The United States Led Nato Intervention and the Libyan Conflict

ABSTRACT Energy security is a fundamental and global commercial priority. Moreover, as industrialization has expanded across the globe, energy has become a key good, the movement of which ties together the commercial and economic interests of a significant majority of states. Oil remains the most important source for global energy production and nearly two-thirds of that resource lies in the Middle East of which Libya is a part. Preserving the global supply of uninterrupted, affordable energy was an explicit or implicit foreign policy interest of the United States, a country with historical and presently high levels of energy consumption. The recent US supported NATO-led intervention against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya has been a considerable source of contention among many, scholars and statesmen alike in the international system, with many openly supporting military action.The application of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) to Libya has generated an unmatched spike in commentary.This study examined how the promotion and protection of oil interest implicated the United States government support for the NATO-led humanitarian intervention on the resolution of the Libyan conflict. The study is guided by three research questions: is the United States Government strategic oil interest implicated in regime change military intervention in Libya?; did the United States Government fail to exercise the R2P United Nations mandate to protect the citizens in the Libyan conflict?; did the United States Government led NATO military intervention violate the United Nations mandate on the resolution of the Libyan conflict? Using secondary sources and qualitative descriptive method in our data collection and analysis, we hypothesized that; the United States Government strategic oil interest is implicated in her regime change military intervention in Libya; the United States Government failed to exercise the R2P United Nations mandate to protect the citizens in the Libyan conflict; and the United States Government led NATO military intervention violated the United Nations mandate on the resolution of the Libyan conflict. Findings based on thepower theory also known as Political Realismrevealed thatWestern powers led by the US viewed Gaddafi as an obstacle to their imperial strategies for yet another reason: standing in the way of their age old policies of divide and rule. Also the intervention in Libya reveals general weaknesses and shortcomings in the international system of collective security, as during the intervention, the intervening forces constantly moved beyond the strict mandate they had been given by resolution 1973.Finding equally revealed that the United States capitalized on the phrase “all necessary means/forces” as an alibi to revert to regime change instead of civilian protection which was their main reason of intervening in the first instance. The study recommended among other things that,the US and the rest of the world should be careful about where and when they intervene militarily, but dictators should also be on notice as “all necessary measures” in a United Nations Security Council resolution likely means military intervention and regime change. Also The United Nations should equally rise up to the challenges of international security so as not to give room for some Western countries who hide under the pretext of implementing UN resolutions, to pursue their private and most times selfish economic and political interests