No-fly Zone is Intervening

Over the last few weeks, as the crisis in Libya is fast taking on the visages of civil war, the international community - or to be more precise, the Western World - has been considering how to respond. Sanctions have already been imposed, refugees aided and the forces of stern rethoric deployed. Yet, as Colonel Gaddafi has no intention of leaving his bedouin tent any time soon, the debates are centering on whether to intervene militarily. In an earlier post, I dismissed the possibility and beneficial results of foreign military action, but Western leaders - whether from the UK, US or EU - do not share my negative outlook on the principle. What we do share are doubts about the problems of actually intervening in practice, if only because the UN Security Council is unlikely to sanction such a move.

What seems most likely, at the moment, and if any military operation is to take place at all, is for the UN to give the green light to the imposition of a no-fly zone in Libya to prevent Col. Gaddafi ordering his air force to bombard civilians. This option was muted by David Cameron some weeks ago and then quietly withdrawn as the US would not support the suggestion, saying that for it to be successful, a no-fly zone would have to be supported by ground forces. But now Dr. Liam Fox, the British defence secretary has again voiced British proposals, saying

rather than "taking out" air defences in a pre-emptive strike, Nato leaders could say that, if an enemy locked its air defence radar on Nato planes, they could "regard that as a hostile action and take subsequent action".
He added: "That's one military option but there are other military options that we have used."

Dr. Fox seems to suggest that a no-fly zone would be an action short of military intervention. If this is indeed what he is saying than he appears to be living in a fantasy world - harsh terms, I know, but appropriate - where a man as clearly deranged as Muammar Gaddafi will not provoke the forces enforcing the zone by ordering his own planes into the air, or will desist from placing his anti-air batteries in civilian-populated areas. In the event of the former, enforcing planes would have to engage Libyan aircraft, as clear a military action as any in my book. In the event of the latter scenario, taking out those batteries would without the slightest doubt result in civilian casualties, giving Col. Gaddafi a much needed excuse to excoriate the West. To prevent atrocious numbers of casualties would require ground forces to coordinate airstrikes.

So a no-fly zone is an intervention by its very nature and we should not go down that path, as even Dr. Fox agrees. A civil war is a matter of internal sovereignty and until it spills over into other countries or affects British citizens, Britain has no right to intervene. Col. Gaddafi recognises this and it is indicative that when a BBC team was detained in Libya, the only one of the three reporters who was not physically assaulted was the one British citizen, as this would have given Britain an excuse to press for intervention.

One other way to gain the right to intervene is to take the step France took today to recognise the rebels as the legitimate government of Libya. This would give the rebels the sovereign power to ask for foreign military assistance.