The Strategic Use of Liberal Internationalism: Libya and the UN Sanctions, 1992–2003

The UN's sanctions against Libya became an issue of great controversy in the Security Council in the 1990s owing to competing interpretations of the central legal norms of international relations+ The norms of due process, the presumption of innocence, and respect for international organizations ~IOs! were defended by both sides, but for opposite ends+ I use the contestation over norms and law at the Council to argue three broader themes about international politics: first, that states' perceptions about the legitimacy of international institutions is important in influencing state behavior; second, that this legitimacy creates powerful symbols in international relations that are strategically useful to states in the pursuit of their interests; and third, that the distribution of material power among states does not necessarily parallel the distribution of symbolic power, and so it is not uncommon for apparently strong states to be defeated by apparently weak ones when they fight over symbolic stakes+ The norms of liberal internationalism are intersubjective resources useful in the strategic competition among states+ When Libya was faced with United Nations ~UN! sanctions in the early 1990s, it was a relatively weak state in a confrontation with a relatively unified international community+ Lacking coercive resources or powerful allies, the Libyan strategy to undermine the sanctions rested on appropriating the symbols and norms of liberal internationalism and deploying them in a counterattack+ Because the proponents of the sanctions had based their case in the Security Council on the norms of due process, respect for international organizations ~IOs!, and peaceful dispute settlement, international support for the sanctions was sensitive to new interpretations of these principles+ Libya's strategy took advantage of this fact and, by consistently pressing a reinterpretation of liberal internationalism and of the norms of the Council, it was able to delegitimize the sanctions and threaten the legitimacy