 Okay, well I think we are, we're going to start. My name is, is Matt Spurdan and I'm professor in the department of war studies. And I'm also director of the conflict security and development group and it's a very, very great pleasure to welcome Ian Martin here this afternoon Ian Martin has been with the group as a senior research fellow since 2018. Any of you will know Ian Martin from a long and distinguished career as a UN senior UN official, heading several UN human rights and peace operations, including in Rwanda team or less Nepal and of course in Libya indeed in Libya in 2011 and 2012 he was Ban Ki Moons or the Secretary General's post conflict advisor, and then of course the UN support mission head. Now he's here because he has spent part of COVID very sensitively writing up his experience reflecting on the experience in Libya and around the planning for the Libyan operation. The book, which is available I should say at the back for a much reduced price and more importantly is, is very well worth reading and spending some time on revisits the international engagement in Libya from February 2011 through to the uprising in July. Sorry, through the first election in July 2012. Now, with all that is going on around us at the moment. Those events may seem to some of you a long time ago, but as I think the book certainly makes clear a more nuanced understanding of that intervention, what prompted it, how it unfolded, and why it was eventually sent into renewed civil war is deeply relevant to an understanding, not only of where we are today in Libya and in the wider region, but also to broader developments in international politics over the past decade and of course to more specific issues, such as the dilemmas and risks raised by military involvement in defense of human rights, and of course the UN's role in such operations. They're more nuanced understanding because that is precisely what we have received and got here and I say again that this is an issue this is an intervention which generated a lot of of debate and heat and discourse and much of it inaccurate or ill-informed or representing particular views so I think this was much overdue that we got this particular perspective. And what we're going to do is we're going to start off with a bit of a conversation. I'm going to ask some questions, and then 2025 minutes into that open up for broader questions from from the audience, and then we'll have a bit of time afterwards for those who want to, to buy the book and I'll do my level best to juggle the online presence of questions there and from the audience. And then I think I'm going to start where you start in the way in the book as well right at the beginning, where you ask the question whether the international intervention in Libya, whether it was a justified response to an impending massacre, or whether it was a wider threat to civilians, or whether there were other motivations involved in seeking to ask Gaddafi and to shape the future of what was an oil rich country. Some will already have an answer to that people will have lined up on different sides of the aisle but I think your perspective on the, on the justifications for the intervention will be a very good point to start. No worries. This always happens with it coming through downstairs and I apologize for going through this. But he wants to start there. Sure. Justification. First Max, many thanks to you and to KCL for hosting this. I'm also very pleased to meet my publisher for the first time Michael Dwyer, who I've had a lot of online communication with, but it's the first time we're meeting in person. Yes, I do think the intervention was initially justified. I thought so at the time. I'm not a gun hoe interventionist. I mentioned the introduction that my views about previous interventions are quite mixed. I worked in veranda quite soon after the genocide and saw the consequences of non intervention. I was in East Timor, heading the mission that conducted the self determination referendum there is an engulfed in the violence that followed and welcomed and indeed encouraged military intervention led by Australia, authorized by the UN Security Council. But I was so opposed to the illegal invasion of Iraq that I resigned 38 years in the leadership of the Labour Party when Tony Blair supported George Bush in that gratuitous invasion. So, I think that interventions and indeed modern interventions need to be considered each of them in their, their own context. Military intervention was authorizing began in Libya, I have no personal involvement in denied no income if I was going to become involved, I was only looking at it, like, I guess, almost everybody here was except the Libyans, very different reasons to look closely at it. It did seem to me then that it was justified and I, in writing and preparing to write this book. I look more closely than I ever had at the information the human rights information from organizations like Amazon International Human Rights Watch the Human Rights Council Commission of the investigation. There were hand accounts from journalists who were on the ground Alex Crawford of Sky News who is in Al-Saria when that was pretty easy taken by Gaddafi's sources. I do believe that, unfortunately, Gaddafi had failed to respond to a wave of condemnation of the repression of the uprising from everybody, United Nations, African Union, League of Arab States, governments all around the world, and the organization is running cooperation and, and so on to a first Security Council resolution to sort of throw them almost every tool in the Security Council's toolbox short of military intervention at Libya sanctions on Zimbabwe, and yet none of that led to any rain in the back of Gaddafi's forces in seeking to retake cities that had gone into rebel hands. And of course that the uprising, because of how quickly it was through repressed had itself taken up arms quite quickly to therefore, are to distinguish between civilians who are being killed and those who have taken up arms. I think there was a case for humanitarian intervention, and you asked the question all of the other motives. And of course, those who, whenever one looks at oil rich country, think that our motive may very well have been related to its riches. Anyway, that's the case. I haven't found any indication in terms of what one knows about the considerations amongst the decision makers that was a motive. The long countries, especially those that intervened were looking to their future trading relations arm sales relations with a rich Libya so naturally that, especially when the National Transitional Council suggested that those who supported the intervention should have been that might be favoured in close conflict contracts and so on. But I do believe it was a, in its initial motive, a humanitarian intervention. And I don't believe either that it was initially a regime change operation in the sense that Iraq was because, and that's why I get quite irritated when Iraq and Libya and sometimes Afghanistan as well are all mentioned in the same breath as if they're very similar situations. Iraq was a completely gratuitous invasion, whereas Libya was initially an internal uprising which then confronted external actors with how they were going to respond to this and that's very different indeed. So a tendency now to forget the broader context of the so-called Arab Spring, the Arab uprisings, how quickly Ben Ali had gone in Tunisia, how quickly Mubarak had gone in Egypt. And actually there was rather an expectation that Gaddafi simply would go quickly, you know, there were defections around him very soon, rather than a planned regime change, that change at the time. And yet, just on that, you also make the point which I think is an interesting one and I would tend to agree that at the time a number of prominent advocates and supporters of the responsibility to protect, which had sort of crystallised over the previous five or six years when the General Assembly resolution saw this as the, finally, this is the application of the R2P. I think the evidence for that is rather more limited and I think you reinforce that. If they look to anything, they look back to Srebrenica and Duranda in the early 90s rather than to the recent evolution of the R2P doctrine. And the way I look at it is that, I mean, there was indeed a great deal of talk about Rwanda, Srebrenica on steroids, and I should have said, in referring to the evidence around the uprising, there was also a lot of exaggeration, in media reporting, in rhetoric, talk of genocide, inappropriate comparisons in my opinion to Rwanda and Srebrenica. But there's no doubt when one looks at the policy makers that the past experience and non-intervention in Rwanda and what happened in Srebrenica weighed very heavily on them, and that's not just the French and UK and American decision makers. I quote the current Prime Minister of Norway, who is then the foreign minister, is talking about how Rwanda and Srebrenica weighed on a whole generation of politicians and shape their response. What I don't see is anybody said, you know, okay, the General Assembly has adopted the responsibility to protect, so we have to assess it against this. There were some references in New York to R2P and some language that was resonant of R2P, but you don't find it frankly in the considerations as far as I can see of the key decision makers. But these are two parallel things, R2P came out of, there mustn't be another Rwanda and Srebrenica. But I think the response of the policy makers to say you have to stop the being another Rwanda and Srebrenica would have been there, even if the doctrine hadn't been formulated in the meantime. We come to the actual unfolding of the of the campaign itself, and how NATO became eventually drawn into a civil war. And I think one of the, certainly for me, one of the most interesting chapters in the book is, and partly because it is deeply relevant today is whether or not, in your view, there ever was a real possibility of a peaceful transition. One that could have been brought about by eunmidiation, or by the African Union or others indeed as you point out, other parties in the Norwegian government was quite actively involved behind the scenes as well. I'm just interested in the counterviews to say that, you know, there's very little to do with Gaddafi in power, but I wonder whether you could speak more to that chapter that deals with the possibilities of a peaceful transition. And I think there's no doubt that Gaddafi's oduracy was a huge obstacle to any possibility of a managed transition or a mediated outcome and I think all the mediators came to that conclusion because at the end of the day, the last issue that couldn't be resolved was, is Gaddafi going to step down? Is Gaddafi going to take the lead? And people were close to him, Musakusa, his foreign minister who affected, you know, all testify to his own lack of realism. And I think there was some interest in part of some of those around him clearly. It was his son's, like Lislan Gaddafi, on whose behalf the Norwegians were contacted very early and asked to become involved before military intervention had been authorized and there was a Norwegian mediation team in Tripoli as the Security Council resolution for military intervention was passed. And that's part of the story that hasn't been very much written about outside Norway. But I think to have had the maximum possibility of a managed transition would have required a coordinated effort by the different external actors who had the most influence with Gaddafi himself, you know, probably the Africans probably were the only person who was the only person who was the only person who was the only person who was the only person who was twice face-to-face, once on behalf of the African Union, once on his own, you know, saw Gaddafi and told him the game was up and he should step down, although how strong he isn't entirely clear. But the Africans had that access to Gaddafi. On the other hand, the UK, France, those who were particularly in the US, those who were intervening, clearly had the influence with the National Transitional Council to urge them to engage in a negotiation. But it's very clear and I think I have the evidence that in the book that the UK and France were long-term interested, at least at the beginning and although they gave lip service in the UN Security Council, the efforts of the UN Special Envoy, Mr Al-Khati, they didn't give that real backing and they were very contentious of the African Union, with the scars of which are still felt in the African Union today. So, if there had been a coordinated effort, could that have produced a managed transition? And then, of course, a further question would that have been better than the outcome, because there were other problems, other things people feared about that. Ultimately, we should never know and Gaddafi was a huge obstacle, but I don't think one can say that the collective international community made the best coordinated efforts that it could towards that. And I wanted to dwell a bit on your role as post-conflict planning advisor. Obama, of course, afterwards blamed the Europeans for not having paid enough attention to the post-conflict phase, which I suppose was easy to do afterwards. But there were other aspects, which you and your book acknowledge, in retrospect, you might have underestimated, not only you obviously, but a lot of others, including the tension that was there between Islamists and other political groups, and also the rivalries of other international actors in the region. I wonder whether you could say a little bit more about those, but also a little bit about post-conflict planning process. And this is part in light of your long experience working with the UN. Every time we have an operation, every time we have a new, I should, of course, have added, and I didn't do this, I do apologize, that Ian went on to serve on the high level panel for UMP's operations in 2015. So I think it's your experience and leave a note out in form that as well. What is the difficulty of getting post-conflict right and will be your experience from the Libya? Well, the first thing I want to say is not only did Obama say that not planning for the day after was the worst mistake of his presidency, but an academic witness told the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee that not a bit of thought was given to the post-conflict issues. And since my response was, as you said, was to think about the UN, I'm a little sensitive to that charge and do set out in the in the book what efforts were made by the UN, by the UK and the US. I don't mean you can't find France particularly present present in any post-conflict thinking, but there were efforts by the UN, the US and the UK in particular. In retrospect they don't look very realistic. I think a lot of people underestimated and I don't plead entirely guilty to this because I think our own analysis in the UN was to say what the post-conflict challenges were going to be very great. Whereas there was too easy an assumption that Libya had a lot of money, so that wasn't going to be a problem. They had a lot of well-trained professionals, as indeed it did, and many of them committed themselves to return and work for the new Libya. But that underestimated, I think in particular, the institutional weakness of Libya. You know, the way I sort of summarise it and I know historian of Libya obviously is that this was a country that had never had a period of institutional development. The experiences of the Ottoman Empire brought together under Italian colonialism that was extremely brutal and ultimately genocidal. A second world war battleground with other people's wars going to and fro, leaving it with virtually nothing other than scrap metal in two bases at the end of the war. The UN, that's an interesting bit of the history, into a unified country with a monarchy but ultimately a fairly weak monarchy that didn't achieve much in institutional development by 1969 when Gaddafi overthrew. And then 40 years of a dictator who was explicitly opposed to the development of the institutions of a modern democratic state. So I think that you can go from that to an easy transition is obviously naive. But I think the charge that those who intervened didn't give sufficient attention and follow through is justified. Again, one has to remember how many simultaneous issues confronting policymakers in the Arab uprisings and the tension very quickly turned to Syria and elsewhere. There was from the beginning, a rather easy passing of the buck to the UN, it happened at the very first London conference that Cameron and Hague convened and second, you know, banky moon accepted that the UN would coordinate post conflict and then on. It was regarded as a as a UN responsibility, although what was really the central issue as became clear and clear, which was the security sector and the proliferation of armed groups who had been built up by the intervening countries and by their special forces operations on the ground. That was never an issue that the UN was equipped to resolve, but it was a responsibility that I don't think the countries that intervened really accepted responsibility for. I mean, I think, again, in light of the benefit of hindsight, an argument to very quickly developed about whether part of the problem was that the UN adopted a very light footprint. I think debate about the virtues of going light footprint to having heavy, heavy missions and some suggested that this should have been a major stabilization and peacekeeping operation in the aftermath of NATO's operation in place or rather instead of a so-called light footprint approach. And that didn't happen. And I wonder why, first of all, what do you think, what are the reasons why it didn't happen, whether that was in the time that feasible option that's all debate light versus the heavy presence. And it's hard to exaggerate the Libyan opposition to having a major international presence they were great through the NATO support and indeed special forces support on the ground during the uprising that there was overwhelming opposition to boots on the ground later on. Again, you know, one must always remember how history weighs on situations Iraq and Afghanistan were referred to a lot in the conversation. In addition, there was absolutely nobody who had any information to be willing to do it. There was a point where, in New York, the UN brought the representatives of the three France UK us the leaders of emails and said, you know, if you think there's going to need to be a major presence, you know, it's down to you because this isn't the sort of thing the UN can do in a hurry. Even limited contingency plans we drew up for military observers if there'd been agreement on a on a C-STAR were viewed very warily by Libyan interlocutors. So no Libyan openness to it, no international interest or willingness to do it. Now I have to confess that I didn't think that would have been in the interest of the time and I don't think in retrospect it would be the interest of Libya either but that goes to our well or badly one thinks the international community does these things. And certainly imposing it on Libya in 2011 think would have only added to problems on the ground. If you're right, if you're applying that I'm a bit of a light footprint man myself, I tend to favor smaller, smarter political interventions by the UN rather than major military deployments or a certain context in which major military deployments are necessary. But I'm quite unconvinced that it would have been in Libya's interests to have had a substantial foreign military presence imposed on it in 2011. Maybe there were kind of lighter options that could have been looked at to which over time Libyans might have been more open but there wasn't much of a debate around that. And that leads to, I think, a final question before I open up and I mean you may I mentioned already or you went on to serve on the high level panel for UNP's operations and you sort of address this is on extent already but but what are the lessons looking back for the United Nations from from this experience from yours that you mentioned, there just a life would have been big but what would you sort of single out. Well, the irony is that I took into the high level panel some of the lessons of the Libya planning which was seen in the system as being as being positive, the way we bought different elements of the UN and the World Bank together in a way to exercise the idea that we would get a mission on the ground fast but then after we'd have an opportunity to engage with Libyan actors plan further stages and these influence some of the recommendations and the high level panel and piece of those recommendations. The problem is it's not terribly popular to say, you know, look at the positive lessons of the planning of unskilled. I think there's a well conducted operation but the patient died so it's been, if I'm not seen as having been successful on the ground in practice. I think the larger lessons though, you know, go to what responsibilities can and can't be put on the UN, especially unless the UN has the strong support of key key member states. And that goes particularly to the security sector, which I've mentioned. If you look at the foreign office evidence for the House of Commons Select Committee they're sort of, after William Hay, they're sort of blaming the UN for not getting a grip on the security situation. So doesn't in general build armies in order to integrate a proliferation of armed groups into them. That would have required very strong action by a number of key member states and in the end, the Libyans turned to the UN for a coordinated role because they were so fed up with the competition among the bilaterals to bring them as the kind of the key, the key players. So, there the kind of lesson is that the UN needs to be a little careful about being pushed in a position of appearing to take responsibility for something that the backing of member states doesn't really enable them to perform. Okay I'd like to, I'd like to open up for for questions. Let me just add. Before I do that, that there are so many things in this book that are worth picking up on we can't talk about everything let me just mention one or two things I think are particularly interesting. You touch on the role of special forces and the roles played by special forces in this intervention and it's not the only place where they have played an important role and the special role often behind the scenes and in shadowy fashion. It's not something worth while looking at and what you write about it is very interesting basis it is large and open sources, but I think it's an interesting story. The other thing is what you just mentioned about security sector reform, I mean, I think your story shows, first of all the centrality and absolute importance of addressing security sector reform issues, but also have very very difficult to address. So partly with having a requisite sort of analytical understanding of a country's political economy if you like, but also getting the right kind of, you know, political violence report from member states to tackle that properly so I think on both, both those areas you should, you should have a very interesting life. But let me open up for for questions from the, from the audience starting with my, their colleague, Christine Chang. I wanted to ask what I would ask of this question is that break the. So looking forward, what is the best way to deal with the hundreds of thousands of arms groups that are running. And I say this with a special agent, one of my future people working on the VF, and this is one of the things that these various things could have had, but you know there's obviously no simple answer. Well, I think it is worth saying first of all that the situation I don't think was any precedent for the situation that Libya faced in 2011. There's been a, you know, an outcome already in Syria, there might have been some parallels there. So there's no way you can look to for, you know, here's a case where this kind of proliferation of armed groups who've come out of a rebellion and uprising have been successfully and it's hard enough to find any successful examples of DDR, even in countries where there's just been, you know, one rebel group fighting a state army and integration into the state army afterwards. The international system isn't very good at tackling that, right, a lot of positive lessons there. Whereas anyone looked at Libya, the tendency was to use the kind of the standard vocabulary of DDR, disarmament demobilization and reintegration, security sector reform, although the situation that was being looked at was a very different one. There are, I think people who have continued to wrestle with this question in the case of Libya and have done some interesting work and have some proposals, which are based not on thinking that the answer is, you know, create a national army and then, you know, you can integrate everybody into it, who advocate much more the kind of bottom up approach of working with armed groups and trying to bring them into a more disciplined framework and one of a sort of local accountability. That's interesting to me because in 2012. Two things happened which are now looked at as as unfavorably. One is that a lot of the armed groups were brought into something called the Supreme Security Committee, which was under the Ministry of Interior and was supposed to be an auxiliary in policing functions. And the other was the creation of Olivia shield, which was supposed to come under the authority of the chief of staff of the armed forces and be observes in the responsibility of the army. And so the way that eventually develop that scene as something that in some way further entrenched armed groups, rather than contributed to a path forward. At the time, it looked to some of us as if that was at least bringing people under a degree of state authority. What might have been a step towards the proper integration, well, that's not how it, that's not how it turned out. But, but I think one has to, one has to start from where things are all the later efforts and I, you know, I can't claim to have followed these closely over the 10 years, the 10 years since all the later efforts have tend to focus on developing something in terms of the armed forces at the center. And have so far succeeded. I have a job of looking at questions coming in. And I had a question here. Kevin Manson. Do you think from your own experience that maybe in transport or less from past interventions or post conflict as part of future peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine. Or is the possibility that can be any role negligible to be irreducible so negligible to be. Well, I'm not the best person to answer that question. I mean the first thing to point out is that there was resistance to a UN monitoring role in Ukraine from Russia and an acceptance of a role from the OSCE the organization security and cooperation in Europe and the first thing to say about any peace operation is it has to have and unless we're talking about a peace enforcement, it has to have the consent of the parties. So, where does one get to an agreement that not only defines lines of control and responsibilities parties but is also accepted by the parties in terms of the deployment of an international actor. So some people are already thinking about this and writing about it to Richard Gowan, the crisis group United Nations person has had written about it previously and is rethinking what he's written already and as and when we head towards hopefully to negotiate the outcome in the case of Ukraine that will be a real issue but there's certainly so far absolutely no green light from from from Russia to think about a UN role in that respect. Secretary General said a great problem to the United Nations member states don't know what to do with them. And so they might still be a chance further down the line. I got to read. Yes, go ahead. And it's really my attention on Russian, Russian, repeatedly saying that the West intention was a point that which we could say, well, if the West just delivered on the media, it's very subjective. Can you just briefly summarize the question for because they asked that so just the essence of it. The question is, whether if the intervening countries had stuck more closely to the original UN Security Council mandate, would that have been more likely to have been accepted by Russia. Right, I know that a lot of possibilities. First, I think it's, it's, I mean, the whole question of how Russia took its decision to abstain is extremely interesting in itself. The, this happened during the presidency of Medvedev. And the foreign policy responsibility was with the president, not with the prime minister Putin had stepped down as it were to be to be prime minister. And I think reason something that Medvedev was more open to a Western point of view about this, even before the uprisings began. He took the decision to abstain on the resolution and even then defended it publicly against Putin when Putin very quickly criticized the NATO intervention as a medieval crusade so it's even public discussion with Obama and some others think it's inconceivable that Medvedev took that decision to abstain without Putin's agreement. So that's interesting, but there was also a later stage when Russia sought to play a constructive role, despite their criticism of military action and brought their own envoy into play, even sent the Russian chess champion to play chess with Gaddafi and supposedly to tell him that he was in the end game. He was also tactfully said to have lost the game. So that's interesting and it's also very significant because now in the Ukraine discussion we're seeing references to, you know, to the extent to which the graduate souring of Putin was fed by the sense of betrayal over Libya, the decision making over Syria, you know, there's even a story that he, you know, the killing of Gaddafi had an impact on him. So it's very relevant. And it is not a moment when I want to quote Sege Lavrov positively, but there is a quote from him in the book in which he said if, you know, if in future anyone wants our agreement to use force for an objective we all share, it's hard to say who's going to use that force, what the rules and engagement are, what its limits are, and, you know, it's hard not to agree that the, I mean there's no way that if members of the Security Council had known at the outset, what was going to be done, what ended up being done in the course of the military action, not just by NATO, but by the bilateral special forces operation that Max has referred to, there wouldn't have been a majority in the Security Council for it, let alone a willingness on the part of Russia and China not to be there. So that one has to acknowledge, I think. Yes. So. So. So, So, So, So, So, So, I was in the school there with some lawyers and the location for me to ask for this question, so I said, when you are going to see all necessary measures to bring these to look at my nation. So this is the question nowadays. So about to look at our bill. So, when we look for countries like Saudi or the Turkey, Egypt, France, Italy, or the, every arm through their supported by one of these countries for children, and this is the fact. So, when you ask when the nation go to show all real pleasures or all necessary measures to bring citizens to look at, again about Ukraine. Do you think that what's going on in Ukraine nowadays, especially about oil and gas, a lot of the news nowadays about oil and gas from Algeria and look at. So maybe that will bring peace. Well, will the importance of Libya as an oil producing country in the context of the world shortage following the Ukraine conflict. You're right in some way helping these the Libya. No charts, I suspect is the answer to that. But the, your earlier question. When will the United Nations bring all necessary measures to resolve the situation that exists in Libya. Now, you know, the United Nations is made up of its member states. And they, as you actually said in your own question are deeply divided over Libya and have been very irresponsibly supporting different sides rather than trying to form some international unity that through the UN otherwise can contribute to a path forward for Libya and that my view is the tragedy of what's happened with, with, with Libya. But the extent to which, you know, the United Nations, I mean, the Secretary General, whoever's his special representative on the ground can impose that as long as the member states are pursuing their own interest is is very very limited. And the UN does make efforts, excessive UN special envoys have made efforts to bring different international actors closer together in support of a peaceful past forward. Those are the efforts that are being made now by Stephanie Williams in terms of trying to produce a path that leads to an election. But although we don't have the overt backing of sides that are fighting the civil war at the moment, we still have very clear differences of perspective amongst the international actors and the UN itself can't resolve that. Thank you. My name is Juna Elgamati, I'm from Libya. If you can allow me just to add a few anecdotes as I was partly involved up to now, as I was in 2011 the National Transition Council representative in the UK coordinating with the British government. And then I got extensively involved with Ansmyl, immediately after Ian handed over to Tarik Metri, until today I met all the involved and got involved with the dialogue that was overseen by Ansmyl under Leon and so on and a signatory to the political agreement in Sierra in 2015. So, just just few points and perhaps Ian can shed some light and maybe I stand to be corrected as well. The first point is that there is, there is an international impression that the Gaddafi regime was brought down by late. But the fact is people forget that the uprising started on the 15th of February in Benghazi and quickly spread to all parts of Libya, and the first military attack, air attack was actually on the 19th of March. It was five weeks of purely Libyan and transit uprising, which meant that Gaddafi lost the whole of the east. He lost parts of the western region, the western mountain called Mufusa mountain close to the Tunisia and Syria border, he lost the center of Zawia city, and major city 40 kilometers west of Tripoli, and he lost Musrata which is third or fourth largest city in Libya, 200 kilometers west of Tripoli, and he actually he placed siege to Musrata and bombarded for a few months, and he could not reclaim it back. So we could say that those five weeks before NATO started the attacks, actually Gaddafi more or less lost control of Libya, and his regime was beyond redemption. Not to say that NATO did not embark on a major military campaign, which seemed to have targeted mainly the military infrastructure of Libya. I mean that might raise a question mark, but that's another topic to learn. That's the first point. The second point talking about not preparing for the morning after or the day after. On the 11th of July, be talking to the foreign office here and speaking to the late Dr. Mahmood Jibril who was running the executive office equivalent to the prime minister of the national transition accounts on the revolution side. I was speaking to him about a stabilization plan. And he said to me specifically, the Juma we have been offered three plans. A stabilization plan by the UK, a stabilization plan by the US, but the stabilization plan by the UN, so just by the UN, we are going with the stabilization plan so just by the UN. And perhaps he can elaborate a bit more on that. So there was a stabilization plan, however, was it put to practice was it implemented immediately the day after the Gaddafi Gaddafi fell in Tripoli. I don't think it was. And here, yes, textbooks tell us and I'm an academic as well, that we should have done DDR SSR, post conflict reconstruction, national reconciliation and all these things. But it is true what what Ian has said, there are some intrinsic factors which are major obstacle. One of them is very weak capacity, we have to admit to that because Gaddafi did not allow throughout 42 years for any political elites or a leadership to develop and evolve within Libya, and very weak institutions, institutional building and state building was completely wiped out in 1969, whatever the monarchy has developed completely wiped out and brought back to zero. So there was no institution or state building whatsoever. So we're almost in a vacuum. Now that vacuum obviously was filled by militias and other forces. Now, the point here is, there was a golden opportunity for the international community to help during 2012 2014 13 until mid 2014 unfortunately things took a very bad downward turn in mid 2014 when we had the first major civil war. And ever since now for the last eight years, we've just been moving from one civil war to another things have got much much worse. So I think that opportunity in the first two years was missed by the international community. And the reason why it was missed as I suggest Ian is that you and smell your role and all you, the people who came after you as involves and smell is only as good as the major countries, especially the permanent five. Without those countries and some cannot do anything. And I think one of the major problems in over Libya is that the international players we have about seven or eight countries who are regional and international players. They never had the cohesive aligned policy on Libya. They're narrow minded interest meant that they were conflicting amongst each other. I can give you lots of examples, Italy and France, France and the UK, Emirates and Qatar, Turkey and Egypt, and so on. And this is partly the problem which we are suffering until now. So it's not easy. It's very easy to say the UN has failed. The international community did not have a plan. NATO is the one who brought down the regime and not the Europeans. But honestly, these are more of a cliches when you look closely at it. It's far more complicated than that. I have one final little question to Ian. Now he had an experience in Rwanda. Rwanda has a major, major civil war. You know, literally two tribes killing each other over a million people died. The question is, why is it that national reconciliation in Rwanda succeeded, whereas national reconciliation in Libya, which is far more easier, has been eluding us until now. So that is really a question that still, even me as a Libyan who's trying to contribute to achieving national reconciliation as a major step that we need along the road of stabilizing Libya. We find it very difficult. Is it because of internal external factors, you know, using Libyans as proxies and feeding conflict? Is it because international players are actually engaged in conflict containment rather than conflict resolution? That's that's that's right. And one final anecdote. You mentioned about the light footprint in Libya and not heavy policy. We remember very, I remember very well, we were very strongly saying the narrative, our Libyan narrative was no boots on the ground. We don't want any direct administration. Right. Because we remember what happened in Iraq. Prema, he messed up the country. And I think he messed it up for good. Probably it will take decades and decades to for the Iraqis to reclaim Iraq. So we definitely did not want a replication of that whatsoever. Plus, our Libyan people are very proud and very nationalistic and they remember the colonial days of it, the Italian colonials and so on. So they are very sensitive to foreign forces being on their ground. So I think I think that was the right thing actually to do, not to have much heavier international involvement in directly administering Libya immediately after the regime fell. Well, thanks. And Mr. Gamavi has emphasized a couple of things that I've already said and very much agree with just now that that a heavy international military presence would not have been at all welcome to the Libyans would have been very unlikely to serve Libya well. We'd have to have Libyans as she had. Well, exactly. I mean, I do, I think if in the unlikely event that an international military presence have been forced on Libya might have kind of united Libyan armed groups against the international actors, but that usually wouldn't have lasted very long. So I very much agree with you on that and you've also emphasized as I did the weakness of the UN role as long as key member states in the UN are deeply divided and in the way they're involved and we very much agree about both those things. I think I think two of your main points. I mean personally I very much you absolutely right to emphasize the extent to which Gaddafi had lost control of major places in Libya before the international military intervention began that's absolutely true. I think that's an important point because some of those who would ultimately oppose the intervention say oh well you know if Gaddafi had taken Benghazi nothing very terrible would have happened. Well, okay so one argument is what would have happened in Benghazi itself and I don't talk genocide but I do think it would have been very, very nasty. I mean it looks the fact as you've emphasized that major parts of the country what then I mean you would you would have had a civil war situation because there's no way that the rest of eastern Libya and the other places you refer to Israel and so on. I mean you know some people talk as if there could have been a return to a nice stable Libya around the Gaddafi I mean that that she was out of a bottle so so I think you're quite right to emphasize that. On the post-conflict planning, I wouldn't myself talk about it as three stabilisation plans, one US, one UK although I do think the US and the UK were the players who did at least give some thought and engaged with, as I should have said engaged with Libyan plans too because of the responsibilities established by the NTC. But the NTC plan, which was developed by Mahmoud Jigriil was informed by the UN suggestions more that's my first point you mentioned to me. Well, yeah. But one of the problems the people we worked with. When you will know Dr. Jihani, who was given a major responsibility by Dr. Jigriil for the NTC's post-conflict planning. None of those who we work with Dr. Jigriil himself, Dr. Jihani others, were ultimately part of the government that the interim government that then steered Libya for the first year. So we can go into the in the book described to some extent the politics that led to that so there was no real continuity between the engagement we had as internationals at the planning stage, with those who assume responsibility in the first government and we had to kind of rebuild, rebuild that so that's a factor I think these we take into account. The other thing I would say about the sort of post-conflict planning, certainly so far as the Americans were concerned perhaps to some extent as far as the UK was concerned. And it's how previous situations weigh heavily. It was this great focus on the first hundred days and the fall of Tripoli, and it mustn't be like the fall of Baghdad because, you know, the chaos that follow the fall of Baghdad so so there was, in many ways an emphasis on the very short term when Tripoli fell than there was on the longer term challenges that we're going to need to be to be faced, particularly from the, particularly from the Americans and sort of understand, understand why, and that was a weakness in it. Yes, there wasn't a completely unified approach. And as I said, the relationships we built in the planning phase didn't carry forward into the work of the first interim government. I do agree with you that a critical period was after the first election because when I left Libya after the election, my hope was that the elected general national Congress was going to provide the basis for a first government that legitimized through election and that was able to play a stronger role and that somebody else needs to write a book about why things fell apart in 2012 to 2014, not me. Some of us have ideas to do a book, write a book. Just to let the online audience know I haven't forgotten your questions and I'll get back to you in a minute, but you've been patient there. Yes, go ahead. You know, I had a lot of very good friends who are dedicated to trying to make responsibility protect an effective tool I have to tell you, I think that the language of responsibility protectors now become almost counterproductive in the United Nations discussions. That doesn't mean that the impulse, I mean, the need to think seriously about how, you know, how to prevent mass atrocities in what circumstances some form of external intervention is necessarily unjustified. How one should focus on rebuilding after this. I mean, all those elements need to be, you know, part of serious serious focus of the international community, but the actual language of responsibility protect has has a great gone toxic. Because of Libya and and I really advise people to pursue objectives that I share in other language. Matt, I'm Preston. Sorry. Go ahead. Thank you very much, Max. And thank you. It's a fantastic presentation and I couldn't say I'm the best I have in the foreign office. Only one in the foreign. Well, normally, I get to put logic in the game of saving the three, but now I'm actually a way to go away. Really, the detail. But I mean, what I've talked about this many other things that I wanted, if I may, if I might ask to step back from Libya and ask for your reflections on the project of international intervention. This strikes me and I suspect you to that we've been engaged in all sorts of military interventions over the last couple of years. There's been some of undoubted lawfulness, some of protested legality, but only very few of them seem to have worked. Whether it's in Libya or Afghanistan or Iraq, or in the public or in Mali, some regional interventions, more than that international, for example, in Somalia. And the only ones that have consistently had the degree of success of being those which have been in support of a sitting government or one which had just been toppled. And the boss years, the Sierra Leone, so we know our contested successes. But we have a series of interventions which may have been needed, but would seem to have been unable to set the frame for that consensus that unity on political order. So why has that left you with the project of international intervention, whether lawful or unlawful, justified or unjustified? I'm not actually sure those factors have been the key ones. Sure, go ahead. I mean, blogging together Iraq and UN peacekeeping operations, I think is to model a lot of different causations. But I do think if you look at, it's a similar question. Because in Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, et cetera, and then the message area and what happened in Iraq, really should be dropped the conception of the United States giving interventions, and instead think about mediation and humanitarian support, because really the UN can't do it. I mean, for the reasons you've outlined, and to kind of pretend that the capacity is there when it isn't, it's just to fool everyone and create mess in the name of the UN. I mean, there's plenty of mess in the name of Britain, the US, but that's their mess. My question is, can anyone do anything other than create mess? My role as a member of the High Level Panel on Peace Operations was referred to, and the sort of the mantra of HIPAA, as it's called, is the primacy of politics. And all situations depend upon political outcomes, and they depend essentially on the national actors. My question is, do you sometimes need external security provision, and can that help buy national actors the time to do what they need to do? Does the international presence actually complicate and stand in the way of the working out of solutions by the national actors, or can it genuinely support them through mediation? And certainly, you know, it happens that the three UN missions I've headed were all what the UN calls political missions. As the same from peacekeeping missions, in other words, they didn't have foreign troops armed with a mandate to use force. And it's also interesting that since our High Level Panel was set up, and since Marley in 2014, there hasn't been another UN peacekeeping operation mandated. The recent UN operations around a lot of them, Columbia and the follow on Haiti, are political missions. And I think there is an increasing tendency to be wary of large military deployments and to think that the UN role would better focus on the political role. I wish as much discussion was devoted to that as to, I mean, there's still a huge industry around UN peacekeeping. Lots of meetings on the future of UN peacekeeping, when if one looks forward in 2014, it doesn't look as if there is much of a future for UN peacekeeping. So maybe we should be focusing more on the political role of the UN and including through its political missions, but that leads to a lot of organizational impediments in governments in the UN as well. Unfortunately. So I'm not quite ready to, you know, write off intervention to say, or even say there are no contexts in which some external military presence may be necessary. But there's no doubt that we see more situations where that adds to the problem than creates the solution. Do you want to come in on this one or shall I just follow the order. And then in the back and then you and then the online audience. Go ahead. Yes. Obviously, a lot of people here will be watching side basically the views being like the situation is to be shooting again. There's more people to go to work so to sort of pilot. So I was just wondering, I mean, I was going to ask two sort of five questions actually. The one is what can the international community do now to try and get about peace. But number two, we look at these conflicts and we see that maybe it keeps going in the civil war. You can see the link, but it's the stages of fighting. Every time the civil war starts, at least most of the time, it's because one actor, it took this book, an interactive fight, right. So quite recently I'm finished with Egypt. I think after having agreed with one of the governments, then Egypt is not, you know, if you agree with this, you'd be in a situation where you'd have to, you'd have to put pressure against, it really broke down and fighting it might start again. So I'm wondering when you have a situation like this where it's still left as a play all of the parties. Instead of focusing on talks like to be the two front of Berlin talks. Instead of focusing on talks and getting these two governments to work together and trying to bring about a united movement. Which by the way, we have to try to do those talks before that. But instead of doing that, do you think that's what we'd be first taking a step back and actually try to all talk between the external actors, right. So between Turkey and Malaysia, trying to get them to work out their differences. Because if they work out their differences, work out their conflicts, their states and living in like law. And therefore once you start disentangling that network, you can then try and get peace between the internal actors. Do you think that's a strategy that you can think about? But also what do you think the future is? What do you think the future is? Just for the online audience, the question is about the current situation and the tendency for external actors to fuel the conflict on the ground and turn our attention to them as much to the internal actors. I mean, successive UN envoys have spent a fair amount of time and attention to try to influence the external actors and bring them closer to being on the same page. You know, whether talking to them separately or sometimes together. One of the countries that haven't had such a kind of personal national interest in the situation, Germany most recently, and who therefore are more neutral in relation to the other external actors have devoted quite a lot of effort to that. It's not that no efforts have been made in that in that direction. But you're starting question what should the external actors do. The answer is they should indeed try to work out a common position which flows not from their national interests but from the interests of Libya. And they should try to give Libyans to the space to work out their own solution. But it's easy to say that it's anything but what actually what actually happens. And, you know, at the moment, fortunately, most of the external actors seem to be discouraging more actual fighting, but conflicting roles haven't disappeared at all and you know, it's, it's, it's easy to condemn, but quite hard to know how to to address it and it's another aspect of how the United Nations Security Council fails in what ought to be its role. I mean, it's actually quite reluctant even to call out some of the external actors as frankly as their role should be exposed. And it certainly isn't able to play a strong role in enforcing greater responsibility and unity among them. I have two questions here before they leave that one of them I think you have touched on already and that comes back to the issue of justification. So I think when you answer about the R2P that might have been an answer. So when you think the development since since 2010 to 2012, what is realistic to expect in the future. I mean, did the, although R2P wasn't instrumental in prompting intervention, it did a lot of damage to the limited consensus that was, what do you see, perhaps the political missions might be the way future. And the other question is whether you see any of these stabilisation failures in Libya now being repeated in their Mali. I, you know, I very strongly believe in looking at all situations their own terms and I'm usually fairly resistant to trying to sort of interpret one situation in terms of another and I didn't even tell Mr. I thought that I don't think looking at reconciliation in Rwanda is going to be very helpful in looking at reconciliation in Libya, because of the radical differences in the situation and I think that applies to to sort of to to Mali. Mali, one of Mali's problems is, does have not just one military presence to it's had about three, if not more. One of the problems is problems in it's in itself. In terms of what is the future I mean, let's ask ourselves what would happen if there were another clear looming human rights come humanitarian tragedy. We have one of course in Ukraine but but one that was exactly we have we have one in Ethiopia we have one in Myanmar. Exactly right. So, you know, so, so, I mean certainly part of the answer is that there is the National Committee is both bitten by failure in other contexts, and so divided that the prospect of agreement on a unified force of action is now very small. So, and I don't see either of those two things changing. Go ahead. I'm just wondering how then if you don't have things that can be seen in various ways of attention, how not then just agree that the UN as a system requires a major restructuring if it's to continue working on this consensus it's really not going to get anywhere. And if it continues working with permanent members that don't reflect the bills of issues of people across the globe. How much of a difference can we meet does require a major restructuring project. Does it require yes is there any chance that it will give it no. I'm afraid the. It's interesting that Ukraine has provoked one set of arguments about UN reform, especially from people who would like in some way to get away from Russia having a veto has supplied it in the case of Ukraine. That's not the major concern of most member states of the UN concern of most members states of the UN has been the extent to which it's decision making and the UN Security Council doesn't reflect current geopolitics in terms of the representation of other regions Africa. Africa, Asia and the Americas. So, so there are almost two different conversations about you and reform going on. But the, the obstacles to you and reform are huge. And in terms of formalities, anything that was a change in the UN charter requires agreement of two birds of member states in the general assembly and requires the current five permanent members in the end through their parliament to to endorse it and that's obviously a very heroic barrier to to to cross. So there's more sense in looking at ways within the existing charter that the UN could be more effective rather than thinking that there will be charter agreements and the obstacle to changes in the composition for Security Council isn't just the obstacle resistance of the current permanent members it's also the inability of the rest of the members to agree on what they want they have conflicting interests as to where new representation would come through. I'll be talking about a new San Francisco moment and I've been looking back at the original San Francisco conversations, but that was preceded by very serious statesmanship by people in governments in an utterly different geopolitical context and if you open up Pandora's in today's geopolitical context, you're not likely to get anything as good as the current UN charter. So, so I think one has to be sufficiently pragmatic I mean yes I'm strongly in favor of UN reform and the need of reform of the UN Security Council. So as long as we can't get there, let's look at what can be done within the existing charter and what coalitions of countries might achieve some reforms in that respect. Hi, my name is Hennie and I'm from Norway actually and I was just asked about public perception when it comes to interventions and especially if you say that we shouldn't be giving up on interventions and the RTP, I was wondering that I was wondering just as kind of, I realized that I was wild in terms of how maybe asking me what about all the times that we didn't intervene and I think that's just my first whole idea perhaps for that. Sometimes it wouldn't be as we don't and I think this perception that it's quite interesting anyway, and that creates distrust, and I think that's one of the big challenges now to say especially that you know we shouldn't give up on it. And so really my question is how do you think that we can create more trust and change perception of intervention. Is it by changing rhetorics or perhaps I don't know when having more of a statement first place frameworks which feels fairer without going on an external structure in a sense. So yeah, if you have any thoughts on that. RTP and the International Commission on State sovereignty that preceded it was an effort to do that was an effort to create a framework that could be applied more consistently and objectively to different situations. When it comes to sharp that's not the actual world, the world is a world of state interests at the particular time that a crisis, a crisis happens. So, I don't think there's a, I don't think there's some new framework that can be created to get out of that situation. I just think that those who have a more altruistic and less interest driven approach to particular context, you know, have to fight to assess that point of view, when, when particular situations arise, I don't think there's an answer in some new formulation of intervention. Two more questions. There is a major paradox isn't there in when you have countries who make up the UN, especially the permanent five, perhaps to a less extent China, who appoint you and missions and tell them to go into countries where there are conflicts and say to them, go and help in the countries and bring peace to this country. Yet those same countries and others. Give us over the table give us nice statement saying we support you and you support the effort we support the missions blah blah blah, and yet under the table, they are undermining those exact missions in those countries by actually fueling that conflict by actually taking on proxies within those countries and fueling that conflict. This is a major paradox. This is a dichotomy. This is, this is double standards. So how, how are we ever going to end these conflicts? How are we ever going to make the UN actually succeed or achieve anything. We, as long as we have this paradox. This is, this is really, I think the major countries, especially the permanent five or permanent four, they are always pursuing their own narrow interest, national interest, rather than the interest of global peace or whatever the UN stands for. And I think this paradox. Now, Libya is paying a happy price for that. Many other countries are paying a price because these civil wars and this this conflict that is now going on in Libya and it's getting worse and worse is actually mainly fueled by outside actors, regional and international actors, and by major players in the world. So I think this paradox is going to be with us and it's not going to help at all. And in fact, if you have students here from your department, this will make a great research project perhaps. Did you want to take that as a comment or? I think a comment, yes. I'm not sure it's a paradox, it's a description of the world as it is. I mean, if you were to look back at when every conflict in the world that the Soviets and the Americans on one side, the other, lots of wars may not be in effect, tactically, but all over the place. I don't think I've heard that. And the UN can't believe you could stop it. I mean, maybe we should look at that period for what the UN can do when there's such conflict in the international system that maybe that period after the collapse of the Soviet Union and that period of optimism about international institutions and what it actually is in the development. They just hope for something that's slid into our fingers and gone and we need to reassess what the UN can do and see it as much more limited than we had in that period. Yes, I mean there was a period between the end of the Cold War and 911 invasion of Iraq when you know there was a lot of belief that international agreements could be more possible but of course that was largely going to be international agreement on US terms it was sort of that was the belief at the time and in retrospect it's not so surprising that that's turned out to be a limited period rather than the end of history as somebody said. So yes, I mean I think you're right I think one does have to, I mean it is a case for not giving up on the UN to remember that it did useful things during the Cold War in a period when it was blocks and a lot of situations and even, you know, even in the Cold War context even in the context of Cuba, you know, was able to play a role. So yes we should look for that and not think that we are, I mean I think Antonio Vacherios began talking about a new Cold War. I think a new Cold War is not a very good way to talk about it because we're actually in a much more complicated multipolar world is a more accurate way of talking about it and in particular the role of China in future is posing questions that are very different from the sort of the questions the Soviet Union posed in the Cold War but yes let's look at what the UN can do and how it can be encouraged to be more effective in those contexts where it's not blocked by great power. I think that's got to be our final question. Yes. Oh, that's right so you can tell me how it all went wrong. My question is, do you think, I haven't read your book yet, the role of China in the end was in the United Nations. Do you think it was actually without the feeling of effect and so I don't know if it was a case for intervention. Well, the question is referring to just to make sure everybody understands the roles that were played. I mean a very dramatic moment at the UN was the defection. The role of the deputy permanent representative either leave the bushy and virtually all the living in the start of the mission, and then eventually, and that's Shalgam was a permanent representative for my foreign minister and close friend of Gaddafi. And there's no doubt that that may a huge impact on the diplomatic community in New York. And so the role of the only living who I, you know, I struggled through his book in which he accounts his role in in Libya and he's not modest about his personal roles. He's behind the whole of that. But I think one go too far in attributing things to those personal roles of individuals. I think the forces, you know, they might have developed a different way, but I wouldn't say that either in the UN's defection or ladies role is necessarily critical. And one thing that I think is is too much of a tendency in the UK and France is to, is to minimize actual Arab agency and how the situation. Particularly the role of cuts, but it's not only that. I mean, I quote in the book and a very early statement by Arab intellectuals statement by a large number of Arab NGOs, calling very early on for intervention, possibly including a no fly zone. You know, before psychosis even out there sort of calling publicly for the GCC. And sometimes I mean Cameron in his book says, you know, William Hay persuaded the Arab League. Well, not at all. I mean, you know, Qatar was lobbying Washington certainly to my to my knowledge. So one shouldn't, I think, over emphasize the Libby sarcosis story. There were a lot of forces building up and I think they would have pointed towards intervention, despite those particular personal roles. Okay, on that note, it remains for me to thank the audience for coming both online and here. And of course to thank Ian so much for producing the book which I now hope will go by, but also for coming here and giving such a splendid response to a lot of interesting questions. So please join me everyone and give me a round of applause.