In 2016, near the conclusion of his second term, President Barack Obama was asked by Chris Wallace about his greatest mistake as president. Obama didn’t hesitate to respond. He said his “worst mistake” was “probably failing to plan for the day after what I think was the right thing to do in intervening in Libya.”
Five years earlier, a coalition of NATO members, led by France, Britain, and the United States, intervened in the Libyan civil war and overthrew the government of Muammar Gaddafi. This resulted in Gaddafi’s death and the transformation of Libya into a failed state, a condition that persists thirteen years later, which has resulted in an ongoing civil war, countless deaths of civilians, and a humanitarian and refugee crisis. The US-led intervention in Libya was strategically misguided and ultimately harmful, providing a cautionary example for future US foreign policy. It would have been a better option for the United States to have done nothing than to trigger such a calamitous descent into chaos.
Today, Libya is essentially split between two rival factions: the Government of National Unity (GNU), based in Tripoli, which controls parts of western Libya, and the Government of National Stability (GNS), backed by the eastern-based House of Representatives (HoR), which operates in the east and south of Libya.
Efforts to hold national elections have repeatedly failed. Numerous armed groups, militias, and foreign mercenaries regularly clash. In mid-December 2024, a battle between two rival groups led to a major fire and destruction in the country’s second-largest oil refinery, which will lead to further economic turmoil as Libya’s economy depends almost entirely on oil production.
Reports of arbitrary detentions, torture, and extrajudicial killings by various armed factions are widespread. The situation has been exacerbated by the aftermath of natural disasters, notably the floods in Derna in September 2023, which resulted in thousands of deaths and displacements. Libya’s economy, heavily reliant on oil exports, has been disrupted by the conflict and counterfeiting is widespread. Ordinary Libyans face a deteriorating economic situation. Many Libyans have fled to Europe, though severe human rights abuses against migrants, including in detention centers where forced labor, extortion, and sexual assault have been reported, are common. In short, the thirteen years since the United States and NATO invaded Libya have been nothing short of disaster.
The US-led intervention that overthrew Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 is the direct cause of Libya becoming a failed state. If the goal was simply to overthrow a tyrant, it achieved that. If the goal was to put an end to the ongoing Libyan civil war, or to alleviate the suffering of civilians, or to transform a dictatorship into a democracy, or to demonstrate that Western military power could be a force for good in the world — all goals claimed by the Western powers involved — then it failed disastrously.
Libya, post-intervention, remains undemocratic and war-torn, with countless civilian casualties. It can reasonably be argued that the average Libyan’s — those still alive — quality of life is far lower today than it was under Gaddafi. Millions have been displaced, many of whom have flooded into Europe, poverty has increased (more than 800,000 need humanitarian assistance out of a population of under seven million), and food security and the availability of basic services have dramatically decreased. These criticisms collectively paint a picture of an intervention that, while initially justified on humanitarian grounds, led to unintended and severe negative consequences for Libya and the wider region.
It is clear that the United States should never have allowed France or Britain to talk it into intervening in Libya. There was a complete disconnect between the use of military force to overthrow a minor regional power — that was the easy part — and fostering an environment in which violence would cease and an effective and democratic government would emerge. The use of military power could never achieve the desired end goals. No US nor NATO plan existed for the aftermath of Gaddafi’s overthrow. This lack of planning led to a power vacuum that was filled by competing factions and militias rather than a stable, democratic government. (Keep in mind just how poor the US track record of democracy promotion is.) Critics, including Obama himself, have acknowledged that they failed to “plan for the day after” the intervention. Even had the United States and its feckless NATO allies been willing to invade and occupy Libya for years, the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate the folly of such an approach.
By no means should this critique be read as a defense of Gaddafi. He was an odious tyrant, a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction, a once-active sponsor of international terrorism, and a perpetual thorn in the side of the United States and Western Europe. But the US and NATO military intervention in Libya has been an unmitigated disaster for the people of Libya. Like Iraq (and many other locales before it), the military intervention in Libya began with positive, humanitarian intentions. To some Europeans and Americans, the prospect of overthrowing a violent tyrant was worth the cost of intervening militarily. But that military intervention has had, predictably, a host of negative unintended consequences.
In Libya, just like in Iraq, ideology — the desire to promote democracy and humanitarianism — trumped realism and American national interests, and has resulted in a series of costly failures for all concerned. The interests of the United States and Western Europe, not to mention those of ordinary Libyans, were in no way served by overthrowing Gaddafi.
The problem is that the US military has been, and continues to be, used to conduct operations that far exceed American national interests. The invasion of Libya not only was unnecessary and cost significant resources and lives, but it also destabilized the country and region, and has opened the door to increased Russian influence in Libya.
US national interests would have been much better served by simply taking no action in 2011 and beyond. It is also worth noting that the Congress never authorized the use of military force in Libya; the Obama administration did not seek Congressional authorization, and justified the intervention based on the president’s constitutional powers as Commander in Chief and an international mandate from the UN Security Council. The House of Representatives even voted against a resolution (HJRes. 68) that would have authorized continued US involvement, but this did not legally bind the administration to stop the operation.
Libya should be seen as a cautionary tale for future American policymakers and strategists. In deciding whether or not to use US military force to affect some outcome abroad in the future, we should return to first principles. Does taking military action, and expending our precious, finite military resources, meaningfully advance significant US interests? If not, we should take no military action.
The best arguments mustered by supporters of military intervention, including Bill Kristol, were that Gaddafi was committing humanitarian violations and that he had once sought nuclear weapons and supported terrorism (though we should note that long before 2011, Gaddafi seems to have given up his weapons of mass destruction programs and support for international terrorism). In this neoconservative mindset, such actions justified US military action. Ironically, deposing Gaddafi only seems to have increased the amount of violence and suffering within Libya, which is likely only to exacerbate the terrorist threat.
We should always follow the advice of past American leaders and strategic thinkers like George Washington and George Kennan: avoid unnecessary wars, defend and maintain our constitutional order, and ensure that every American has the opportunity to achieve economic prosperity.
We can do that, placing the national interest at the core of everything we do as a nation, and remain perfectly secure, while doing no harm abroad.