A Model Intervention? Reflections on NATO’s Libya ‘Success’

Abstract

In their Foreign Affairs article ‘NATO’s Victory in Libya: The Right Way to Run an Intervention’, US Permanent Representative to NATO Ivo H. Daalder and the Supreme Allied Commander Europe Admiral James G. Stavridis hailed the 2011 Libya campaign as a ‘model intervention’.¹ That Libya represents a ‘tremendous success story’ for NATO is a view that has remained relatively unquestioned, at least publicly, among many of the alliance’s members, and this narrative dominated the May 2012 NATO Summit in Chicago.² This chapter seeks to place this ‘success’ narrative in context, and provide a more balanced assessment. It will draw attention to a number of issues raised by supporters as well as critics of the campaign. Even prior to the start of NATO’s involvement in Libya, there were numerous commentators who incorrectly predicted extremely grave consequences for the alliance, even going so far as to speculate that this would be NATO’s last mission, or even the end of NATO itself. They argued that NATO after Libya would cease to be a global actor, and instead would look inwards and wither away into obsolescence.³ In the campaign’s aftermath, such views warrant little merit, and appear somewhat bizarre in retrospect. Yet leaving aside the undue significance these commentators attributed to the Libya operation relative to other fac­tors influencing the alliance’s future, they do make a useful point, namely, that NATO is not infallible, and that the operation could have turned out much worse than it actually did. Indeed, if there is one crucial point that this chapter intends to highlight, it is that there is a crucial discrepancy that exists between the ‘success’ narrative that emerged after Gaddafi’s fall and the more pessimistic attitude that prevailed during the course of the campaign itself.