When there was a clear and present danger, intervention was the right thing to do. But the threat is receding
Barely through the entrance and we're looking for the exit. The Libyan intervention is just 11 days old, but already the clamour is for an end. Polls show almost identical levels of weak support on both sides of the Atlantic, a meagre 45% in Britain and 47% in the US. (At the equivalent stage, 90% of Americans backed the war in Afghanistan, and 70% supported the invasion of Iraq.) Each day brings conflicting signals as to whether the end is near. News of rebel advances on Monday brought hope that Colonel Gaddafi might be gone by the end of the week. The morning bulletins on Tuesday brought word of pro-Gaddafi successes, suggesting that the dictator would not be out any time soon.
That's what a protracted civil war could look like, a tug of war between two armed groups where the momentum shifts back and forth. But this very pattern presents an awkward question for the alliance thumping Libya and for all those who supported this intervention: a question that becomes all the more urgent on those days when the rebel forces do well.
Put simply, how can the allies keep attacking Libya if the threat that brought them there is receding? The UN approved military action – with the backing of the Arab League and the pointed non-opposition of Russia and China – for a very specific reason: to "protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack". That was the legal form of words, but the moral case was direct. Gaddafi had his "knife to the throat" of the civilians of Benghazi; if he were not stopped, he would stage a massacre.
Yet on Monday Barack Obama was glad to tell the American people: "Tonight, I can report that we have stopped Gaddafi's deadly advance." In similar mood, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, told Tuesday's London conference that we "have averted a humanitarian crisis". In which case, why are we still there? If the knife is no longer at the throat and if, thanks to coalition air strikes, the knife has now been severely blunted, isn't the basis for this intervention melting away?
There's a legal, even moral, way to look at this question and a political way – and the two are diverging by the day. The lawyers are indeed sounding the alarm. Philippe Sands QC, an authority on such matters, is clear: "The resolution allows for protection of civilians from the threat of attack. If the threat of attack has ceased, there is no justification for the use of force."
Morally, too, those who only backed this move because they wanted to prevent another Srebrenica – and I put myself in this category – can hardly maintain their support once that core goal has been achieved. If the allies had a duty to act, then once that duty has been discharged – and the threat has been repelled – their only responsibility is to go home.
The problem, of course, lies in the meaning of that word "threat", a word the UN resolution was careful not to define. Here's where the rarefied abstractions of international jurisprudence hit the dusty, blurry realities on the ground. It is, admits Sands, an "empirical question", one whose answer can vary hour to hour and from person to person. When Obama spoke on Monday, with the rebels surging, it did indeed look as if Gaddafi's threat to civilians had receded. Twenty-four hours later, with Gaddafi's forces back inside the crucial rebel-held town of Misrata, the threat had returned.
Some set the bar high, approving of action only if Gaddafi poses a threat that is unambiguous and imminent, the knife at or heading towards the throat. Others include indirect threats, arguing that if the Libyan regime exposes civilians to danger by conducting military activity in built-up areas, that too justifies action. And still others, such as Liam Fox, say that the threat has not gone until every Libyan can "sleep in their beds" free of fear – until, in other words, Gaddafi is removed from power. (And that's even before you've considered the possible threat to civilians posed by the armed rebel groups themselves.)
Perhaps the best working definition is that offered by Obama the day after the UN passed its resolution. He demanded that the regime leave Benghazi alone; pull back from Ajdabiya, Misrata and Zawiya; let water, electricity and gas flow to those areas; and allow in humanitarian aid. If those demands are met, then any reading of the resolution and therefore international law says the west must cease its fire – even if that means leaving Gaddafi still safe in his Tripoli palace. If he threatens civilians once more, then the UN resolution can be "reignited" – the word of choice among lawyers, conscious that the word "revived" carries too many echoes of the old Iraq arguments – and the allies can resume their bombing. Otherwise, they have to lay down their weapons.
That, at any rate, is what international law says. But this is politics and they are not the same. The political reality is that no one wants to see the stalemate scenario, in which Gaddafi clings on as the seething ruler of a Tripoli-plus statelet in the west, while the rebels control the east. They want him gone, no matter how much they have to stretch the language of the UN resolution to achieve that outcome. Obama, no less than Cameron or Sarkozy, knows that public opinion will only see this action as a success if Gaddafi falls. Britain, France and the US are also mindful that, with a handover to Nato imminent – giving Turkey, Germany and Italy, all of whom are tepid at best about military action, a role in decision-making – they don't have long to tilt things their way. Watch in the next few days as the three core allies make a last push, in the hope they can nudge the colonel off his perch. They will keep up the air strikes, whether the original threat is there or not.
That is the nature of realpolitik. But there is a hard-headed case for a ceasefire sooner rather than later. For one thing, there is at least a chance to broker a deal with Gaddafi and his family, one that would involve exile and – painfully sacrificing justice for the sake of peace – the removal of any threat to put him in the dock at the international criminal court.
But there is a larger purpose too. By calling a halt when the resolution says they should call a halt, the allies will be showing that international law is not just a matter of what suits the powerful. Our leaders always like talking about the credibility of the UN. Well, agreeing to ceasefire – especially an inconvenient one – would help.
It may also be vital for the future of humanitarian intervention itself. Right now, too many believe that interventions will always be code for regime change, that they will always succumb to mission creep, that they will always drag on for years. What better way to disprove that than by showing that sometimes a humanitarian intervention can be just that – a short, sharp action designed to avert a catastrophe. When there was a clear and present danger, it was right to act. When that danger has receded, it's right to stop.