect civilians. 133 00:18:15,460 --> 00:18:18,580 But if you look at how NATO's intervened, 134 00:18:19,870 --> 00:18:28,150 it's clear that this intervention almost immediately transformed from protecting civilians to pursuing regime change. 135 00:18:28,420 --> 00:18:32,920 That is a rebel victory to overthrow the Gadhafi regime. 136 00:18:33,490 --> 00:18:43,390 Why do I say that? Well, first of all, Naito targeted Rich Gadhafi's forces while they were retreating. 137 00:18:44,680 --> 00:18:48,280 Retreating forces are not a threat to civilians. They're just retreating. 138 00:18:49,030 --> 00:18:51,700 They're running away. Okay. 139 00:18:51,820 --> 00:18:59,260 So if you have forces that are threatening civilians and then the forces run away from the civilians, they're no longer a threat to the civilians. 140 00:18:59,260 --> 00:19:01,150 And yet NATO's targeted those forces. 141 00:19:01,960 --> 00:19:15,130 Second of all, NATO's targeted Gadhafi's security forces in in areas that were bastions of support for Gadhafi, including his hometown of Sirte. 142 00:19:16,180 --> 00:19:26,830 So if you have Libyan security forces in a town where all the civilians support the Libyan security forces, 143 00:19:27,070 --> 00:19:30,910 then those living in security forces are clearly not a threat to civilians at all. 144 00:19:32,110 --> 00:19:35,110 And yet NATO's bombed those security forces. 145 00:19:37,520 --> 00:19:53,570 Thirdly, the NATO's coalition both provided intelligence to the rebels to help them win, 146 00:19:55,370 --> 00:20:06,110 provided weapons to elements of the population that supported the rebels and wanted the rebels to win. 147 00:20:07,520 --> 00:20:18,020 And facilitated the arming and training of the rebels by third countries such as Qatar and Sudan and Egypt. 148 00:20:19,490 --> 00:20:22,490 The arming of the rebels by land and sea. 149 00:20:24,200 --> 00:20:28,489 The training of the rebels not in third countries. 150 00:20:28,490 --> 00:20:37,670 But the training in Libya. Training of the rebels by Qatari security forces in Libya. 151 00:20:39,070 --> 00:20:54,860 So clearly, de facto, the NATO intervention was intended to help the rebels overthrow Gadhafi, not merely to protect civilians. 152 00:20:58,690 --> 00:21:07,870 And this is underscored by the fact that when the rebels when when Gadhafi offered cease fires and he offered cease fires repeatedly, 153 00:21:09,490 --> 00:21:13,030 I've I've got this also fairly well documented. 154 00:21:13,420 --> 00:21:16,780 The rebels rejected every single cease fire. 155 00:21:21,050 --> 00:21:21,980 What did Naito do? 156 00:21:23,120 --> 00:21:30,140 Did Naito say, well, we're trying to protect civilians, so therefore we're going to put pressure on the rebels to accept the cease fire? 157 00:21:30,470 --> 00:21:37,580 No, Naito did just the opposite. When the rebels rejected the cease fire, Naito continued to help the rebels. 158 00:21:37,850 --> 00:21:41,270 What did that do? That prolonged and escalated the war. 159 00:21:41,480 --> 00:21:44,180 What did that do that got more civilians killed? 160 00:21:45,980 --> 00:21:53,060 So when it came to a choice between protecting civilians or pursuing regime change, Naito chose pursuing regime change. 161 00:21:54,350 --> 00:21:57,800 So clearly was the Naito intervention to protect civilians? 162 00:21:58,880 --> 00:22:06,260 No. The Naito intervention de facto was to pursue regime change. 163 00:22:06,620 --> 00:22:12,140 That doesn't mean, as I said, that the motivation originally of those who supported the U.N. intervention. 164 00:22:12,330 --> 00:22:21,830 I mean, the U.N. authorisation and those who supported the NAITO implementation, it's quite possible that their motivation was to protect civilians. 165 00:22:22,190 --> 00:22:33,530 But the way that the intervention was actually carried out virtually from the start favoured regime change over the protection of civilians. 166 00:22:33,560 --> 00:22:39,110 In fact, it put more civilians at risk in order to pursue regime change. 167 00:22:46,930 --> 00:22:58,810 Okay. Now, I've talked a bunch about the course of this rebellion and and the intervention, 168 00:22:59,350 --> 00:23:05,799 and I've mentioned a lot of towns and and and several dates and so forth. 169 00:23:05,800 --> 00:23:11,080 And it's all very fresh in my mind that it may be fresh in the minds of a few of you who specialise in this. 170 00:23:11,560 --> 00:23:20,889 But I want to just put some some some maps up here and go through them quickly so that 171 00:23:20,890 --> 00:23:27,580 I can refresh the memories of the rest of you about exactly how the war did progress. 172 00:23:28,330 --> 00:23:28,720 Okay. 173 00:23:29,230 --> 00:23:45,670 So the conflict started with uprisings in five cities in those first few days from February 17th to 19th of 2011, a little bit more than a year ago. 174 00:23:47,890 --> 00:23:55,900 As you can see, four of the cities where these uprisings occurred were in eastern Libya. 175 00:23:57,220 --> 00:24:03,340 One was in western Libya, in Zawiya, and that one was actually peaceful. 176 00:24:03,700 --> 00:24:10,450 Initially, at the start, the ones in eastern Libya were violent from the start. 177 00:24:11,710 --> 00:24:22,750 And so the first thing that this shows us is that this was not a nationwide uprising against a dictator who was universally hated. 178 00:24:23,680 --> 00:24:37,720 What this was was a regional armed rebellion against Gadhafi by tribes that had long been his rival. 179 00:24:38,740 --> 00:24:44,020 There's a long history in Libya of power switching from eastern Libya to western Libya. 180 00:24:44,920 --> 00:24:56,350 And Gadhafi had ruled for 40 plus for 40 years and had favoured tribes in central and western Libya. 181 00:24:57,160 --> 00:25:00,190 And the folks in eastern Libya had long resented it. 182 00:25:00,910 --> 00:25:07,870 Okay. And we can see from the nature and the location of these uprisings that this was a regional and tribal rebellion, 183 00:25:08,260 --> 00:25:13,360 not a nationwide uprising against the dictator as it was portrayed in Western media. 184 00:25:15,130 --> 00:25:25,390 Yes. Several days later, we start to see the emergence of rebels in western Libyan cities, 185 00:25:25,390 --> 00:25:32,230 especially Misrata, another city with a tribal rivalry against Gadhafi and Zuwara. 186 00:25:32,350 --> 00:25:39,819 And we start to see protests in Tripoli that again turn violent almost immediately. 187 00:25:39,820 --> 00:25:44,080 February 20th, the protesters start burning buildings, 188 00:25:44,080 --> 00:25:48,460 and it's only when they start burning government buildings that the government responds with violence. 189 00:25:48,490 --> 00:25:53,170 Until then, the government had refrained from violence against the protesters. 190 00:25:57,270 --> 00:26:04,830 The rebels then gained control of Zawiya in the west and they start to move. 191 00:26:07,030 --> 00:26:11,290 Westward from the east. It's about a weekend. 192 00:26:13,510 --> 00:26:20,060 The Libyan security forces finally sort of wake up and say, oh, my gosh, we have a real armed rebellion going on. 193 00:26:20,080 --> 00:26:25,870 We have folks from the East who are going to try and move west and take control of the whole country. 194 00:26:26,050 --> 00:26:33,200 And so Libyan forces initiate their defence on around March 2nd, but they still haven't gotten their act together. 195 00:26:33,220 --> 00:26:38,360 And so the town where they initiated their defence actually falls to the rebels on March 5th. 196 00:26:38,380 --> 00:26:41,830 And I would call this the high point of the rebellion. 197 00:26:42,670 --> 00:26:45,730 This is about two and a half weeks in. 198 00:26:46,120 --> 00:27:02,170 We see the rebels have gained control of almost the entire eastern half of Libya and then many towns and cities that surround the capital of Tripoli. 199 00:27:03,910 --> 00:27:17,560 But once Libya's security forces got mobilised, this was not a a a level fight between equal forces. 200 00:27:17,770 --> 00:27:31,690 This was a fight between an army, not a great army, but an army that was controlled by Gadhafi versus rebels who had very few weapons, 201 00:27:32,020 --> 00:27:38,170 very little ammunition, almost no training, no cohesion. 202 00:27:38,950 --> 00:27:41,200 This was a lopsided battle. 203 00:27:41,710 --> 00:27:51,550 And as a result, Libya's security forces were able to push back the rebels and eliminate reverse their gains in about a week. 204 00:27:51,910 --> 00:27:57,790 And so we see that very, very quickly in just a couple of days. 205 00:27:58,840 --> 00:28:05,770 If Libya's security forces start pushing back eastward and they regain control of key cities around the capital. 206 00:28:09,490 --> 00:28:16,000 Again, just a few days later, they've now conquered not only reconquered Ras Lanuf and Brega. 207 00:28:16,150 --> 00:28:20,799 They're on the edge of Ajdabiya and then Ajdabiya falls. 208 00:28:20,800 --> 00:28:28,780 So in one week, the rebels have lost control of all the cities that they had taken except for Benghazi. 209 00:28:29,380 --> 00:28:36,790 And now on March 16th, the next day, Libya's security forces come to the gates of Benghazi. 210 00:28:36,790 --> 00:28:42,219 And Gadhafi's son says everything will be over in 48 hours. 211 00:28:42,220 --> 00:28:47,920 That is we recaptured this last rebel held city and the rebellion will be over in 48 hours. 212 00:28:48,490 --> 00:28:51,870 And he was right in my judgement. He was right. That would have been it. 213 00:28:52,420 --> 00:28:56,110 Around March 18th, this thing would have been over. 214 00:28:57,100 --> 00:29:06,970 There were also still a few rebels fighting in Misrata, but they were running out of ammunition and Gadhafi's forces controlled the sea. 215 00:29:07,150 --> 00:29:11,590 There was no way to get ammunition to them. So they were also going to be over in a couple of days. 216 00:29:11,890 --> 00:29:23,290 This thing this war was going to be over around March 18th, except on March 17th, the U.N. authorised intervention, 217 00:29:24,670 --> 00:29:36,250 a no fly zone and all necessary means to protect civilians, except no ground forces, no intervening ground forces. 218 00:29:36,940 --> 00:29:45,280 Two days later, NATO's started bombing and immediately the rebels went back on the offensive. 219 00:29:45,820 --> 00:29:51,220 And we see that within a week they've retaken Ajdabiya in the east. 220 00:29:51,850 --> 00:29:56,979 They take Brega and Ras Lanuf, but then as many untrained military forces, 221 00:29:56,980 --> 00:30:02,140 they go too fast, they outrun their supply lines and Gadhafi's forces push them back. 222 00:30:02,590 --> 00:30:09,040 And we start to see this sort of fight in central Libya that goes on for about four months. 223 00:30:09,040 --> 00:30:13,000 These cities trade hands multiple times. 224 00:30:13,300 --> 00:30:17,980 Each time there is artillery fire, there is mortar fire. 225 00:30:18,040 --> 00:30:22,180 There are civilians killed over the course of four months, 226 00:30:22,630 --> 00:30:33,310 eventually due to arming and training of the rebels and naito airstrikes against that decimate Gadhafi's security forces. 227 00:30:33,550 --> 00:30:43,750 The rebels finally go back on the march and we see them progressing westward again from their eastern stronghold. 228 00:30:43,930 --> 00:30:48,850 We also see rebels in the western mountains of Libya. 229 00:30:51,550 --> 00:31:01,870 The last gasp of the Gadhafi regime is on August 2nd when they momentarily attack and recapture Zintan. 230 00:31:02,350 --> 00:31:05,620 But after that, the. 231 00:31:05,800 --> 00:31:09,880 Rebels advance both from the west and from the east. 232 00:31:10,540 --> 00:31:18,460 And we start to see all the towns around Tripoli fall and we start to see a pincer movement into Tripoli. 233 00:31:18,970 --> 00:31:29,440 In late August of 2011 and then rather quickly, Tripoli is captured, Gadhafi flees, 234 00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:36,490 and there are a few little strongholds such as Sirte and some towns in southern Libya. 235 00:31:36,820 --> 00:31:43,960 But in relatively short order, Gadhafi is captured, tortured and killed. 236 00:31:44,530 --> 00:31:50,380 And by late October, the last remnants of his forces have been defeated. 237 00:31:52,270 --> 00:31:53,770 So that's the course of the war. 238 00:31:58,440 --> 00:32:11,970 And now we get to the question that I laid out at the beginning in my in my introduction, which is what was the net impact of intervention? 239 00:32:13,320 --> 00:32:24,240 What were the consequences of intervention? And in order to answer that, you have to look at two scenarios. 240 00:32:25,980 --> 00:32:31,020 The first scenario is what would have happened without intervention. 241 00:32:31,440 --> 00:32:34,530 This we call in my field of political science. 242 00:32:34,530 --> 00:32:42,330 We call it a counterfactual. And with any counterfactual, you can't know for sure, right? 243 00:32:42,360 --> 00:32:50,730 If this hadn't happened, would that have happened? You can never say 100%, but you can certainly make a very educated guess. 244 00:32:51,150 --> 00:33:00,370 And in this case, I think we can make an estimate with pretty high confidence after doing that. 245 00:33:00,390 --> 00:33:03,870 Then you have to look at what really happened. Okay. 246 00:33:05,010 --> 00:33:09,600 That's a factual. And then you compare the counterfactual to the factual. 247 00:33:12,410 --> 00:33:18,570 So what would have happened? Without intervention. 248 00:33:22,030 --> 00:33:26,970 Well, I would argue that that Saif Gadhafi was right. 249 00:33:26,980 --> 00:33:37,120 This thing was going to end in late March 2011 when Benghazi fell and then Misrata would fall in a day or two after that. 250 00:33:37,390 --> 00:33:41,920 And so overall, we would have had a five week war in Libya. 251 00:33:43,780 --> 00:33:58,570 How many people would have died in this war? Well, we have fairly good figures for how many people had died by late March in Libya. 252 00:33:59,470 --> 00:34:07,540 We know that in Benghazi and the east, there was a total of about 400 had been killed. 253 00:34:07,540 --> 00:34:17,619 And we know this from various sources. There was a medical committee in Benghazi that said in early March that 228 people had been killed 254 00:34:17,620 --> 00:34:28,330 in Benghazi and Benghazi was under rebel control from that point on until it never felt right. 255 00:34:28,600 --> 00:34:35,770 So under my scenario, it would have fallen around March 17th or 18th and maybe a few more people would have been killed. 256 00:34:35,980 --> 00:34:40,720 But no bloodbath because Gadhafi's forces hadn't committed bloodbaths after recapturing towns. 257 00:34:41,050 --> 00:34:46,420 So somewhere around 250 maybe would have been killed in Benghazi. 258 00:34:46,570 --> 00:34:52,299 And if you add the cities to the east, according to Agence France Presse, 259 00:34:52,300 --> 00:35:00,940 which interviewed medics in the area in mid-March, they say a total of about 400 in Benghazi and the other eastern cities. 260 00:35:01,360 --> 00:35:02,290 So that's Benghazi. 261 00:35:02,470 --> 00:35:14,230 In Misrata, we have a Human Rights Watch report that says in April that in April, only about 250 people had been killed in Misrata and since. 262 00:35:15,040 --> 00:35:22,720 Under this scenario, without major into NATO intervention, the war would have ended in late March and it would have been even fewer than 250. 263 00:35:23,500 --> 00:35:28,420 And so we can interpolate and say maybe about 200 in Tripoli. 264 00:35:28,750 --> 00:35:33,700 There had been really two days of violence February 20th and 21st. 265 00:35:34,270 --> 00:35:46,060 And the U.N. reports that 200 people had died in Tripoli in that violence, and that's based on interviews with doctors in Tripoli. 266 00:35:46,420 --> 00:35:49,840 After that, Tripoli was under government control. 267 00:35:49,840 --> 00:35:56,620 There were no more of these violent protests or retaliation against violent protesters. 268 00:35:56,620 --> 00:36:02,440 And so had the war ended in late March, only about 200 total would have died in Tripoli. 269 00:36:03,640 --> 00:36:11,860 Zawiyah. This this this number may be actually higher than it actually was. 270 00:36:11,860 --> 00:36:17,320 It's a report from Time magazine. It's based on second-hand information from doctors in Zawiya. 271 00:36:18,550 --> 00:36:32,440 And then there's those towns in central Libya, which had been the scene of fighting for about a week or two in early March. 272 00:36:32,740 --> 00:36:38,350 But in those early days of fighting, there weren't very high casualties because when one side attacked, 273 00:36:38,350 --> 00:36:43,059 the other side fled and the other side attacked the the the other side fled. 274 00:36:43,060 --> 00:36:51,010 And so it doesn't look as if there were very, very high casualties. And so I would guess I would put them in the tens, maybe maybe as high as 100. 275 00:36:52,180 --> 00:37:00,040 And so the total, therefore, without narrow intervention, is that about a thousand Libyans would have died. 276 00:37:01,060 --> 00:37:08,530 About a thousand. It's possible that that this is an underestimate. 277 00:37:09,040 --> 00:37:12,250 Maybe it's as high as 1500. It's possible to overestimate. 278 00:37:13,750 --> 00:37:19,750 But I'm going to say it's it's probably around 1000. Now, what happened with NATO intervention? 279 00:37:21,670 --> 00:37:25,600 Well, the war didn't end in five weeks. It lasted 36 weeks. 280 00:37:27,070 --> 00:37:31,420 So the war was greatly perpetuated. What about the death toll? 281 00:37:32,740 --> 00:37:41,320 We do not have a firm, firm documentation of this for the overall death toll. 282 00:37:41,980 --> 00:37:49,510 Ironically, we have we have better information about those first weeks than we would than we do about the overall conflict. 283 00:37:49,870 --> 00:37:59,080 But we have several estimates. We have a U.S. estimate, and this comes out of a conference organised by the Brookings Institution in November 2011. 284 00:37:59,500 --> 00:38:05,860 This is an anonymous U.S. government official that I've talked to the organisers of the conference and they 285 00:38:05,860 --> 00:38:13,120 say this was an official who was in a position to have the best information that the U.S. would have. 286 00:38:13,150 --> 00:38:20,500 It doesn't mean it's accurate, but this is what the U.S. thinks, and that is that 8000 people died in Libya. 287 00:38:20,790 --> 00:38:31,820 Over the course of the war, the estimate of the new Libyan regime in September 2011 after the capture captured Tripoli, but before the war was over. 288 00:38:31,830 --> 00:38:33,450 So this is even before the war was over, 289 00:38:33,450 --> 00:38:45,300 they estimated 30,000 had died and they said half of these were Gadhafi's forces and the other half were either rebels or civilians. 290 00:38:46,650 --> 00:38:56,910 And if you think about this, again, this estimate may not be precise or accurate, but there is some logic to it. 291 00:38:58,950 --> 00:39:06,690 Gadhafi's forces came under persistent Naito airstrikes for seven months. 292 00:39:08,140 --> 00:39:18,180 Okay. When you bomb military bases, when you bomb tank formations, those are not empty military bases and they're not empty tanks. 293 00:39:18,210 --> 00:39:22,710 There's human beings inside those tanks and there's human beings at those bases. 294 00:39:22,980 --> 00:39:32,100 And so it is quite plausible that thousands of Gadhafi's security forces were killed. 295 00:39:32,760 --> 00:39:36,480 And you may say, well, who cares? They were Gadhafi's security forces as well. 296 00:39:36,630 --> 00:39:38,190 I still think they're human beings. 297 00:39:38,580 --> 00:39:48,840 They were people who either were drafted into the security forces or volunteered to be patriotic to their country, whatever. 298 00:39:49,410 --> 00:39:53,310 They're human beings, and they would be alive if not for the NATO intervention. 299 00:39:55,860 --> 00:39:59,530 The estimate of 15,000 rebels and civilians. 300 00:39:59,550 --> 00:40:06,390 Again, it's possible it's it's higher than that. But but there's some reason to believe it's plausible. 301 00:40:06,990 --> 00:40:15,210 So in Misrata, as I said, it was the scene of the most intense fighting from the beginning of the war. 302 00:40:15,570 --> 00:40:22,550 And the the death toll really did mount and doctors reported this as well. 303 00:40:22,560 --> 00:40:29,550 And so so whereas the death toll was about to 50 in April, eventually by the end of the war is about 2000. 304 00:40:30,240 --> 00:40:34,049 And similarly, the fight for Tripoli was rather intense, as you can imagine. 305 00:40:34,050 --> 00:40:40,470 This is where Gadhafi's forces made their last stand, and the rebels really had to fight to try to conquer the city. 306 00:40:40,650 --> 00:40:44,760 And that's the sort of situation where you're likely to get high casualties. 307 00:40:45,390 --> 00:40:54,780 So somewhere between 8000 to 30000 as the eventual death toll, I think is plausible. 308 00:40:59,460 --> 00:41:03,720 Another question that I look at is. 309 00:41:06,960 --> 00:41:12,450 Did. And this is something I've looked at in in my work for many years. 310 00:41:12,450 --> 00:41:16,440 It's this question of what I call the moral hazard of humanitarian intervention. 311 00:41:16,980 --> 00:41:24,150 It's we just discussed it in that 2000 book that was mentioned called Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention. 312 00:41:24,510 --> 00:41:32,850 It's laid out most clearly in an article I did in International Studies Quarterly in 2008 called The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention. 313 00:41:33,810 --> 00:41:41,190 And then it's summarised in another article I did in 2009 called Rethinking the Responsibility to Protect. 314 00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:52,320 And the question I raise in those articles is, does the prospect of intervention actually encourage rebellion in the first place? 315 00:41:53,520 --> 00:41:56,040 And then once rebellion is started, 316 00:41:56,040 --> 00:42:02,760 does the prospect of intervention actually encourage escalation of rebellion and therefore escalation of civil war? 317 00:42:04,680 --> 00:42:08,400 And on those two questions, I would say that we really don't know. 318 00:42:08,430 --> 00:42:15,330 On the first question, there is very little evidence yet on why the rebels decided to launch their rebellion, 319 00:42:15,720 --> 00:42:23,730 how they thought that with, you know, a few guns and a few bullets they were going to take on Gadhafi's tanks and air forces. 320 00:42:24,090 --> 00:42:27,260 We don't know, right? We don't know. 321 00:42:27,270 --> 00:42:35,370 It's possible they did so thinking that they would win on their own without any help, that David would be Goliath. 322 00:42:36,960 --> 00:42:44,760 But we do know that within about ten days of launching their rebellion, 323 00:42:45,030 --> 00:42:49,409 the rebel leaders appealed to the international community, saying, we need intervention. 324 00:42:49,410 --> 00:42:53,070 It is our only hope of defeating Gadhafi. 325 00:42:53,730 --> 00:42:57,870 So we don't know if they thought that when they launched the rebellion on February 17th. 326 00:42:57,900 --> 00:43:06,300 We do know that within about ten days they thought that and they expressed it so that the civilian leader of the opposition, 327 00:43:07,290 --> 00:43:11,489 Jalil, called for a no fly zone to be established. 328 00:43:11,490 --> 00:43:12,930 He called for that on February 28th. 329 00:43:13,200 --> 00:43:25,109 Two days later, the military leader of the rebels, General Yunis, asked the U.K. explicitly to establish a no fly zone over the no fly zone, 330 00:43:25,110 --> 00:43:34,230 as I said, was was authorised by the U.N. and the resolution authorised all necessary means to protect civilians, but no ground troops. 331 00:43:34,620 --> 00:43:38,370 And yet, lo and behold, ground troops were deployed. Okay. 332 00:43:38,370 --> 00:43:42,870 So it wasn't disclosed at the time. But in retrospect, 333 00:43:43,230 --> 00:43:52,770 the chief of staff of the of Qatar's of Qatar's military revealed that there were hundreds of Qatari 334 00:43:52,770 --> 00:44:04,800 troops in every region of Libya training and fighting with the rebels and clearly encouraging escalation. 335 00:44:09,710 --> 00:44:15,750 In terms of consequences. There's two other categories of consequences. 336 00:44:15,770 --> 00:44:19,670 First of all, what does post-war Libya look like? 337 00:44:25,670 --> 00:44:29,060 Compared to pre-war Libya or pre intervention Libya? 338 00:44:29,510 --> 00:44:32,540 Well, first of all, when the rebels came into power, 339 00:44:33,440 --> 00:44:50,810 they summarily executed hundreds of their fellow Libyans and also foreigners whom they suspected of having been allied with or fighting for Gadhafi. 340 00:44:52,130 --> 00:44:59,940 They also ethnically cleansed the black African town of Tolaga, which is near Misrata. 341 00:44:59,960 --> 00:45:08,740 Again, saying that because some of Gadhafi's forces had been black Africans from the town of Tawargha. 342 00:45:08,810 --> 00:45:12,170 Therefore, no black Africans should be allowed to live in that town. 343 00:45:13,790 --> 00:45:19,270 Okay. Gadhafi never committed violence like that. In Libya. 344 00:45:22,390 --> 00:45:31,090 What about the state of governance? Do we have a strong or at least growing central government? 345 00:45:31,360 --> 00:45:34,140 No. We have rival militias, 346 00:45:34,150 --> 00:45:50,799 essentially warlords or gangs who some of which are radical Islamists groups that had fought in Afghanistan and or Iraq against the US, 347 00:45:50,800 --> 00:45:57,610 UK and coalition forces. So these are folks who had allied in the past with Al Qaida and now they have, 348 00:45:57,610 --> 00:46:02,860 because of NATO's intervention, have been able to come into control of certain parts of Libya. 349 00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:10,960 Different militias control different cities. And in the capital, different militias control different neighbourhoods in the city. 350 00:46:12,940 --> 00:46:23,920 And the again, Jaleel, the head of the of the transitional government, said we can't do anything about it because if we did, it would cause a war. 351 00:46:25,870 --> 00:46:36,700 Moreover, the eastern half of Libya, which is where most of the oil is, has threatened to secede, saying We want our rebellion. 352 00:46:37,180 --> 00:46:41,150 Now we're going to take the oil and make our own country and you guys can have the sand. 353 00:46:44,050 --> 00:46:49,930 Human Rights Watch said just this month that the former rebels, 354 00:46:50,320 --> 00:46:57,100 the victorious rebels have come to power in Misrata continue, quote, crimes against humanity. 355 00:46:58,750 --> 00:47:04,750 This involves torture and cruel treatment of prisoners and summary execution. 356 00:47:06,250 --> 00:47:15,639 And then somewhat ironically, there was a study that was done here in Oxford earlier this year. 357 00:47:15,640 --> 00:47:25,660 It was based here. It was it was it was a poll that was taken in Libya, the first nationwide poll in Libya. 358 00:47:26,290 --> 00:47:31,900 And it revealed that 42% of Libyans want a new strongman like Gadhafi. 359 00:47:34,350 --> 00:47:38,040 So that's post-war Libya. 360 00:47:39,090 --> 00:47:44,940 The last consequence that we need to look at is the regional effect, 361 00:47:46,920 --> 00:47:54,960 because even though this intervention was focussed on Libya, it doesn't mean that all the consequences were confined to Libya. 362 00:47:56,220 --> 00:48:12,840 And so what about Mali? Well. Gadhafi had been allies with Tuareg rebels in Mali's north, but he never really wanted to heat that place up too hot. 363 00:48:12,900 --> 00:48:18,540 And so he kept them on a short leash. And any rebellions that occurred in Mali were rather mild. 364 00:48:19,650 --> 00:48:29,430 Once Gadhafi was going down in Libya, weapons flowed to these Tuareg rebels in Mali who then went on the offensive. 365 00:48:30,780 --> 00:48:35,100 This caused tens of thousands of Malians to be displaced. 366 00:48:37,110 --> 00:48:44,910 The rebels then succeeded at conquering the northern half of the country in Mali and announced they were declaring an independent state. 367 00:48:45,630 --> 00:48:54,390 The Malian military, which was losing to these rebels, got so upset that they staged a coup and overthrew the president. 368 00:48:56,130 --> 00:49:03,420 And so we have this intervention in Libya leading to a civil war in Mali. 369 00:49:05,070 --> 00:49:11,220 Humanitarian suffering in Mali and a setback for democracy in Mali. 370 00:49:12,270 --> 00:49:25,420 What about Syria? At the same time that events were occurring in Libya, there was a truly peaceful protest in Syria for months and months. 371 00:49:25,440 --> 00:49:28,710 The Syrian protests really remained peaceful. 372 00:49:30,240 --> 00:49:33,150 But then the Syrian protests turned violent. 373 00:49:33,780 --> 00:49:44,160 The Syrian protest turned violent after the Libyan violent protesters had benefited from Naito intervention. 374 00:49:46,800 --> 00:49:49,230 Now, I cannot. And no one, I think, 375 00:49:49,230 --> 00:49:57,750 at this point can know for sure whether the Syrian protesters turned from non-violence to violence because they saw that in Libya. 376 00:49:57,750 --> 00:49:59,370 That was the way to get Western help. 377 00:50:01,200 --> 00:50:11,160 All we can know is that the NATO intervention in Libya certainly did not discourage the Syrian protesters from moving to violence. 378 00:50:11,370 --> 00:50:16,050 And when the Syrian protesters moved to violence, Assad escalated his crackdown. 379 00:50:16,290 --> 00:50:20,610 And the death toll has grown and accelerated in Syria. 380 00:50:20,910 --> 00:50:25,890 We don't see five or ten people killed today. We see 30 or 50 people killed a day. 381 00:50:27,660 --> 00:50:32,819 In addition, some of the weapons from Libya not only flowed westward into Mali, 382 00:50:32,820 --> 00:50:42,240 they flowed eastward into Somalia where they fallen into the hands of the al-Shabab rebels and possibly exacerbating the civil war in Somalia. 383 00:50:42,690 --> 00:50:54,840 And there's still this worldwide hunt for the man portable surface to air missiles that went missing by the thousands in Libya. 384 00:50:55,110 --> 00:51:03,990 So if a plane comes down one of these days with a Libyan MANPADS, that will also have to be added to the toll of this intervention. 385 00:51:05,910 --> 00:51:12,180 All right. How do we put all this together? What was the net humanitarian impact of NATO intervention in Libya? 386 00:51:12,810 --> 00:51:19,050 Well, the war was perpetuated somewhere around seven times as long as it would have been. 387 00:51:20,970 --> 00:51:25,680 As a result, the death toll was magnified somewhere between eight and 30 times. 388 00:51:26,880 --> 00:51:31,590 The human rights situation in Libya is unimproved at best. 389 00:51:34,490 --> 00:51:38,030 Unimproved at best. They were not large scale. 390 00:51:38,030 --> 00:51:47,509 There was no ethnic cleansing or large scale summary executions under Kadhafi's for at least 15 years. 391 00:51:47,510 --> 00:51:54,800 There was a one crackdown in 1996 when prisoners revolted at a prison. 392 00:51:55,520 --> 00:52:01,520 But that's not what's going on today in Libya. What's going on today is summary executions, torture and ethnic cleansing. 393 00:52:02,150 --> 00:52:07,340 So I'm trying to be generous. The human rights situation is unimproved at best. 394 00:52:08,000 --> 00:52:15,380 The economy is much worse. Governance is much worse in Libya than it was under Gaddafi. 395 00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:20,960 Under Gaddafi. It may not have been the most efficient government, but there was essentially organised government. 396 00:52:22,310 --> 00:52:26,270 Now there's not. In Mali we see civil war contagion and displacement. 397 00:52:26,480 --> 00:52:33,500 In Syria, we see rebellion encouraged possibly and I think likely leading to the escalated death toll. 398 00:52:34,700 --> 00:52:42,800 So all of these things suggest that the net humanitarian impact of the intervention was negative and significantly negative. 399 00:52:43,100 --> 00:52:47,160 And then the only question is, is there something else? Something. 400 00:52:47,570 --> 00:52:55,850 Five years down the road, Libya is going to be such a flourishing liberal democracy that will look back and will 401 00:52:55,850 --> 00:53:01,580 say it was all worth it and this was actually a net positive humanitarian impact. 402 00:53:02,000 --> 00:53:06,500 It's possible you want to invite me back in five years? I'll give another talk and we can see. 403 00:53:07,400 --> 00:53:10,850 The only thing I can say is I don't think it's likely given where Libya's today. 404 00:53:11,060 --> 00:53:15,890 And the only other thing I can say is that based on the evidence of where Libya is today, 405 00:53:17,450 --> 00:53:21,320 the net humanitarian impact of NATO intervention was grossly negative. 406 00:53:24,260 --> 00:53:28,250 So just finally, a few lessons. Okay. 407 00:53:29,390 --> 00:53:39,770 Yeah, this is it. BP, a cautious consumer of news. 408 00:53:42,470 --> 00:53:47,930 Beware of both misinformation and disinformation. As I said, this this French doctor. 409 00:53:48,380 --> 00:53:53,690 You know, I don't think he was in bed with the rebels. I think he was in honestly reporting what he saw. 410 00:53:53,930 --> 00:53:57,499 But anecdotal evidence is anecdotal evidence. 411 00:53:57,500 --> 00:54:05,090 If you're stuck in one medical clinic, seeing your handful of a dozen or two dozen patients, 412 00:54:05,090 --> 00:54:10,880 you're not qualified to say what the death toll is in your entire city in the eastern half of Libya. 413 00:54:11,150 --> 00:54:14,810 And yet people do that. They do that. 414 00:54:15,590 --> 00:54:25,100 That's misinformation. Be wary of that. So a tribal, regional, religious war is not the same as a democratic uprising. 415 00:54:26,840 --> 00:54:32,360 And similarly, the discriminate targeting of rebels is not the same as civilian victimisation. 416 00:54:35,380 --> 00:54:42,070 Secondly, and this is the point I've tried to make in all my work on the moral hazard problem. 417 00:54:43,540 --> 00:54:51,490 And when I talk about I've come up with sort of a five point plan of how to rethink the responsibility to protect. 418 00:54:51,700 --> 00:55:01,180 And the most important point there is, is this one that if humanitarian intervention benefits rebels, 419 00:55:02,260 --> 00:55:08,050 then that will escalate a conflict where you're intervening. 420 00:55:08,350 --> 00:55:14,290 And moreover, it will foster contagious civil war elsewhere, as may have occurred in Syria. 421 00:55:15,400 --> 00:55:20,020 And both of these dynamics increase the humanitarian toll. 422 00:55:20,050 --> 00:55:24,129 That is, you increase the suffering civilians where you're intervening and you increase the suffering 423 00:55:24,130 --> 00:55:29,020 of civilians in other places where you've inadvertently encouraged rebellion and civil war. 424 00:55:30,370 --> 00:55:38,110 And it seems to me and again, this gets to ethical questions, that it's hard to justify that kind of intervention on humanitarian grounds, 425 00:55:39,400 --> 00:55:44,650 especially if the state was originally targeting mainly combatants, as Gadhafi was. 426 00:55:46,240 --> 00:56:00,389 And lastly. Because of domestic politics, of the intervening states, any humanitarian military intervention, 427 00:56:00,390 --> 00:56:06,540 even if it's originally started for purely humanitarian reasons, is likely to devolve into regime change. 428 00:56:06,720 --> 00:56:14,850 Why? Because in order to get public support in the West for an intervention, you have to demonise the target state. 429 00:56:15,180 --> 00:56:20,850 You have to say they're about to commit another Rwanda, another genocide. 430 00:56:21,270 --> 00:56:27,210 Once you've done that, how can you cut a deal with the regime? It's like cutting a deal with Hitler. 431 00:56:28,110 --> 00:56:32,490 You can't cut a deal with Hitler. You have to overthrow and kill Hitler. 432 00:56:34,020 --> 00:56:38,930 Right. And so you start this and I believe and we can get into this in questions, 433 00:56:38,940 --> 00:56:44,160 I believe we really the international committee started this for truly humanitarian reasons. 434 00:56:44,820 --> 00:56:49,500 But once you start for domestic political reasons, you have to have regime change. 435 00:56:50,950 --> 00:56:55,170 Unfortunately, as I laid out, once you start calling for regime change, 436 00:56:56,370 --> 00:57:03,990 rather than just trying to make a peace like a power sharing deal by going for regime change, you increase the humanitarian toll. 437 00:57:06,330 --> 00:57:10,910 And this raises a question, and I think it's a it's a legal question, and I think it's an ethical question. 438 00:57:10,940 --> 00:57:14,400 I think it's appropriate way to end the opening remarks today. 439 00:57:15,060 --> 00:57:22,410 Assume you have a regime that is not actually genocidal and is not engaged in grossly disproportionate retaliation. 440 00:57:22,890 --> 00:57:27,030 That is, it is meeting force with force, as in Libya. 441 00:57:28,170 --> 00:57:36,600 Can you support humanitarian military intervention if you also oppose foreign imposed regime regime change? 442 00:57:36,840 --> 00:57:39,240 If you oppose neo imperialism. 443 00:57:41,920 --> 00:57:48,850 Like if humanitarian military intervention is going to devolve into imperialism, what do you do if you support humanitarianism? 444 00:57:49,030 --> 00:57:54,890 But you oppose imperialism? You know, it's a very, very tough question. 445 00:57:55,370 --> 00:57:57,350 Thank you. Great. Thank you so much.