As the situation deteriorates in Libya and the international community begins to look at
various options, including military ones, policymakers would do well to remember a number of key lessons from the last 15 years of warfare. Like all history, they don’t provide a guide to the
future, but can be a warning nonetheless.
The Bosnian experience of the mid ’90s contains four key lessons. The first is that international handwringing costs lives. Many lives. (The same lesson emerges from the post-Gulf War I slaughter of the Kurds and Shia by Saddam Hussein). Wait, and the situation usually gets worse not better.
The second lesson is that however great the humanitarian need may be, any military mission must not be framed as a humanitarian one. It is ultimately a political mission to stop the killings and help topple the regime; it must be conceived as such. Framing the mission as a humanitarian one invites the problems that bedevilled the international community in Bosnia, which Brendan Simms so eloquently described in his book Unfinest Hour.
A third lesson from Bosnia is about the inadequacy of a no-fly zone. The massacres of Srebrenica happened while a UN-sanctioned no-fly zone was in place and the same could happen in Libya. A no-fly zone may be a start, but policymakers would do well to think through what subsequent steps they are willing to take. Finally, Bosnia tells policymakers that an indiscriminate arms embargo can hurt the weaker faction.
Then there is the 1999 Kosovo bombing campaign. Here the international community learnt that what is right may not be legal, and that any military engagement will be effective only if it is backed up by a diplomatic strategy and a willingness to deploy ground forces. It also became during the campaign that coalition warfare is a painful and slow process, with some allies likely to be untrustworthy.
Five lessons come from Iraq. First, the need to understand the situation on the ground. Second, the need to have trustworthy allies in the country and not just rely on expats and exiles. Third, to have a comprehensive political, economic and military strategy. Fourth that even oil-rich countries will need a decade or so of international assistance after a terrible war. And fifth, that a mission needs to be seen as legitimate and preferably legal, but certainly supported regionally.
Many similar lessons come out of Afghanistan with the added lesson that even a UN-sanctioned intervention at some point is seen as an invasion and will therefore generate a nationalist response.
As David Cameron thinks through his options, he would do well to decide what these historical lessons mean for Libya policy.
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