Liberal interventionism and the case of Libya

When, on March 17th 2011, the UN Security Council passed UNSC 1973 authorising UN members to establish a ‘No Fly Zone’ (NFZ) and take ‘all necessary measures’ to protect the civilian population of Libya, there was some reason to think that this represented a genuine break with the past. Here, for once, we have an intervention to prevent human rights violations by a sovereign member of the UN which is supported by a UNSC Resolution and by the local regional organisation, the Arab League – this seems to validate the idea of a ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) which the UN acknowledged warily in 2005 but had not previously put into operation and, perhaps, to represent the coming of age of liberal interventionism after the false starts of Kosovo in 1999 and Iraq 2003. Three weeks on, does this positive assessment still hold true