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[THREAD] Every time things go wrong in Libya (as they often do), we are told that it is the “responsibility”, the “effect” or the “fault” of the 2011 intervention. This supposed causation is fallacious [1/16]. 
The intervention should, and indeed must, be criticised, for the lack of preparation, its execution and the management of the aftermath. However, this does not mean that the current state of the country can be attributed to it, or that the endogenous factors can be ignored [2/16]
Firstly, cause and effect cannot be inverted: the current state of Libya stems from a transition which began before the intervention (19 March 2011), as part of the Arab spring [3/16].
The first Libyan civil war (the uprising and counter-offensive) had already broken out a month prior to the intervention. The war triggered the intervention, not the inverse [4/16].
On the eve of the intervention, the Portugal representative at the UN Security Council said that “for the international community, the regime that has ruled Libya for more than 40 years has come to an end by the will of the Libyan people” [5/16].
Then, after the intervention, the situation improved: the first democratic elections were held in July 2012 and embassies were reopened. The second civil war only began in May 2014, two and a half years after the end of the intervention [6/16].
This shows that there is no direct “intervention implies chaos” causal chain. Libya’s future had in no way been determined and the conflict was not inevitable [7/16].
Finally, those who claim that the current problems are due to the intervention presume, without evidence, that without the intervention, Libya would be in a better state today [8/16].
In doing so, they often compare Libya’s current situation with that before the first civil war, to deduce that stability under a dictator is better than instability without one [9/16].
This is a fallacious comparison for two reasons. First, because the decision to intervene was taken while the country was already unstable (the reference point is not the “Ghaddafi years” but the civil war into which Libya was plunged when the decision was taken) [10/16].
Second, because an honest comparison would consider what the current situation would be if the war had been allowed to develop without an intervention (on 19th March, as Ghaddafi’s troops enter the suburbs of Benghazi) [11/16].
This is impossible to know (which is the problem of counterfactuals). The two hypotheses are therefore both plausible: some claim that it would have been better not to intervene, while others that it would have been worse. Neither camp can prove themselves to be correct [12/16].
The comparison with Syria has limited value in this legitimate debate (it has neither the same forces, nor the same allies, nor the same risk of regional escalation), but it is useful as a case of a decision not to decisively intervene against the regime [13/16].
Without the 2011 intervention, Libya could therefore potentially be in a state similar to Syria today which, it should be recalled, is worse (half a million deaths, 5 million refugees, 6 million displaced and lasting consequences in the region and for Europe) [14/16].
The debate remains open but there is nothing to prove that it would have been better not to intervene. It should never be forgotten that, while intervening comes with a cost, so does not intervening [15/16].
Find these arguments and others in the article “Ten Myths About the 2011 Intervention in Libya” (The Washington Quarterly, 39:2, 2016, p. 23-43) [16/16] jbjv.com/IMG/pdf/JBJV_2…
