on the. video on demand keys mine. just feeds with the palm of your. com. hello it's up was eleven pm here in moscow this is the r t news channel it was me kevin o. him tonight these are all top stories. for verse the libyan rebels advance following the international air strikes it's comes as coalition members including the u.s. britain and france consider arming the opposition now amid warnings and that would violate the u.n. resolution. there are fears of a terrorist backlash in europe too with the alarm sounded over possible revenge

plots by libyan islam it's the apparent growing number of casualties in the bombing raids is believed to be spurring terrorist recruitment right now. and radiation remains the big concern around japan's stricken nuclear plant levels in nearby seawater are estimated at over three and a half thousand times higher than normal in abreast of all the latest on line it out c dot com or swath facebook and twitter feeds as well coming up next people of cross talk this time running away to foreign powers can really design their future for libya without colonel gadhafi that programs on air just twenty seconds from now . we'll. bring you the latest in science and technology from. the future. you can.

follow him you're welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle the battle for libya is a so-called humanitarian intervention there so noble and straightforward must intervention lead to military occupation and human suffering and is the libyan scenario a new template for disaster. they can't. discuss what's happening in libya i'm joined by david gibbs in tucson he's a professor of history and government at the university of arizona in london we have i bet she is a senior lecturer in international relations at the university of kent and in beirut we crossed the aisle a question he is a professor of political science at the american university of beirut and another

member of our crossfire team illinois hunger all right folks this is crosstalk that means you can jump in anytime you want if i could go to london first i don't know if how would you describe events being played out now in libya because i've been covering this watching this very closely obviously it's my job in and that's what i do for this program and it seems to me this is a civil war in the west but under the guise of a coalition has chosen a side in my being unfair in that description i think it's a very difficult one this one in terms of intervention because on one hand you know doing nothing at all would have sent the signal broadly from the west that we just don't the responsibility to protect anymore because it didn't quite work out very well for us. and intervening of course has all sorts of connotations like the one you mentioned taking sides in the civil war. and there's also the internet. of the

security council resolution which is really i mean the political objective which is to protect civilians so there's no mention of regime change there but then if you in a grossly sort of create a military balance on the ground through military intervention and that favors one side then you're obviously you know taking sides and leading towards regime change and you know president obama already made a political statement about that so i think it's the linkage of different political objectives here that are not entirely clear in the long run well since president obama was mentioned you know why don't we listen very quickly what he said a few hours ago about america's mission in libya let's listen to what he had to say . we've accomplished these objectives consistent with the pledge that i made to the american people at the outset of our military operations i said that america's role would be limited and the we would not put ground troops into libya that we would

focus our unique capabilities on the front end of the operation and that we would transfer responsibility to our allies and partners to night we are fulfilling that pledge. and. you buy that because one of the things that's very interesting about president obama's statement is that he doesn't talk about in and game getting into a war is not that difficult we've seen that since the iraqi adventure of starting in two thousand and three even before that afghanistan and american and coalition forces are still there now because he didn't think about the end game is this a mistake being made again. yeah i mean the u.s. . in this situation in the world she was dragged into the situation and libya it was the french and to a lesser extent the british who were enthusiastic about intervention there on the grounds of. minimizing civilian casualties.

from the beginning none of the western powers said that they would be committing ground troops to the conflict in libya we i mean the us had no option but to interfere against the pressure from its european allies ok david i mean i can't think of really trying to do my homework for this program i can't think of any humanitarian corridor or humanitarian intervention where you can end up putting ground forces on moving them into the into the battlefield expanding the battlefield expanding the civil war. well i agree with what you just said i think that obama's statement to me seems confused and a bit naive. the problem the united states faces is that when the u.s. becomes publicly involved in a military operation there's an expectation it's going to succeed and if and

produce something you can call a success however defined if it doesn't do this then the u.s. will be humiliated and there be a perception the u.s. as we look at america being the hedge amount of power feels it can't tolerate that the problem you face in libya is very simple the u.s. has already committed itself publicly to some military objective however it will be fine and if it cannot overthrow gadhafi through air power which is an open question here and then there will indeed be pressure to escalate and the us consider sending ground forces in the event that we do overthrow gadhafi then there'd be a question of the u.s. would have responsibility as well as with the europeans for stablish in some kind of political stability and thereby establishing a government that may have that is very likely to require a long term commitment to ground forces possibly in a peaceful situation possibly in a civil war this could indeed evolve into a very large scale military operation that could go on for years i think that's

a probability at this point and they're trying to back to you in london now and again researching this program i came across a quote from colin powell before the invasion of two thousand and three of iraq and he said you know you break it you own it i mean we're getting involved into a very broken situation idea because as all of us seem to appear at least at this point in the program is that you know that without an endgame clearly defined in with gadhafi still in power which we're still told that he has to go but we're not going to get rid of him i mean again this is it creates an ambiguity here this ambiguity making this mission creep even worse because we don't even really know what we want. you know i would agree with that i mean actually a friend of mine who's not an international asian specialist recently settled me he said well as far as i can see it. with the other interventions like iraq they didn't have an exit strategy with this war they don't seem to have an entry strategy either and i think you know to some extent you can say that's true because you know when you look at the the aerial the air campaign during the gulf war

ninety one which was very layered very strategic very well thought out even that couldn't achieve with nutri objectives with air power alone whereas here i mean you have sort of multiple layers of objectives which are both political and military. i mean to what next some extent the beginning of the aerial campaign did stop the advancement of the of these forces from entering into benghazi so i think if that was a political animal a tree objective you can say that has been successful but on the other hand you know this mixture of enforcing a no fly zone on the other hand and starting off with bombing the specific military targets if you like of the libyan government and not achieving that completely either because now that nato has taken over the operation will see less of that bombing it will be a sort of very much more standard no fly zone operation so it's not very clear here what the military objectives are because they've been happening in different layers

simultaneously and if i go to you back to you in the router and weary clinton said just as we were sitting down here we have prevented a potential massacre is there or is there a potential massacre still in the cards i mean given what we just heard here because alicia is not nearly as solid is the mainstream media and may in the western politicians want us to believe because it's not a growing coalition of the willing there's more and more countries that are doubting this and how far we started with a no fly zone and now we're going deeper and deeper again there are news reports that the u.s. may even consider arming the rebels now i mean again are we just going down the path of just more more war not less. yes i mean western powers have until yesterday they said they are not inclined to arm the insurgents and libya i think there was a a gross error committed and the beginning of the washington operation everybody

in the worst seemed under the impression that all the rebels want to do was some sort some aerial support before they could marshal on tripoli and unseat that free market that his forces and the tribal support that he has been receiving lately. the balance of power and the insurgents are not really up to the forces the political to the combined forces of qaddafi i mean i understand that this morning forces were driven about one hundred kilometers from sort so we are witnessing a very complicated religious situation that may eventually lead to a stalemate. here i mean the beginning it could have been possible i mean had insurgents been far more capable militarily it would have been possible for them to conclude the outcome of the confrontation what would be this momentary performance

i think we would expect more bloodshed i david i know you're an expert on the breakup of the yugoslavia and it seems to me that libya could see spelled in a very different way and that's cos of zero and in everything we've heard on this program again everything i'm reading in them in the news tells me and i read your article your recent article on it this is another cause of adventure and there is kind of a disneyland version for western audiences but it's ended there very badly and it is very long term very expensive and really no solution it's just waiting it out and we could see the same thing happen again in libya. but on a much larger scale well one of the things that. one of the things that has come out since the end of the kosovo war very dramatically is that the image people had of that war as a simple case of villains versus victims with the serbs the villains and the codes for liberation army as the victims was overly simplistic and that the serbs were

indeed villainous but the kosovo kosovo liberation army wasn't that much better they also engaged in terrible massacres and ethnic cleansing and recently the european union has issued a report implicating the leadership with the kalay and the possible trafficking of human organs taken from slaughtered serbs. so what you had in kosovo is a situation where neither side came off very well and backing the kosovo liberation army the united states and the european union made itself complicit in mass ethnic cleansing in other atrocities. i fear that that's a possibility in libya and that we don't really know that much about the opposition and we've got a clearly more market doth he's a very unsavory and brutal leader we know that but there is a danger that the opposition may also commit ugly atrocities and then backing the opposition which again we just don't know that much about the west may be setting

itself up for becoming and that's a very just moment let me jump in here and see if we go to a short break after the actual break we'll continue our discussion on the intervention in libya stay with our. there is not enough space for them on the ground. down to. get things nonexistent under the sun. fill the gap of adrenaline to. discover deeply hidden secrets. they are seen to. find. and even.

talking to god. from. under the road to. wealthy british soil samples and pass the time to the times. markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy in these kinds of reports on r.t. . you can. see. the full. welcome across the top right of your lapel to remind you we're talking about libya in the western led coalition. can. see.

but first let's see how russians view events in the arab world. what lies ahead for the troubled arab world revolution who sweeps across the region sparking heated international debate in libya tensions have resulted in a full scale civil war and a western led coalition isn't forcing a u.n. resolution on the country. paying an agency letter sent to ask russians to describe the events happening in the arab world twenty seven percent call them people's revolutions partick regimes twenty four percent say the troubles i knew she'd had by the west to stall more convenient rulers in the region eleven percent regard them as poorest takeovers ten percent believe their revolutions to heaven islam a character and then call them as senseless riot what and who is next to fall is a burning question. how can i go back to london going if you feel comfortable with

the term humanitarian intervention because it seems like newspeak to me because you know you go through countries around the world that people don't like you know china the democratic republic of congo you ran venezuela's and bob way bahrain you can talk about so many places where you could have a humanitarian intervention but no it's libya this time lot of people will say it's because of oil there's other issues of hubris the united states standing in the world we see the french and the british politicians that are not doing too well in the polls a little war might help them out expression of the americans you know do what they like to do in the middle east the last forty years i mean it's you know humanitarian intervention is just a very odd term isn't it for what we're seeing. well i mean it's it's one of those sort of norms i suppose that sort of emerged in the early one nine hundred ninety s. especially poor ninety one iraq war sort of euphoria that the west can do collective

security they can be militarily successful in it and they can have full legal backing and a regional support and i think that template and the euphoria of that sort of led led sort of an intervention to go on with things like bosnia and kosovo but one of the other norms that has emerged i suppose in the last twenty years is that you know the implementation of responsibility to protect has been very selective i think you know nobody is surprised that it's selected again in this case but you mention oil i mean i you know if i was at a meeting and sort of here in london a couple of a couple of days ago with the policymakers and academics and one of the answers that came out to the question is it all about oil was that had it been all about oil the logical thing would have been to do nothing and i think you know people who are the only states who have intervened in this would be caught between two things here you know whether to do nothing because of this responsibly to protect if they hadn't done anything i think that would have been the end of that doctrine

completely and they didn't want to see that happening but on the other hand what they didn't know how to intervene and then there is this caution over ground troops obviously and and then of course there was the hastiness of the action if you like which was inevitable because had it not started at up points then you know we don't know what would have happened in benghazi so all of these things coming together and you're absolutely right certain politicians pulls their different factors here converging that have very little to do with each other i think and i think this is where you know the end game is not clear actually you know horrifying do you. think it's really quite interesting as we put it in the scheme of the great arab awakening if you say you want a group of people saying we want to mark received we want freedom we. want to get rid of are dictated it by the way you've been dealing with for decades or or in the kentucky case he was brought in from the cold i mean is this playing to

a weakness to the west has it in certain cases it has to stand up and has to be prove its values and unfortunately prove its values with its military that's what it always does in these cases here my point is is that you know given the moments now in north africa is that maybe western powers are overreacting too fast to a very complex situation it's being played out in the region. i don't think it's a question of action i think the libyan case is special mainly because of its proximity to europe. after all libya is in italy and france is back to back but backyard so i mean there are additional such as oil definitely. illegal immigration. to europe through libya and of course i would argue with humanitarian mention is a variable. not i would certainly not use it as the on the verge

otherwise i would be reductionist i mean there is a humanitarian dimension to what but having said that i must emphasize that this human they mention has also a very strong political dimension as well so i mean the picture the picture is complex the european powers felt over the years that other perspectives open have been negative and they seem to have to wanted to do something in order to reverse the negative public out of public opinion about western intervention especially after the war in iraq in two five and three david is libya special in tucson is libya special because there are so many other cases where humanitarian intervention could fit the bill i mean considering how broad the term is you can use the word however you want. one of the things that very much bothers me about the doctrine of responsibility to protect is that it's very arbitrary at least in supplication that

libby is not so sure there's nothing to suggest that the trustees if there are worse there are let's say in the ivory coast in which the world is doing nothing there's no question the atrocities being committed libby are on the whole less than the atrocities that have been committed over the years in the congo which is probably the worst humanitarian crisis since one thousand nine hundred five by a long shot. this whole doctrine of responsibility to protect is entirely arbitrary doctrine even door for which was that which is a very serious ugly conflict was not the worst humanitarian crisis in the world at the time and even there there was an element of arbitrariness and so the arbitrariness with which this doctrine has been applied in my mind raises real questions about either how clearly people are thinking about this or indeed about the question of motive which brings us back to the issue of why the west is involved in libya and i think there are a lot of reasons and it's never a single issue but i think oil is indeed a factor here and i don't agree with the professor in london that the most logical

response would be to do nothing because in the situation of civil war our companies and countries supporting those companies would be worried about the facilities being damaged and they're all supplies being interrupted b. as a major supplier of oil not really started states but to europe especially italy and some of the world's major oil companies are involved there and there's a larger regional issue which is it's not just a question of libya but the whole arab region which is indeed a source of more than half of the world's oil reserves and the whole region is in turmoil and i think the west wants to show that things aren't spinning out of control there and that it has some capacity to control events. so i would see a responsibility to protect has mostly worked as an excuse for intervention that has more shall we say traditional self interested purpose and then if i go back to you in london again no matter how you cut it. i mean however you look side on the right to protect. these type of injury interventions this is

a third war in the last few years by the west in the arab world that cannot go down well or or there are people on the ground and we are thinking of the gulf states and things like this and the west it feels that it is it's frustrating because its efforts in the greater middle east are basically failures that's in my opinion anyway we can call down very well and it certainly has to tell people on the ground because you know the democratic awakening which i think that's a very broad picture that is being missed in a lot of users questions that's going to that can actually turn people away from the west you can walk because the only tool in your tool box is war and they look outside. i think you know i mean i think this point i agree with the last bit i think it is about control and the west is feeling that you know if they sort of intervene in this it is really about showing that they have some kind of control in the region that's obviously changing very rapidly but on the other hand i mean i

don't really think that there is this very cynical sort of well thought out strategy that you know in the long term we would like to control certain resources in this country so let's do it responsibly to protect now i think with this intervention it's mean not clearly thought out at all and like i said this different factors coming together. that have little very little to do with each other that resulted in this intervention and now i think one of the reasons for this conference today is to try to smooth out what this is going to lead to with a kind of broader coalition i think that's where the problem is because you know if you do sort of intervene in this in this kind of situation and there is a stalemate and the west has always. taken sides this could go on for years i mean you know the no fly zone in iraq was in place for over a decade and. i didn't do anything to save the government and this insane fact is more complicated than that because although iraq you know there was

a no fly zone over the north of iraq. there was no sort of implicit recognition of any other party as a viable opposition to saddam hussein where is i think here is very blatantly you know some countries have said you know the rebels are definitely the sort of the legitimate government or the opposition and i think you know that creates a problem as to you deal with but also we're coming back to the oil companies i mean. all the international companies have now pulled out it's very uncertain when they're going to come back and so he has said that if there's a stalemate or he's already said that you know he would just turn around and deal with in terms of the oil trade with the china brazil in india which he probably will do once if there is a stalemate so in actual fact everybody turns out to loose from this so you're wondering like you know it can't possibly have been carefully thought out i think you know a lot of like i said converging factors came together and it's a bit of a blunder but now you know let's try to sort it out with

a broader coalition and see where we go from here i think that's where we are going to give you the last word in this program all of these events taking place right now that is going to embolden the dictators that are still in the arab world to crack down even more and i'm thinking of bahrain and other places like that where you know when it gets out of control they're going to always use force or they can call on their american in nato friends. well absolutely no question and there's no doubt in my mind that i don't think those leaders will use caution and excess of caution that in order to suppress the position. we don't believe western intervention is a repeat of the u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton made it clear the other day that that's what we are doing and libya will not be applied say and see if we are to jump in here i hope we hope that doesn't happen ok many thanks and i guess today in london. thanks to our viewers for watching us your r.v. see you next time and remember

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