Beyond Regime Change in Libya

The Libya intervention is the first time in NATO's history that the Alliance has been directly engaged in imposing regime change in another country. NATO's intervention reflects a mixture of national prestige and the ambition of enforcing a humanitarian order in the European neighbourhood. This Policy Brief highlights to main two problems related to this kind of intervention: first, the risk of losing political capital at the international level and second, the likelihood of being drawn into new dubious state- and nation-building projects after Afghanistan and Iraq.