Volume 7 Issue 1 (2018)

The Rise and Fall of Liberal Peace in Libya

pp. 14-25  |  Published Online: January 2018  |  DOI: 10.22521/unibulletin.2018.71.2

Siyum Adugna Mamo

Abstract

In the wake of the 2011 “Arab Uprising”, liberal elements were haunting in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya – countries which experienced the uprising at its early stage. The liberal elements triggered the youth particularly in Libya to boldly oppose their long-serving Libyan president, Muammar Qaddafi. In what followed, the West not only interfered to help the rebels and become involved in a direct military intervention in the guise of humanitarian intervention, it also tried to install a liberal peace in the process of state reconstruction and peacebuilding in the aftermath of the revolution that ousted Qaddafi. The intervention had an implicit agenda of regime change and installing liberal peace in post-Qaddafi Libya. However, the intervention descended the country into a protracted civil war that the country has been suffering from for more than six years after the downfall of Qaddafi, instead of bringing peace and stability to the Libyans. The liberal peace that was rising during the revolution and immediately after the fall of Qaddafi through the liberal ideals that triggered the Libyan revolutionaries ruptured as the country descended into protracted civil war among different factions due to Western intervention. The aim of this desk research is therefore to unpack the rise and fall of liberal peace in Libya. Employing discussion of the debate over liberal peace in Libya as a core methodological analysis, this paper argues that the liberal peace that the West attempted to install in the country failed mainly because it was rooted in hegemonic liberal values, which are incompatible with Libyan tribal society, and disregarded the indigenous peacebuilding mechanisms. This paper concludes that liberal peace, which privileges the international over the local, is irreconcilable with post-conflict environments in the Global South and hence was unable to solve the Libyan crises. Therefore, emphasis should be given to indigenous peacebuilding mechanisms, which are less recognized and understudied compared to liberal peace which is over-studied and hegemonized, to bring a resonant and sustainable peace in post-conflict environments of the Global South.

Keywords: liberal peace, Libya, NATO’s intervention in Libya, 2011 Arab uprising

References

Adebajo, A. (2016) The revolt against the West: intervention and sovereignty. Third World Quarterly, 37(7), 1187-1202.

Becker, J., & Shane, S. (2016a, February 27). The Libya Gamble Part-I: Hilary Clinton, Smart Power’ and a dictator’s Fall. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/hillary-clinton-libya.html

Becker, J., & Shane, S. (2016b, February 27). The Libya Gamble Part-II: A New Libya, with Very Little Time Left. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/libya-isis-hillary-clinton.html

Bose, S., & Thakur, R. (2016). The UN Secretary-General and the Forgotten Third R2P Responsibility. Global Responsibility to Protect8(4), 343-365.

Cypher, J. M. (2016). Hegemony, military power projection and US structural economic interests in the periphery. Third World Quarterly, 37(5), 800-817.

Danilovic, V., & Clare, J. (2007). The Kantian Liberal Peace (Revisited). American Journal of Political Science, 51(2), 397-414.

Doyle, W. M. (2005). Three Pillars of the Liberal Peace. American Political Science Review, 99(3), 463-466.

Heathershaw, J. (2013). Towards better theories of peacebuilding: beyond the liberal peace debate. Peacebuilding, 1(2), 275-282.

Hegre, H., Ellingsen, T., Gates, S., & Gleditsch, N. (2001). Towards a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political Change, and Civil War, 1816-1992. American Political Science Review, 95(1), 33-48.

Hoffman, M. (2009). What is left of the Liberal Peace?. LSE Connect21(2), 10-11.

Kuperman, A. J. (2015). Obama’s Libya Debacle: How a Well-Meaning Intervention Ended in Failure. Foreign Affairs94(2).

Payandeh, N. (2012). The United Nations, Military Intervention, and Regime Change in Libya. Virginia Journal of International Law, 52(2), 355-403.

Richmond, O. P. (2006). The problem of peace: understanding the ‘liberal peace’. Conflict, Security & Development, 6(3), 291-314.

Richmond, P. O. (2010). Resistance and the Post-liberal Peace. Millennium Journal of International Studies, 38(3), 665-692.

Richmond, O. P., & Mac Ginty, R. (2014). Where now for the critique of the liberal peace. Cooperation and Conflict, 50(2), 171-189.

Salih, M. A. (2012). Coming to Terms with the Liberal Peacebuilding in Post-War Liberia and Sierra Leone. In D. J. Francis (Ed.), When War Ends: Building Peace in Divided Communities (pp. 167-184). Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.

United Nations. (2011). Security Council Resolution 1973. New York: United Nations.

Vandewalle, D. (2012). After Qaddafi: The Surprising Success of the New Libya. Foreign Affairs, 19(6), 8-15.

Weiss, T. G., & Roy, P. (2016). The UN and the Global South, 1945 and 2015: past as prelude? Third World Quarterly, 37(7), 1147-1155.

Zoubir, Y. H., & Rózsa, E. N. (2012). The end of the Libyan dictatorship: the uncertain transition. Third World Quarterly33(7), 1267-1283.

Announcement

UNIBULLETIN News!

► New issue coming soon! (Volume 13 Issue 1, 2024)

Call for Papers

UNIBULLETIN is calling for submissions. Authors are invited to submit papers from the all fields of the Education (General) and Social Sciences (General) in the international context. All submissions should be presented only in English.