What were the dominant themes within media narratives during the UN sanctioned NATO intervention in Libya and the non-UN sanctioned NATO intervention in Kosovo?
An analysis of print media discourses.
The recent NATO
intervention into Libya had many similarities and some key differences to the
NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999.
Both interventions were justified by NATO and its allies and also in the
Western media as ‘humanitarian’, as necessary to prevent a ‘genocide’ or
‘massacre’ from occurring and to remove an undemocratic dictator from power.
Both interventions involved an aerial bombardment on the enemy, and the support
of a non-state actor in an internal conflict. The differences lay in the fact
that the NATO intervention into Libya had UN Security Council sanction, whilst
the intervention into Kosovo had not received the same sanction. Since the
Kosovo intervention, the concept of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) had come into being, in many ways as the direct
result of the controversy of NATO’s illegal intervention into Kosovo. R2P as a
growing international norm had now legitimised an intervention into Libya.
