Interventionen i Libyen 2011: En teoriprövande studie av FN:s och Natos intervention i Libyen med hjälp av den organisatoriska modellen

February 2011 began with demonstrations against Muammar al-Gaddafi in Libya. It quickly escalated into a violent civil war. The actions of the UN and NATO have been widely discussed. The purpose of this essay is to examine the objectives behind the UN’s and NATO’s intervention in Libya. This will be done by applying Graham Allison’s organizational model to the case to test its explanatory power. The study is a single case study with a theory-testing ambition. The objectives behind the UN’s and NATO’s intervention are examined and analyzed based on three factors: protection of civilians, promotion of democracy and regime change. I concluded that both the UN and NATO initially had the protection of civilians as their primary objective. However, NATO’s objective shifted to regime change as the conflict intensified by supporting the rebels. The main objective of the UN was to protect civilians with an ambition to promote democracy, as they followed the established practice. NATO violated international law and practice, which equated to acting solely for regime change. Furthermore, the theory could explain the general features of the conflict but not in great detail.