The international community was afraid of large violations of human rights. Thus they wanted to prevent a 'new Rwanda', no matter what. However, there were some complications with the actual practical implementation of this resolution. While several countries decided to approve the resolution directly or support it while not having a voice in the Security Council, only the United Kingdom (UK), United States (US), France and some minor countries like Belgium and the Netherlands are willing to support the resolution in practice, by offering material or financial aid.

The decision to come to Resolution 1973 is likely to have an indirect and unforeseen consequence: the impotence to intervene in eventual future conflicts. The Security Council consists of five permanent members (US, UK, France, Russia and China) of which two withheld from voting, neither used their veto. With adopting a resolution by the Security Council, one out of five permanent members can block this by using its veto. Normally Russia and especially China are not very keen on (humanitarian) interventions in the internal affairs of states. So while 'the three', namely France, the UK and the US wanted to intervene and even felt themselves forced to do this in Libya, they needed these 'concessions' from Russia and China. It needs to be said that these two countries do not have direct interests in Libya. Contrary to this, apart from humanitarian intervention especially the UK and France are economically dependent on Libyan oil and they are neither anxious to have a conflict in their ´backyard´. At the same time the US has had a very ambiguous relation with al-Qadhafi for decades. The resolution seems to be adopted just in time, but 'the three' should repay their debts in the future. In possible future conflicts where the interests at stake for Russia and China are much higher because they are located within their sphere of influence or even within their state borders, the three 'Western' powers have to do the favour back and should not bring it on the table in the first place. This is even more the case because 'the three' received a lot of criticism, mainly from China and Russia, for acting beyond the mandate given by the resolution.

It seems a bit speculative, but while the Libyan citizens partly may have been escaped from a massacre, in the future this might go at the expense of for example the Kosovars and the Chechens in the case of Russia and the Uyghur's, the Tibetans and North Korean citizens in the case of China. Humanitarian intervention was likely to become one of the new cornerstones of international law in the post-Cold War era. However the interests of the great powers and the hard geopolitics still rule the world today.

•••

Bram Kin (NL) is a Master student Comparative International Politics at the K.U.Leuven