The Wire

Air strikes by international forces have Libyan rebels to recapture several towns as they push back toward the west of the country, and towards Muammar Ghaddafi’s base of power. Some observers say that the intervention is a success story based on a relatively new UN doctrine: ‘the responsibility to protect’. The ‘responsibility to protect’ urges the international community to act when a government is committing atrocities against its own population, and the doctrine was invoked for the first time in Security Council resolutions against Libya. But other commentators say that claiming any kind of success is premature, when a protracted civil war looms on the horizon.