NATO’s R2P operation in Libya was a regime-change bombing campaign

Evidence

To justify military action and the violation of Libyan national sovereignty, the international forces invoked the “responsibility to protect,” a doctrine developed in the wake of tragedies in Rwanda and Kosovo in the 1990s, with the aim of protecting civilians from things like genocide. But the targets chosen by NATO revealed that the real goal was to overthrow the government. A layperson would have never guessed it, but a “no-fly zone” actually meant bombing quite a lot of Libya. Fighter jets carried out thousands of airstrikes, killing scores of civilians, and they bombarded Gaddafi’s hometown, even though no one in the loyal region needed any protection from the government. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 242

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Libya intervention pushed Putin back toward the presidency and anti-Western doctrine — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 245; NATO’s 2011 Libya intervention was regime change disguised as civilian protection. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 242