NATO’s on-going mission in Libya has brought out the best and the worst in humanitarian intervention. Since Western forces began bombarding Gaddafi strongholds on 19 March this year, billions of dollars have been spent and tens of thousands of deaths have been reported. For much of the viewing public, the implementation of UN resolution 1973 was a test for the concept of humanitarian intervention; a second chance after the debacle of Iraq. After six months of involvement in Libya, with pockets of pro-Gaddafi forces continuing to put up a fight, questions are beginning to be asked about the motivations behind the intervention as well as the future of post-Gaddafi Libya.

There are two conflicting aspects of the NATO mission which present different verdicts on the future of liberal intervention. First, it showed how important having the option of international intervention is. With stories continuously appearing that detailed horrific atrocities were being carried out by Gaddafi’s regime before and during the conflict, the decision by the UN Security Council to pass the resolution has been proved right. One may argue to death that the West (the US in particular) cannot be the world’s policeman, picking and choosing the regimes it wants to fight, but when a group of poorly armed citizens are at risk of being systematically killed, it is the duty of the international community to do something about it. In this light, the UN gets the credit: the passage of Resolution 1973 gave legitimacy to an urgent humanitarian operation and avoided the image of an aggressive dictator attacking and killing his own people.

However, the flipside of the issue shows how intervention is still mis-handled and over-influenced by unwanted actors. There are worrying signs, such as the allegation at the beginning of September that the French government secured a promise of 35% of Libya’s oil production in return for support for the National Transitional Council. This illustrates perfectly the reason that humanitarian intervention has received a bad name in recent years.

While interventions may seem like a selfless act at the time they are undertaken, enacted for the good of mankind, there always seems to be some suspect behind-the-scenes dealings. Stories like these, along with the neglect of similar situations such as in Syria, suggest that some of the decisions made at the Security Council were not purely humanitarian, but in fact had ulterior motives. This aspect of the Libya mission highlights the inadequacy of our international system, and should pave the way for clearer and more authoritative directives from the UN concerning what justifies intervention, the method, when to stop, and all the other issues which seem to be without definition at the moment.

One of the opening lines of the UN Charter is the commitment to reaffirm faith in human rights. In this light, humanitarian intervention remains valuable in the international arena today, and should continue to be a credible option for the international community to take as a last resort. However, for it to sustain legitimacy as a concept, the involvement and influence of individual states must be diminished, and replaced by an assertive international system which will instil fear in those planning atrocities like those which occurred – and without a doubt were prevented – in Libya.