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This chapter investigates civil war duration and shows how culpable leaders respond to incentives to fight until the bitter end. It provides quantitative analysis that demonstrates civil wars last longer when culpable leaders are in power during the accountability era. It reviews a case study of Muammar Gaddafi during the 2011 Libyan revolution, which illustrates how the justice cascade has altered the decision calculus of culpable leaders. The chapter describes Gaddafi, who was unlike his peers during the impunity era, as he worried enough about an international prosecution to spurn the exile option. It recounts Gaddafi's decision to risk it all on the battlefield, which prolonged the Libyan conflict.

This chapter surveys the spectrum of positions adopted by Middle Eastern countries toward the responsibility to protect (RtoP) and offers an explanation for why these policies were espoused and how they developed as the RtoP advanced to the forefront of the international diplomatic agenda. The chapter is divided into three parts. Part I defines the Middle East and the territories that are considered within the region. It also highlights the salient historic, geographic, and political features of the region that influenced policies regarding the RtoP. Part II surveys the positions of the Middle Eastern countries as the international community debated the notion of intervention to prevent or halt gross violations of human rights. It charts the development of Middle Eastern positions as the global debate on the RtoP progressed and it also identifies the main factors that influenced the policies of regional players. Part III examines the applicability of the RtoP to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which illustrates one among the leading issues currently affecting regional attitudes towards the RtoP. Part IV briefly analyzes the international response to the popular revolt against Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and the question of the applicability of the RtoP to the Libyan case.

Chapter 6 begins with an overview of the causes and dynamics of the Libyan Revolution and the civil war between the Gaddafi regime and the Libyan opposition. The core of the chapter examines the empirical effects of the ICC on the conflict and attempts to initiate direct peace negotiations between the regime and the Libyan opposition. The effects of the Court’s intervention on four issues are examined: the conflict narrative and dominant understanding of the Libyan conflict; the attitudes and incentives of the actors involved in the war towards negotiations; the mediation strategies employed to encourage the rebels and the Gaddafi regime to negotiate and determine the fate of Gaddafi; and the potential emergence of a ripe moment for a negotiated settlement to the civil war. The chapter ends with an analysis of whether any of the actors that intimated, at any point, an interest in negotiating a settlement between the regime and the opposition forces could have successfully done so. Five actors are considered here: the Libyan opposition; Muammar Gaddafi; Saif al-Islam Gaddafi; the African Union; and the intervening NATO forces.

Chapter 5 analyzes China’s response to the 2011 Libya crisis. In the space of three weeks, China would vote on two landmark resolutions at the UN Security Council: a yes vote for a unanimous referral of a sitting head of state to the International Criminal Court, and shortly after, an abstention vote permitting sanctions and a “no-fly zone plus” over Libyan territory. China’s votes were largely a surprise—many analyses had predicted that China and Russia would cast tandem vetoes. Status is key to understanding China’s response. China was particularly sensitized to status due to a well-publicized speech by Colonel Gaddafi citing his domestic repression as a parallel to the Tiananmen Square Incident of 1989. Against this status trigger, the great powers (the “P3” of the United States, the United Kingdom, France) came out forcefully for intervention, and representatives of China’s Global South peer group—the African Union, the League of Arab States, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the Gulf Cooperation Council—were among the first to call for a strong response. China was able to reconcile its concerns regarding an International Criminal Court referral of the Libya case as China prioritized status; China was socially isolated from its great powers peers at the UN Security Council and from its Global South peers in regional organizations. When the Global South reference group disagreed about the call for a no-fly zone, China viewed the next most feasible option as an abstention vote, so as to offend no peer.

This chapter examines Libya’s experience with transitional justice since the conclusion of the country’s 2011 civil war and the onset of its post-Gaddafi transition. The core of the chapter focuses on three transitional justice mechanisms: retributive criminal justice, lustration under Libya’s Political Isolation Law, and the amnesty granted to revolutionaries under Law 38. None of these mechanisms have been implemented within a peace or peacebuilding process. Libya’s experience with all three of these transitional justice approaches has acted to perpetuate, rather than alleviate, a climate of selective impunity and vengeance against those associated with the previous regime while simultaneously elevating the revolutionary legitimacy of Libya’s rebel groups and militias. Transitional justice efforts to date have, as a result, frustrated the construction of a post-war peace. The chapter concludes by arguing that the current UN-led peace negotiations may offer an opportunity to integrate transitional justice and peacebuilding processes.

This chapter shows how Muammar Gaddafi set out to eradicate the state as Libya's Atomic Energy Authority (NAEA) prepared for a nuclear power program. Gaddafi's Cultural Revolution gave him increasingly unrestrained power, created a shadow apparatus challenging the formal institutions of the state, and caused turbulence throughout the country. As Gaddafi pursued increasingly radical policies at home and abroad, fueled by oil wealth and the growing influence of vigilante Revolutionary Committees, the state dwindled. The Cultural Revolution, which undermined the administrative capabilities of the state to an extreme degree, eroded the Gaddafi regime's resources for monitoring and controlling Libya's NAEA.

Despite the autocratic nature of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, its weakness in Cyrenaica (Libya’s eastern province) became apparent in the 1990s. A series of protests there over specific issues—the deaths at Abu Salim prison in 1996, the children’s AIDS crisis in Benghazi, and the cartoons protest in 2006—allowed embryonic social movements using civil resistance to emerge. Regime attempts to suppress demonstrations linked to these events provoked a general uprising against it in Cyrenaica in mid-February 2011, which spread into Tripolitania and the Fezzan (the western and southern provinces respectively). Although civil society flourished after the removal of the Gaddafi regime, the failure of formal governance over the next four years led to extremist attempts to suppress any manifestation of civil resistance. The reasons for this are rooted in the nature of the previous regime as well as in the way in which the Libyan revolution evolved.

This chapter explains President Barack Obama's decision to intervene in Libya in 2011 and to actively suggest that there could be no future for Libya with Muammar Gaddafi in power. It outlines the professed foreign policy set forth by Obama's incoming administration — throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, he had been a fierce critic of President George H.W. Bush's declaration of a War on Terror. Then the chapter shows how Obama succumbed to principled types of ideas when faced with the prospect of mass atrocity, becoming drawn into the conflict in Libya in 2011. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates advanced more cognitive ideas, arguing that Libya was of ‘no strategic interest’, but the principled interpretations advanced by Samantha Power, Susan Rice, and Hillary Clinton prevailed. The chapter discusses how Obama pursued a decisive action in the Security Council and pushed for a resolution for the protection of Libyan civilians ‘by all necessary measures’.

This introductory chapter claims that the way autocrats fare in their pursuit of nuclear weapons programs is related to the way they treat their states. For instance, Saddam Hussein solidified his hold on power by proliferating and fragmenting state institutions. On the contrary, Muammar Gaddafi maintained his power by dismantling state institution. These choices later tied their hands by limiting their ability to monitor their nuclear program and to intervene when necessary. Saddam was able to fix some of the problems facing his country's nuclear weapons program, once he decided to intervene; Gaddafi's attempts met with much less success.

This introductory chapter sets out the aims and subject matter of the book. In the first section, it offers a brief outline of the emergence and development of the ‘peace versus justice’ debate, observing that the debate has become the dominant framing of ICC interventions into ongoing conflicts. The chapter then demonstrates how the ICC was made—and is structured—to intervene in active and ongoing conflicts and has been directed to by individual states and the UN Security Council. The third section addresses the research questions and research design that drove the research behind the book. In the fourth section, the subsequent chapters of the book are briefly outlined. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the book’s overall goals and contributions.

Chapter 5 looks for what, if any, impact real-world operations occurred as a result of changes to air force doctrine during the “small wars” of the 1980s. In other words, were there results seen in the Libyan and Panamanian conflicts? By focusing on real-world events, including Operation El Dorado Canyon, this chapter demonstrates that tactical exercises had a direct impact in Libya but not so much in Panama or Grenada. Furthermore, the relationship between the army and air force was strengthened through the meetings held between the Tactical Air Command and the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command. These meetings resulted in the adoption of the “31 initiatives.” These initiatives greatly increased the focus on close air support and the destruction of enemy air defense as part of combat operations, something the Red Flag exercise was already focusing on.

This chapter summarizes the central argument and empirical findings of the book. It begins by demonstrating that the legal theory developed here outperformed alternative explanations centered on escalation control, domestic politics, and nationalism. It also shows that the argument travels beyond the Cold War and outside of Latin America by exploring America’s various interventions in Iraq from 1991 to 2003 and Obama’s varied responses to civil wars in Libya and Syria during the Arab Spring. The chapter concludes by suggesting avenues for future research and highlighting the book’s scholarly and practical implications.