Note, from yesterday’s Guardian, how imperial/international ‘law’ blocks a negotiated peace in Libya:

Muammar Gaddafi’s exit hindered by UN resolution, law experts warn
Resolution 1970 ordering ICC investigation into suppression of Libyan uprising may mean Italy’s safe-haven efforts are pointless
Robert Booth, guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 29 March 2011 14.34 BST

The search for an exit route out of Libya for Muammar Gaddafi is severely constricted by the international criminal court‘s (ICC) investigation into his alleged crimes against humanity, legal experts warn. …

It may have been hoped that they could flee to one of several dozen countries that, like Libya, have not ratified the Rome statute, the treaty that established the ICC. Those include … three permanent members of the UN security council: the US, China and Russia.

But the powers of the ICC investigation extend to all of those countries because the security council, in resolution 1970, urges all member states to co-operate fully, whether they recognise the Hague-based court or not. …

“I have heard people say that resolution 1970 was a mistake because it gives Gaddafi no way out,” says [Malcolm Shaw QC, a senior fellow at Cambridge University’s Lauterpacht centre for international law]. “It basically said to Gaddafi, ‘You have to fight to the end.’ He may have a few short-term options, but the long-term prognosis for him and his family is very difficult. Apart from the fact an amnesty is unlikely to stick for ever, whoever takes over in Libya is sure to want to go after Gaddafi’s money.”

To review the recent history that led up to the U.S./British/French/Italian air war on Libya:

In order to remove the targeted ruler from power, for home country PR reasons he had to be demonized/criminalized. This was done mainly by the imperial centers’ mainstream media crediting as true second-and-third-hand reports relayed by the rebels, who are/were engaging in the time-honored tradition of heaping extreme human rights abuse charges on a ruler targeted for removal by imperial powers. (Libyan rebels now feel it is smart to go along with the imperialists’ desire to make war, but the sincere nationalists among them will be dissapointed with how little economic sovereignty the imperial centers will allow their country.) The preceding, by the way, is not to deny that human rights abuses and war crimes occur frequently in all modern wars, especially civil wars.

The imperialist center’s interventionist law establishment, working in tandem with the demonization campaign, managed on February 26 to get Security Council Resolution 1970 passed. The Resolution is perfect for the interventionists, but for those of us who want a negotiated settlement to the civil war it is a nightmare. As the Guardian notes, it makes it far more difficult for the Libyan government to settle peacefully with the rebel forces.

In this civil war, the government seems to be backed by a substantial number of Libyans, while the rebels seem also to be supported by a substantial number of Libyans. Many experts write that the two Libyan sides in conflict are split by regional clan loyalties that are a well-known part of Libya’s political geography.  In such scenarios, the best solution for Libya would be new a constitution and government that forges a compromise among these competing clans and regional loyalties.

However, the successful efforts of imperial interventionist law have made that nearly impossible. Instead it has created only one likely outcome: winners-take-all (well, actually, they’ll hand most of that over to international oil companies) and losers-executed-or-jailed-for-life. Compromise and negotiation are nearly impossible, according to me and the experts quoted in the Guardian article. In sum, interventionist international law successfully blocks compromise and compels bloody war to the end.

Anyway, of course, the above is no surprise: compromise, ceasefires, and negotiations are not what the West wants. It wants complete military victory for its soon-to-be puppets. This requires complete defeat for the regional and tribal clans that have long played prominent roles in the Libyan government and been supporters of Moammar Qaddafi’s rule. As we know from our recent interventionist experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, such a complete victory/defeat ‘outcome’ for one ethnicity, or one major religion, or one set of clans inevitably leads to an endless and very bloody civil war.

Oh well.