Everyone Says the Libya Intervention Was a Failure: They’re Wrong

US President Obama suggested that one of his biggest regrets failure to plan for Libya after the 2011 NATO intervention. Libya is a failed state, but that does not mean intervention was wrong, argues Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, for Vox. “The goal was to protect civilians and prevent a massacre,” he notes. “In fact, the civil war had already started before the intervention began. As for today’s chaos, violence, and general instability, these are more plausibly tied not to the original intervention but to the international community’s failures after intervention.” He goes on to explain that the United States had expected Europe, swept up in a refugee crisis, to do more. Critics blast nation-building and occupation as well as militaries stopping short after an intervention, thus limiting foreign policy options. Hamid argues that the United States is “expected to set the agenda, convene partners, and drive international attention” on conflicts like those in the Middle East. He concludes some threats like massacres and genocide demand action and intervention even when there is little assurance of stable democracy afterward. – YaleGlobal