Operation Unified Protector: Lessons learned for NATO
Determined to maintain NATO’s relevance in the aftermath of the Cold War, Allies began reconsidering the role of the organization as reflected in the series of new strategic concepts adopted in 1991 and 1999, which established an important turning point in the Alliance’s approach to security. On the eve of the entry into a turbulent twenty-first century, Allies agreed to carry out a new mission of managing and preventing crises outside the traditional operational area of NATO. Faced with growing instability and emerging threats on its Southern flank, the Alliance reviewed its strategic concept in 2010, reflecting on the danger emanating from the South with a direct threat to the security of the citizens of NATO countries, including regional conflicts that provided fertile ground for terrorism and transnational illegal activities such as human trafficking.[i]
The next year, supported by the United Nations and the Arab League, NATO Allies agreed in March 2011 to intervene militarily in Libya, under Operation Unified Protector (OUP), to implement the military aspects of UN Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973, i.e., imposing a no-fly zone, enforcing an arms embargo, and protecting civilians. After over 26,500 air sorties, including 9,700 strike sorties and around 3,100 hailed and 300 boarded vessels,[ii] though many civilians under threat of attack from Gaddafi’s forces were saved, the situation in Libya had turned truly chaotic. Today, criminal militias, driven by greed and power, are roaming freely, disturbing public order, and harming any political and economic development.
Confirming the decision taken by the North Atlantic Council to end OUP, former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen described the mission as one of the most successful in NATO history. Yet, the NATO-led intervention of 2011 opened a can of worms for the Euro-Atlantic Alliance. NATO failed to anticipate the consequences of an out-of-area intervention, mainly because it was dealing with the domestic security-related issues of an Arab Mediterranean country, which does not fall into its traditional wheelhouse as does, for instance, deterring Russian threats to transatlantic security. Additionally, the military operation brought to the forefront the question of NATO’s legitimacy in the whole region, posing a real challenge to the organization’s existing partnerships in general and its future engagement with Libya in particular and offering Russia a valuable opportunity to assert itself on the Western Mediterranean stage.
Better situational awareness
NATO’s response to the increasing dangers to Euro-Atlantic security emanating from its Southern flank since the 1990s paved the way for not only practical cooperation through the Mediterranean Dialogue but also a rapprochement with regional military and political stakeholders. However, given the rampant spread of disorder in Libya as a consequence of the 2011 revolution, it might seem like NATO failed to deliver a comprehensive situational awareness enabling the identification of evolving threats, especially the emergence of armed militias that have become agents driving Libyan politics and taking advantage of a collapsed state.
The mayhem in the Southern flank of the Alliance after the 2011 Libyan uprising exposed the limits of its Mediterranean partnership in terms of contributing to regional security and stability. To begin with, if Allies has consulted their Mediterranean partners—e.g., direct neighbours of Libya like Algeria and Egypt—before or even during the Libyan operation, that would have helped better understand the Libyan terrain and mindset and would have created a favourable environment for a post-conflict role for NATO. While the management of the aftermath of such a conflict naturally fell to the United Nations and other regional organizations or even the national transitional power, NATO still had a role to play—not a leading role but one that corresponds to its expertise. It could have, amongst other things, continued the arms embargo enforcement, ensured ISR coverage, and extended its mandate to support Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) efforts under UN leadership. Concerned with regional reactions to any possible role in particular with regard to African and Arab reservations about the air campaign and pressed to terminate the operation in Libya as resources were much more needed for Afghanistan, where the process of the transition of the security responsibility to the Afghans was underway, NATO did not adequately measure the situation and disembarked too early.
This highlights that NATO’s current scattered dialogue with regional partners does not guarantee an understanding of the shifting dynamics in a given region or country. A substantial two-way dialogue, where partners are consulted and where their knowledge is seriously taken into consideration, should be sought after in order to hone NATO’s vision. In light of the NATO 2030 reflection process and renewed focus on partnerships, it is worth revisiting the idea of Richard LeBaron, who suggests offering access for regional partners to a right of consultation if one perceives a direct threat to its security, which, in turn, endangers the safety of Southern Allies as the borders between the two sides of the Mediterranean are becoming increasingly obsolete.[iii]
Moreover, the structure of the Mediterranean Dialogue, founded in 1994, which consists of a group of countries from both North Africa and the Middle East, is too ambitious. This has steered NATO away from focusing on pressing threats emanating from its immediate neighbourhood of the Western Mediterranean. NATO ought to see the countries of this part of the Mediterranean as a regional sub-group sharing a common cultural identity and evolving in a geopolitical reality different from that of the Middle East.
It is also worth mentioning that reinvigorating the dialogue could rebuild trust with regional counterparts that faded away in the aftermath of the 2011 intervention, preventing a renewed regional backing for a post-conflict role for NATO in Libya.
In addition, more financial resources, akin to what are allocated to the assessment of the security threats throughout the Eastern flank of the Alliance especially after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and comparable to the European Union budget dedicated to its Southern neighbourhood, should be considered to boost NATO’s understanding of a security setting different from that of thirty, twenty, or even ten years ago. Such a package could cover, amongst other things, the expense of the culturally-skilled human power necessary for the success of NATO in a region where every country has its cultural specificities beyond the generic Arab culture. In this regard, the new NATO Strategy Direction South Hub could also play a crucial role provided it maintains a genuine interaction with local actors including community leaders and academics.
Of coherence among Allies
By 31 October 2011—after the death of Qaddafi and the subsequent declaration of liberation of a nascent National Transitional Council amid strong ideological and tribal sentiments— despite serious concerns, including among some Allies, about “the proliferation of arms in Libya and multiplication of acts of reprisals, arbitrary detentions, wrongful imprisonment and extrajudicial executions” (UNSCR 2016 (2011)), Operation Unified Protector was terminated. No concrete post-conflict strategy outlining NATO’s role in Libya over the short, medium, and longer term as part of wider international efforts has since gotten off the ground, while a NATO role, as alluded to above, would have ensured the good conduct of a political transitional process and laid the foundations for providing the Libyans with NATO expertise in Security Sector Reform (SSR) as well as building defence and security institutions capable of projecting power locally and regionally, within an individual partnership and cooperation program. That would have avoided much of today’s chaos, and perhaps more importantly, led to Libya’s membership in the Mediterranean Dialogue laying the ground for the establishment, in the long run, of a unified regional security architecture benefiting NATO.
Furthermore, such immediate post-conflict intervention would have created an opening for NATO to hit two targets with one bullet. By playing an active role in international efforts toward stabilization, NATO would have taken a good long step in the right direction towards dispelling Arab populations’ negative perceptions afflicting the organization.
Initially following the operation, partnership with Libya seemed promising. At the 2012 Chicago Summit, Allies “welcomed Libya’s stated interest to deepen relations with the Alliance and expressed their readiness to welcome Libya as a partner, if it so wishes”. In those days, there was no doubt that there was an awakening within NATO to the importance of partnerships in handling common security concerns. One of its manifestations was the will expressed at the Chicago Summit to pursue “a more efficient and flexible partnership policy”. Following this, the Libyan authorities had on several occasions requested NATO’s assistance in building defence and security institutions without any concrete action from the Alliance side. However, this momentum quickly faded away, and disunity took the upper hand.
While NATO has been keen on reiterating the importance it attaches to the South, there is an evident gap between the organization’s ambitions and Allies’ fragmented interests. Central and Eastern European states are still largely preoccupied with a more assertive Russia at their door, while Southern European countries are more concerned with the instability of the Mediterranean region. These diverging priorities are deepened by financial constraints that have repercussions for the process of threat prioritization as highlighted during OUP, to which many Allies were unwilling to participate because they lacked a range of niche capabilities critical in the planning and execution of the Libyan operation.
Likewise, strategic national considerations placed above collective interest have had an impact on initiating an effective role for NATO in Libya.[iv] This is reflected in the change of tone between 2012 when Allies unequivocally expressed their readiness to welcome Libya as a partner and the 2018 Brussels Summit’s more nuanced declaration that linked NATO’s support to political and security conditions. The Alliance is faced with a situation where member countries only agree to disagree. That, however, offers a good opportunity to reopen the debate over the consensus principle, which has been the exclusive process for determining NATO’s actions since its inception. Adopted in a Cold War context, this rigid norm undermines the Alliance’s flexibility in a modern, rapidly changing strategic security environment. The recommendations made in this regard by the independent reflection group appointed by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to support his work within NATO 2030 initiative should be given serious consideration.[v]
Strategic communication
While Allies consider OUP to be a military success in terms of operational efficiency in a limited time frame, the operation also revealed a number of strategic shortcomings including strategic communication failures.[vi]
A review of old and more recent literature related to the perspectives on NATO in the Southern Mediterranean region suggests that the Alliance’s image is shaped by a set of elements like its association with colonial powers[vii], religious prism[viii], and US dominance.[ix] Meanwhile, the regional tendency to have rather friendly relations with Russia as well as region-specific views of the nature of NATO’s out-of-area actions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya[x] have also shaped the region’s view of the Alliance. Beyond serving the ethical responsibility to protect civilians, classic PsyOps operations in the form of leaflet drops by Allied air forces warning civilians before an air strike was an effective strategic move that ensured NATO’s success in garnering the Libyan people’s support for the mission. Legitimized by the principle of responsibility to protect (R2P), NATO also received the consent of regional political elites and opinion leaders that successively influenced the formation of the local public opinion in favour of the NATO-led operation in Libya. But sooner than later, NATO’s image was overtaken by extensive Libyan, regional, and international media reporting on civilian casualties during the military campaign and questioning the real motives behind the intervention. NATO missed here an opportunity not only to keep its legitimacy but also to reverse its traditionally negative image in the region through the implementation of a long-lasting communication strategy.
Looking into opinion polls in Arab countries on the NATO-led operation in Libya, such as the survey conducted in March 2012 amongst Moroccan students, we observe that participants, although largely supporting the intervention, do not believe that the action was undertaken exclusively for humanitarian reasons, pointing out possible economic and political motivations behind it. Interestingly, the belief that NATO is the army of the United States rebounds in almost all comments.[xi] This close association between the United States and attitudes towards NATO still resonates today, according to a 2018 study on the Mediterranean Dialogue by the German Marshall Fund.[xii] From there on, we can assume that this negative perception is linked to a limited understanding of NATO across the region, as highlighted during a recent online forum on perceptions of NATO in North Africa and the Sahel, where issues like the difficulty local populations have to distinguish NATO actions from that of individual Allies and limited knowledge of NATO partnership efforts were frequently addressed.[xiii]
NATO has built up its strategy of communication for the region on public diplomacy that targets mainly the ruling elites, whereas the wider audience has been bypassed. While there is a need to maintain mutual trust and achieve better mutual understanding with state actors, the post-revolutionary political landscape requires NATO to take into consideration the general public, which is gaining political maturity and increasingly weighing in on decision-making processes. Another opportunity is offered for NATO to revamp its image.
A good communication strategy should focus on the wide spectrum of social media to share clear, targeted messaging in Arabic language about the objectives of partnerships, to promote NATO’s role in supporting reform, good governance, and integrity in the defence sector, to highlight cooperation deliverables with a direct impact on human security, and to project the organization’s multilateral structure beyond the preconceived idea of American hegemony. Engaging with the youth segment at the university level, for instance, is also of paramount importance as young people in the Southern Mediterranean account for a large share of the region’s population and have the potential to act as agents of change at a pivotal point in the history of a region where geostrategic alignment is being reshaped.
If well executed, such a strategy would build better public understanding of NATO and mitigate the regional scepticism towards the Alliance, triggering ultimately more popular support across the Arab populations. Today, NATO’s operations on its Southern Flank face more and more challenges from actors like Russia, which has been waging information warfare against NATO and Allies for quite some time through both traditional media outlets and online social networks. In that respect, we should highlight the growing use by Russia of media outlets, mainly the Arabic version of Russia Today and Sputnik, as open platforms for anti-NATO advocates from the MENA region and beyond to influence local populations that do not embrace the culture of fact-checking and are not always aware of disinformation.[xiv] The image challenge needs to be tackled efficiently should NATO wish to improve its relations with the region.
In ten years’ time, Russia has become a crucial player in Libya[xv] and stretched its sphere of influence in the entire region, reviving relations with its traditional regional allies[xvi] that are also partners of NATO. China is also conquering the region, having a growing footprint not only in local economies but militaries, as well, through ramped-up defence diplomacy.[xvii] The United States, in its quest for a resurgence of Euro-Atlantic ties and a renewed leadership role under the Biden administration, should position itself as a rallying force within the Alliance to offset diverging priorities and interests and push for a more holistic approach towards the Western Mediterranean region, bearing in mind the interdependency of security risks on the two sides of the sea.
Conclusion
In its current form, NATO’s approach towards the Mediterranean is not the most suitable to allow the Alliance to contribute to stabilizing the region or controlling regional threats to transatlantic security. It has not created a genuine multilateral dialogue with regional partners or provided NATO the credibility that it would like to have. NATO continues to lack coherence in terms of identifying regional challenges, although all Allies are increasingly experiencing the consequences of internal conflicts along the Alliance’s Southern neighbourhood.
The Alliance’s strategic direction has significantly shifted since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its partnership policy has been incrementally evolving. This demonstrates that NATO is a flexible entity capable of constantly adapting, and it should continue to do so sizing up that one of the secrets of Alliance’s longevity lies in its ability to adapt. Challenges to political will, the leadership of great Allies, and sufficient resources are critical issues that the Alliance will continue to face. But Allies should also keep in mind that a more focused approach will strengthen the bonds with their immediate neighbourhood, which would ensure a better mitigation of security challenges and a greater rapprochement with a region increasingly subject to Great Power competition.
Notes
[i]“Strategic Concept 2010,” NATO, accessed February 22, 2021, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_82705.htm.
[ii] “Operation UNIFIED PROTECTOR Final Mission Stats,” NATO, accessed February 22, 2021, https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2011_11/20111108_....
[iii] Richard LeBaron, “NATO partnerships in the Middle East: Time for a new look,” Atlantic Council, November 29, 2012, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/nato-partnerships-in-th....
[iv] Marcel Dirsus and Tim Eaton, “Instability in Libya: Assessing the regional impacts,”
Allied Command Transformation Open Publications 3, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 16–17,
https://www.act.nato.int/images/stories/media/doclibrary/open201901-inst....
[v] “NATO 2030: United for a New Era,” NATO, accessed February 25, 2021, https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2020/12/pdf/201201-Re....
[vi] Florence Gaub, “The North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Libya: Reviewing Operation Unified Protector,” The Letort Papers (June 2013): 4–28.
[vii] Mustafa Alani, “Arab perspectives on NATO,” NATO Speeches and Transcripts, November 4, 2008, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_21904.htm?selectedLocale=en.
[viii] Oktay Bingöl, “NATO’s influence in the near abroad,” The Norwegian Atlantic Committee, February 2012.
[ix] Helle Malmvig, “New Role for NATO in the Middle East?,” DIIS Report 8 (2005),
https://pure.diis.dk/ws/files/54998/hma_nato_role_web.pdf.
[x] Ian Lesser et al., “The Future of NATO’s: Mediterranean Dialogue,” The German Marshall Fund, 2018, https://www.gmfus.org/sites/default/files/publications/pdf/The_future_of....
[xi] Said Saddiki, “Arab Public Opinion and NATO after the International Military Operations in Libya,” Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations 1, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 84–87, https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/19292.
[xii] Lesser et al., op. cit.
[xiii] The online forum was held on 29 January 2019 by NATO Strategic Direction – South Hub (NSD-S Hub) and Three Stones International (TSI) personnel with community and civil society leaders, including representatives from NGOs, think tanks, and academia from Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, DRC, Egypt, Ghana, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Rwanda, Morocco, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, and Tunisia.
[xiv] Dario Cristiani et al., “Of concerns and image: the Alliance and its Southern flank,” GLOBSEC, 2018, https://www.globsec.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/GLOBSEC-Of-Concerns-a....
[xv] “Could Libya be Russia's new Syria,” Deutsche Welle, accessed February 26, 2021, https://www.dw.com/en/could-libya-be-russias-new-syria/a-48277255.
[xvi] Lisa Watanabe, “Russia’s renaissance in the Arab world,” in Strategic Trends 2019, ed. Jack Thompson, Oliver Thränert (Zurich: CSS ETH Zurich, 2019).
[xvii] Alica Ekman, “China in the Mediterranean: an emerging presence,” IFRI Centre for Asian Studies, 2018, https://www.ifri.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/ekman_china_mediter....
Image source: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/news_71959.htm