FORUM: Libya: another catastrophic mess

Published: 24 March, 2011 
by BRUCE KENT

ONCE more a war has started with very little evidence that those in favour of it, or even some of those opposed to it, have understood the requirements of the United Nations Charter.  

The United Nations was set up in 1945 not to authorise wars but primarily “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…”

Nowhere in the Charter is there any agreement that a vote in the Security Council is enough to legitimise a war or military attack. 

In Article 42 there is a very serious precondition before, as a last resort, any military action may be authorised.  

The Security Council must consider (that is, come to a reasoned judgment) that peaceful means of resolving a conflict “would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate”. 

There is no evidence whatever that, once David Cameron started to push for a no-fly zone over Libya, any consideration of  peaceful means of conflict resolution was on the international agenda.

• Were all possible economic sanctions imposed and enforced?  l Was massive electronic jamming put into operation?  

• Were all oil and gas sales cancelled?  

• Was non-governmental intervention of any kind attempted?  

• Muammar Gaddafi at one stage compared himself to the Queen.  Perhaps the Prince of Wales might have been asked to try a peacemaking visit.  Flattery can have advantages.

Now we are again in a catastrophic mess.  

The countries which, for decades, armed and supported Gaddafi and ignored his human rights violations, are now his enemies.  

It will not be long before there are numbers of civilian casualties.  Arab support for what is going on is fading, and the whole venture will be cast as another Western “Christian” imperialist adventure and will not end up by protecting the insurgents.  

It is too late to lament what might have been, but there are still opportunities.  

To start with the UN General Assembly could make clear its view of the legality of the current Security Council resolution.  

We could make an immediate approach to the International Court of Justice with a pre-agreement to abide by any adjudication.  

Cynical or not, Gaddafi has made a ceasefire gesture. 

The countries which have mounted the air strikes should unconditionally promise a ceasefire at least for a significant period of time during which UN-brokered negotiations could start and a peaceful settlement based on democratic principles might be considered.

There is already a UN special representative in Tripoli.  

It may yet be possible to negotiate a UN-authorised peacekeeping presence not made up of Western forces. 

Such a force would have a peacekeeping not a peace enforcement mandate. 

Those who oppose the Gaddafi regime certainly have to be protected in Libya and abroad.  

There might be some British Muslim leaders willing to take part in peacekeeping visits of their own to Libya, with a mandate to explore all opportunities.

This is, thankfully, not a conflict in which the use of nuclear weapons might be contemplated.  

For whatever reason, Colonel Gaddafi, who was once on the nuclear weapon trail, abandoned it some time ago.  

Perhaps that is a piece of political rationality on which we might build.

As a minimum, we have now in this country to eat a very large slice of humble pie.  

Our problem is that we have been brought up in a culture which likes to believe that war ‘works’ and can be made to work.  

It actually often – at massive cost – has exactly the opposite effect to the one intended. 

The fact is that we are not omnipotent and that the best we can ever do is to try to find paths towards the peaceful resolution of conflict.

Popping cruise missiles into other people backyards is not one of them.

• Bruce Kent, a former parish priest at St Aloysius in Somers Town, is vice-president of the Movement for the Abolition of War