From Humanitarian Intervention to Regime Change in Libya: Human Agency in the Production and Transformation of Global Security Assemblages

Abstract

The paper examines human agency in the production and transformation of global security assemblages. A situated conception of human agency is elaborated theoretically through the reincorporation of key concepts from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s original oeuvre, such as ‘bodies’ ‘desire’ and ‘affect’. Through this Deleuzoguattarian assemblage framework it becomes possible to distinguish between human/non-human and active/reactive forms of agency, while not losing sight of how human actions invariably take place within broader structures of signification. To showcase the utility and analytical potential of this approach, the paper returns to a paradigmatic case of global security cooperation in recent times: the military intervention in Libya of 2011. Through the assemblage framework advocated it is illustrated how the agency of the governments of the United Kingdom, France and the United States is crucial for making connections with other bodies in the production of a Libyan humanitarian intervention assemblage, and later bringing about its transformation into a Libyan regime change assemblage. More than this, it becomes possible to grasp how in fact both these processes form part of a single Western-led biopolitical-geopolitical strategy. The paper concludes by emphasising the political and ethical significance of an appreciation of human agency in global security assemblages.

De l’intervention humanitaire au renversement du régime en Libye : l’agentivité humaine dans la production et la transformation des agencements de la sécurité mondiale

Introduction

In recent times authors in a number of fields have been turning to the concept ‘assemblage’ to grasp complex spatially and temporally situated phenomena. ¹ With its roots in the shared oeuvre of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, the assemblage has also been used to great effect in the field of International Relations (IR), where it has featured in a growing, yet still relatively nascent literature. ² Within this work assemblage frameworks have been deployed to facilitate more nuanced accounts of complex formations of global security cooperation and governance. The flexibility of these approaches is such that they can be used to analyse and explain security cooperation on a wide range of issues from piracy, ³ drug trafficking, ⁴ counter-terrorism ⁵ and private security, ⁶ to human security and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). ⁷

While this literature has generated important insights into contemporary global security assemblages, the premise of this paper is that the complex ways in which human beings can act in these arrangements has not been adequately dealt with. Firstly, while the heterogeneity of human and non-human components is often emphasised, little, if any, theoretical distinction is made between what are quintessentially different forms of agency. We might also expect that some groups would be more ‘active’ and others more ‘reactive’ in the production and/or transformation of assemblages. ⁸ This is a notable omission since socio-political assemblages are intentional, purposeful and arranged to the benefit of some more than others. ⁹ Without making conceptual distinctions between human/non-human and active/reactive forms of agency it can become difficult to assign responsibility, meaning that this issue takes on significant political and ethical import. ¹⁰ More broadly, it is maintained that the ways in which human beings can act in global security assemblages has suffered from a distinct under-theorisation in the literature. Much of this work speaks of ‘actors’, but there is little accompanying theoretical elaboration of what an ‘actor’ is, or indeed how ‘actors’ interact with other ‘actors’ and expressive elements like language within the assemblage. Even ostensibly ‘untheoretical’ deployments of the assemblage can never be free from theoretical assumptions. ¹¹ At the very least, in the interests of academic rigour, there is a sound argument to be made for greater clarity and precision about what we mean by crucial terms such as ‘actor’ and ‘agency’.

The current paper aims to address this perceived lacuna by elaborating a theoretical frame for how human agency can be grasped in the production and transformation of global security assemblages. The main contribution made here will be in formulating and demonstrating how a return to the original enterprise of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari marks the best way forward for the designated task. A Deleuzoguattarian assemblage framework shall therefore be advanced along with the reincorporation of some of these authors’ most crucial concepts, such as in particular ‘bodies,’ ‘desire’ and ‘affect’. This will enable one to make distinctions between human/non-human and active/reactive forms of agency, and grasp the complex ways that human ‘bodies’ can interact with and make connections with other ‘bodies’, and also how they can select the significations which define the relations holding these ‘bodies’ together in arrangements of global security cooperation. ¹² At the same time, the assemblage framework deployed will ensure that we do not lose sight of how this activity is inevitably shaped and restricted by broader systems of signification, but also how openings or escapes (‘lines of flight’) can be engineered so as to transform the arrangements put together. As should become clear, through this framework responsibility can be credibly assigned to human beings for the demonstrable roles that they play in the production and transformation of global security assemblages.

To demonstrate the utility of this Deleuzoguattarian assemblage framework for the analysis of global security assemblages I return to a paradigmatic case of security cooperation in recent times: the military intervention in Libya of 2011. While there is now an extensive body of scholarship highlighting the decisive role of the governments of the United Kingdom, France and the United States in the intervention, ¹³ there is substantially less work showing how they facilitated and later transformed the arrangement of international cooperation reached at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). ¹⁴ The paper will show firstly how these powerful Western governments made connections with other ‘bodies’, selecting the significations which will define the relations holding together a Libyan humanitarian intervention (LHI) assemblage. This agency is infused with desire and affect, but it is also situated within a broader system of meaning corresponding to the key signifier ‘R2P’. Secondly, in light of Gaddafi’s refusal to vacate power, it is shown how these same governments play a decisive role in transforming the LHI assemblage so as to arrange a new Libyan regime change (LRC) assemblage. More than this, the chosen case reveals how a theoretically grounded appreciation of human agency may well be necessary to grasp how the production and transformation of global security arrangements can form part of a single strategy. The paper closes with some concluding remarks on the ethical significance of a focus on human agency for global security assemblages.

Global Security Assemblages and Agency

The growing use of assemblage frameworks within the field of IR has included a particular interest in global security arrangements. The attraction of the concept assemblage for studies of this kind is that it can open up the object of study, offering a unique type of analytical purchase on these complex phenomena. Authors have been able to dismantle some of the traditional binaries which have structured IR: the state/non-state, the national/international, the public/private, structure/agency and the human/non-human. For instance, the assemblage draws attention to the multi-layered geographies of particular cooperative arrangements, illuminating how the national and local levels can become intertwined with the global. As Rita Abrahamsen and Michael Williams remark, ‘a resource extraction site in Tanzania, Ghana or South Africa is a local setting or entity, infused with local traditions, norms and relationships, but it is simultaneously part of global markets and global discourses and normativities’. ¹⁵ In addition, through a sensitivity to the heterogeneity of these assemblages, all of this work seeks in one way or another to decentre the human being and move away from the anthropocentrism which has characterised the field of IR. ¹⁶

It is nevertheless important to recognise that the assemblage has been deployed in a variety of different ways in these contributions, reflecting the divergent strands which have emerged from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s original assemblage work. ¹⁷ Logically this has had implications for how authors have approached the crucial question of agency. For some, the work of Jane Bennett and Bruno Latour has been used to emphasise the heterogeneity of human and non-human material elements in assemblages. ¹⁸ In her analysis of the Thai ‘migrant health assemblage’, for instance, Nadine Voelkner has identified a range of non-human material elements which are deemed to be crucial, claiming that ‘human agency can only emerge by way of a distribution into these materialities’. ¹⁹ For other authors, a central focus has been placed on practices of assemblages. ²⁰ By drawing on Tania Li’s work, Demmers and Gould aimed to show how alignments are forged, and ‘how the parties of an assemblage are made to cohere and act’. ²¹ Meanwhile, utilising Sassen’s work on ‘global assemblages’, Abrahamsen and Williams have inquired into the interactions between ‘public and private security agents’ in the provision of private security. ²² On private security companies they note that: ‘their presence is a result of shifts in security governance, but they are also agents that act to produce forms of security governance through their own coercive capacities and their ability (or attempts) to influence how other security actors “see what is possible and desirable”’. ²³

However, it is maintained here that in studies of global security assemblages the question of human agency has not been dealt with theoretically in any satisfactory, focussed or robust way. In those papers where there has been a desire to account for the presence and agency of non-human materiality in assemblages, the agency of human beings can seem to take on a peripheral importance. While one can, and indeed should, recognise the potential for agency in processes, practices and inanimate objects, it would be problematic to situate non-human materiality at the centre of the analysis. ²⁴ Moreover, theoretical distinctions should be made between human/non-human and active/reactive forms of agency. These distinctions harbour critical political and ethical import since for human beings to be assigned responsibility one must first be able to adequately grasp their roles. ²⁵ More broadly speaking, it is argued that the ways in which human beings can act in global security assemblages has suffered from a notable under-theorisation in the literature. That is to say, the existence of ‘actors’ is assumed, but there has not been any notable attempt to explain what these ‘actors’ are, or how they interact with other material and expressive elements within assemblages. ²⁶

As a corrective to this perceived gap in the literature, a return to Deleuze and Guattari’s original assemblage work shall be advocated in the following sections. This will firstly trace some key features of their processual ontology of assemblages, followed later by an elaboration of how human beings can act within this framework.

Situating Human Agency in Socio-Political Assemblages

It is the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari which marks the most pertinent point of departure for any study of socio-political assemblages. ²⁷ We can understand the assemblage as a particular ‘dynamic arrangement’ ²⁸ which is expressed as a kind of ‘co-functioning’, a ‘sympathy’ or ‘symbiosis’ ²⁹ of heterogeneous elements. They are multiplicities insofar as they cannot be conceived of in terms of a fixed unity or transcendental identity, which is to say through totalisation, nor can they be reduced to their constituent parts. We can refer to this as a kind of ‘synthesis of heterogeneities’. ³⁰ Socio-political assemblages comprise two different axes. On the first of these, the ‘horizontal axis’, there are in turn two interacting planes: on the one hand there is ‘a machinic assemblage of bodies, of actions and passions’, that is of ‘content’, and on the other there is a ‘collective assemblage of enunciation, of acts and statements’, which is the plane of ‘expression’. ³¹ There is also a second axis of socio-political assemblages, which corresponds with a particular territoriality, and this territory of action or authority ³² is always subject to processes of de/reterritorialisation. ‘Territoriality’ is not to be thought of in a purely geographical sense here, but rather as ‘a system of any kind: conceptual, linguistic, social, or affective’. ³³ In turn, ‘deterritorialisation’ refers to ‘the movement or process by which something escapes or departs from a given territory’, ³⁴ and ‘reterritorialisation’ denotes how components recombine in modifying the original assemblage or even connect up with other components to form a new assemblage. ³⁵

Thinking the possibility of human agency in this processual ontology of socio-political assemblages is a complex matter, and there has even been some debate over whether or not this can be gleaned from Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage work at all. ³⁶ However, here I draw on the work of those authors who have in one way or another advocated an ‘affective assemblage’ approach. ³⁷

In the first place, this entails an understanding of the ‘bodies’ that interact with one another in socio-political assemblages. As Simone Bignall points out, a ‘body’ is ‘not a discrete entity defined by stable boundaries and a set of fixed characteristics’, but is rather a complex multiplicity which is defined both by the relations established between its internal components and also those maintained with other bodies externally. These ‘bodies’ are ‘assemblages of particular kinds of force or capacity’ in their own right. ³⁸ To grasp this notion it is perhaps useful to contrast it with commonplace assumptions in IR of what an ‘actor’ is. While an actor is typically assumed to be a discrete entity with a stable identity and fixed characteristics, like for instance a state or international institution in mainstream IR theory, a ‘body’ is conceived of as a complex and unstable multiplicity. This multiplicity is defined both by the relations between its internal components and those maintained with other bodies externally. As Brent Adkins puts it, this is a case of perceptual semiotics; that is to say, a way of seeing things differently. ³⁹ Take for example the role of the Italian government in the military intervention in Libya. Understood as a discrete actor, we might inquire into how the Italian government rationally pursued its foreign policy in Libya vis-a-vis its own national interests, ⁴⁰ shifting from an initial reluctance to a more active role more in alignment with the governments of the United Kingdom, France and the United States. ⁴¹ In contrast, by grasping the Italian government as a ‘body’, as a multiplicity of different internal and external relations, we might inquire into how these changing relations led to a shift in foreign policy as the crisis in Libya progressed. ⁴²

Any agency of which human bodies are capable of in global security assemblages is irrevocably infused with desire. As Ian Buchanan has consistently stressed, it is really not possible to grasp how Deleuze and Guattari conceived of the ‘assemblage’, and what brings the heterogeneous group of material and semiotic elements together, without reference to the concept of ‘desire’. ⁴³ Assemblages are in fact ‘compositions of desire’, and thus ‘there is no desire but assembling, assembled, desire’. ⁴⁴ Nonetheless, desire cannot be comprehended in terms of a lack, as formulated in the psychoanalytic tradition of Freud; alternatively, desire is productive, meaning that it ‘is not bolstered by needs. . .needs are derived from desire’. ⁴⁵ We can understand desire as not only being responsible for making connections between bodies, but also in the way that it ‘disposes their practices of interaction in particular ways’. ⁴⁶ That is to say, desire determines the ‘qualitative’ modes of association between bodies, which range from sociability to utility or capture, but in any case are expressions of a desire to make positive ‘joyful’ associations which enhance powers and avoid those ‘incompatible or “sad” associations that will detract from their existing powers’. ⁴⁷ Thus, desire does not flow, strictly speaking, directly from these bodies as subjective agents; since desire permeates the social field and animates processes of desiring production, then it is also implicated in the formation of subjects. ⁴⁸

While desire is understood to be the primary force animating the constituent bodies of global security assemblages, the capacity of a given body to make connections with other bodies and define the relations holding them together, is dependent on a wider field of power relations. ⁴⁹ As Paul Patton has indicated, ‘the power of any given body resides not in the body itself but in its relations to other bodies’. ⁵⁰ Within this field of power relations it is the capacity to affect or be affected by other bodies which is of crucial significance. Bodies exercising agency will exude active affects such as incitement or provocation; bodies who are subject to the agency of others will display reactive affects, including being subject to incitement or provocation. It is worth noting that the capacity of a given body to affect and be affected by other bodies is not merely determined by its physical attributes, but also the ‘enduring social and institutional relations within which it lives, and the moral interpretations which define its acts’. ⁵¹ In addition, the affects that bodies are capable of are closely related to the ‘affections’ that they experience when they come in to contact with each other; that is, there will be a corresponding increase or decrease in their power or capacity to act. These modulations are understood as affections of ‘joy’ or ‘sadness’, which generally speaking correspond with ‘good and bad encounters with other bodies’. ⁵² There is a ‘variety of ways in which the relative power of an individual body can be increased, including combining with or capturing the powers of others, or reducing the power of other bodies by imposing constraints on their capacity to act’. ⁵³

In sum, the agency that a given body is capable of is coextensive with an awareness of the affective relations of desire and power within which it is immersed, and the capacity to cultivate those in a certain way. ⁵⁴ We might think of this as a kind of ‘strategic performance’ or ‘styling of becoming’. ⁵⁵ Intentional human agency is thus possible within socio-political assemblages, but to be compatible with Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage work these intentions cannot be understood to precede the actions themselves. ⁵⁶ Rather, intentions are considered ‘immanent causes’ which are inseparable from the expression or ‘experimental action’ that is animated by the assemblage. ⁵⁷

While a given body may demonstrate a capacity for agency within a socio-political assemblage, this is certainly not the work of a sovereign subject or agent. We have already seen how this agency is invariably traversed by desire and affect, but it is also dependent on and restricted by broader systems of signification. This can be illustrated by turning to those assemblages of power which require the production of a majoritarian standard ‘face’. The ‘face’ does not denote a material face as such, but rather a system of signification composed of a signifying and postsignifying regime of signs. The signifying regime is characterised by circularity, which is to say it organises signs around a central signifier; the postsignifying regime subjectifies, and it does so on lines of flight leading away from the signifier. ⁵⁸ As a system both of these regimes work in tandem to impose order, situating bodies hierarchically in terms of compliance or deviance from a ‘majoritarian’ standard. Moreover, this has clear implications for human agency since it is in relation to the ‘face’ or ‘majoritarian’ standard that some actions are sanctioned while others are not. ⁵⁹ Deleuze and Guattari offer the example of ‘racism’ to explain how this works in practice. They argue that racism is not about exclusion, as is sometimes assumed, but rather a case of ordering bodies hierarchically in terms of compliance or deviance from a majoritarian standard face. For example, in those racist assemblages of European colonialism, the majoritarian standard was that of the White European, and thus any bodies not in conformity were considered deviant to various degrees. Moreover, this had implications for human agency since it was in relation to this majoritarian standard that certain practices were sanctioned, such as for instance that of slavery.

There is another important concept in Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage framework which should be taken into account for any elaboration of human agency in socio-political assemblages. The ‘abstract machine’ functions to bring together the material and semiotic planes of the assemblage. It is thus a kind of unifying principle, but not one which precedes the assemblage in any transcendental way; rather, the relationship is one of mutual supposition as the assemblage effectuates the abstract machine at the same time as the abstract machine diagrams the emergence of the assemblage. ⁶⁰ In this sense the abstract machine constitutes a kind of ‘immanent cause’, ⁶¹ which assumes a ‘piloting role’ for the assemblage. ⁶²

Another useful way of thinking about this is in terms of problem-solution: the abstract machine represents an intensive, virtual problem, while the assemblage constitutes an extensive and actual solution, but one which is always formulated in relation to the outside. ⁶³ For our purposes, the identification of the abstract machine can help to grasp the purpose of the assemblage in question.

A concrete example should help to elucidate how this works in practice. In Deleuze’s commentary on Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, and what he calls the prison ‘assemblage’, he identifies a material plane – for example, the prison itself and the bodies of prisoners – and an expressive plane – for example, penal law and the abundance of statements on delinquency. ⁶⁴ Yet for Deleuze – and for Foucault also, although he puts it in different terms – there is something more profound in operation here and which can account for the ‘presupposition’ of the material and expressive planes. The functioning of ‘Panopticism’ ⁶⁵ is identified as the ‘abstract machine’ of the prison assemblage, and this allows one to determine its purpose as ‘to impose a particular conduct on a particular human multiplicity’ and through the exercise of disciplinary power. ⁶⁶

It is now necessary to specifically address how human agency is implicated not just in the production of socio-political assemblages, but also in how they are transformed into something novel. Returning to those assemblages of power which require the production of a ‘face’, transformation can be brought about by ‘dismantling’ these systems of signification. ⁶⁷ On the one hand, this entails an initial moment of rupture, destruction or deterritorialisation, whereby an escape of desire, intensities and affects is engineered, and on the other hand, a concurrent movement of production and reterritorialisation. A certain knowledge and awareness of the signifying discourses of the system and how these perform subjectification is required, which can facilitate the identification and exploitation of ambiguous or unstable meanings. ⁶⁸ This makes it possible ‘to selectively constitute one’s own identity in relation to the multiplicity of established significations one is “born into”’. ⁶⁹ In this way, the dominant system of signification itself can be undermined, creative lines of escape or flight enabled, along with the release of pre-subjective desire, affects and becomings. It is ultimately towards what Deleuze and Guattari have called ‘becoming-imperceptible’ that these active bodies propel themselves, ⁷⁰ which is commensurate with a desire ‘to go unnoticed’, and a ‘desire to reduce oneself to a minimal set of traits on the basis of which to forge new connections with the world’. ⁷¹ In short, dismantling the face is a way for bodies to reconfigure relations, strike up productive connections with what lies outside of the assemblage, and bring about a transformation in the original arrangement.

Finally, it is worth pointing out that for Deleuze and Guattari lines of flight do not lead inevitably to emancipation and/or the production of new and stable arrangements. It is in fact always a step into the unknown towards an invariably unpredictable exterior filled with potential threats and dangers. ⁷² Thus, there can be no guarantees where the line of flight will lead to, and likewise whether or not the productive assembling of forces necessary for a new co-functioning will be achieved. It is for this reason that caution must be taken: ‘staying stratified – organized, signified, subjected – is not the worst that can happen; the worst that can happen is if you throw the strata into demented or suicidal collapse, which brings them back down on us heavier than ever’. ⁷³

Desiring Humanitarian Intervention: The Territorialisation of the LHI Assemblage

With the Middle East region engulfed in what was being dubbed the ‘Arab Spring’, state security forces in Libya were desperately trying to put down their own protests railing against leader Gaddafi and the Libyan government. The violent suppression of the protests, which would soon morph into disparate uprisings, was swiftly followed by a wave of international condemnation and punitive measures. The Arab League, for instance, suspended Libya from the regional organisation, insisting that the Libyan government take heed of protesters’ demands before being allowed to return. ⁷⁴ EU High Representative Catherine Ashton announced that negotiations over the EU-Libya Framework Agreement were being suspended. ⁷⁵ Meanwhile, criticism of the Libyan government was also forthcoming from the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, adjudging that ‘the reported nature and scale of the attacks on civilians are egregious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law’. Ban will go on to denounce specifically Gaddafi: ‘I have strongly condemned, again and again, what he has done. It is totally unacceptable’. ⁷⁶ Powerful Western governments, for their part, were likewise soon expressing their own criticism of Gaddafi and the actions of Libyan security forces. ⁷⁷

While the aforementioned statements evidenced a widespread concern for the situation in Libya, the UNSC would by the principal institutional site at which the crisis was discussed internationally and the territorialisation of a Libyan humanitarian intervention assemblage (LHI) assemblage can be discerned. ⁷⁸ The material plane of the assemblage is composed of a range of heterogeneous bodies, including the UNSC itself, the regional organisation the Arab League, ⁷⁹ a plethora of national governments who pledged support for the intervention, the Secretary General of the UN Ban-Ki Moon, ⁸⁰ military planes and weaponry and so forth. These bodies will be organised, held together, and coded by a collective assemblage of enunciation containing a dominant signifying regime of signs, and which has at its centre the signifying sign ‘R2P’. The LHI assemblage becomes formalised and codified in two UNSC Resolutions: 1970 and 1973. ⁸¹ The first, Resolution 1970, was accepted unanimously by all 15 members, while Resolution 1973 was approved with 10 votes in favour, and 5 abstentions. ⁸² As the central signifying sign of the assemblage, R2P is referenced throughout the debate on the crisis in Libya, and is present in both UNSC Resolutions 1970 and 1973: for instance, ‘recalling’ and then ‘reiterating’ the ‘responsibility of the Libyan authorities to protect the Libyan population’. ⁸³

This initial survey of the LHI assemblage elicits some preliminary observations about its composition. Firstly, the fact that different actors form part of the assemblage does not of course mean that they all share the same motivations, objectives and/or input. These actors are all bodies or assemblages of desire and affect in their own right, and it is the LHI assemblage which brings about their synthesis in making them cohere. ⁸⁴ Secondly, we can see how the expressive plane does not signify decisively and conclusively the material plane of the assemblage. Both planes are in mutual presupposition, to be sure, but they relate to each other in tense, uneasy and at times incongruous ways. The Arab League, for instance, can be included in the plane of content since it called for and supported a no-fly zone over Libya, and yet this body is itself composed of predominantly authoritarian governments, some of which themselves having been implicated in acts of violence and repression against their own populations. In addition, any rudimentary historical appreciation of powerful Western governments’ foreign policies suffices to grasp just how sparingly notions of humanitarian intervention and R2P have been used, in spite of the many other potential cases around the World. UK Prime Minister David Cameron would nonetheless strive to reconcile this evident anomaly: ‘I would not accept the contention that somehow we have been inconsistent between different countries or different situations. We respect the differences in different countries’. ⁸⁵

The multitudinous composition of the LHI assemblage notwithstanding, some constituent bodies were clearly more influential than others in putting together this arrangement of global security cooperation. Looking more closely at the development and approval of Resolutions 1970 and 1973 at the UNSC, we can see how it was Western governments the United Kingdom, France, and the United States who were the driving forces behind these processes. The agency of these bodies is crucial in making connections between the different bodies at the UNSC and further afield, and likewise determining the specific form that the LHI assemblage would take. ⁸⁶ This entails a set of actions which are infused with a desire for international cooperation; that is, a desire to make productive associations with other bodies, which will, in turn, increase the power of these Western governments to act. ⁸⁷ Yet the efficacy of these bodies in doing so is also dependent on their capacities to affect and be affected by other bodies being drawn into the assemblage. It seems clear that their capacities result not simply from the material constitution of these bodies, whether this be derived from military, political or economic power, but also their dominant and privileged position within the institutional setting of the UNSC itself. They enjoy the status of permanent members, of course, yet they also display a significant degree of competence, experience and know-how that has been acquired throughout the years. ⁸⁸

During negotiations at the UNSC the governments of the United Kingdom, France and the United States show capacities to encourage, incite, provoke, coax and cajole other members of the UNSC. ⁸⁹ This is done by actively assuming leadership, setting the agenda, redacting the corresponding resolutions and making the required military assets available for any military intervention. ⁹⁰ It is precisely in these ways these bodies are able to make alliances and join forces with other bodies. One of the crucial ways through which Western governments are able to affect other bodies is by constituting the crisis taking place in Libya in moral and humanitarian terms. ⁹¹ On the one hand, this moral interpretation potentially increases the capacities of some bodies to act by making it easier for them to join forces with leading Western governments. That is, for instance, governments who may have had some reticence about supporting the intervention for fear of an adverse reaction by domestic audiences. Arguably more importantly, however, the selection of these kinds of moral significations serve to restrict the capacities of other influential bodies to oppose the actions being proposed. This appears to have been the case with sceptical UNSC permanent members Russia and China, as their veto of Resolution 1973 could easily have been constituted as evidencing complicity in the repression of the Libyan people and contra the will of the region as a whole. ⁹² In fostering the acquiescence of member states in these ways the crucial Resolution 1973 is approved, triggering a series of ‘incorporeal transformations’ through which the bodies comprising the LHI assemblage are performatively constituted with the legitimacy and authority to intervene in Libya. As the centre of power of the assemblage, the authority of the UNSC is absolutely crucial for the effectiveness of ‘order words’ such as R2P. ⁹³

It is quite clear that R2P is the central signifying sign of the LHI assemblage, and it is thus around this sign that leading Western governments strive to arrange, organise and code all constituent bodies. The invocation of R2P in fact signals the production of a majoritarian standard ‘face’, which we have said comprises a signifying and postsignifying regime of signs. What is this face? It can be only that of Western politics or Western liberal democracy, and this is evidenced both in how the central signifying sign R2P is facialised with the traits freedom, democracy and human rights, and also in the related modes of subjectification. ⁹⁴ The production of the ‘face’ is required by the LHI assemblage since it is against this majoritarian standard that all bodies can be plotted hierarchically in terms of compliance/deviance, and thus through this mechanism that the ‘deviance’ of Gaddafi can be made visible ⁹⁵ – an important first step in the normalisation of his errant behaviour. ⁹⁶ Leading Western governments are able to constitute themselves as the de facto leaders of the collective, moral imperative to protect the Libyan population. In turn, the role of ‘regional support’ for the operation is assigned to the Arab League, thereby providing an important impetus to negotiations at the UNSC and legitimacy to the subsequent intervention. ⁹⁷ Abstentions by the governments of Russia and China enable them to be defined as cooperative partners, if not willing participants. The UNSC as a whole can then be constituted as fulfilling its principal role of maintaining international peace and security. Yet it is also important to recognise that leading Western governments must also operate within this broad system of signification, which determines to an important extent both the subjective traits which they display and the actions of which they are capable.

It is worth reflecting more on the significance of the signifier R2P for the LHI assemblage. With its roots in previous notions of liberal ‘humanitarian intervention’, R2P is similarly articulated as a response to the abuse of purportedly ‘universal’ human rights. Yet as postcolonial, decolonial and feminist authors have consistently pointed out, the ‘universality’ of human rights is critically undermined by the fact that someone must speak on behalf of the human; that is, someone ‘who is designated to speak to the colonized and marginalized peoples about the rights that they possess’. ⁹⁸ Thus, while such appeals are inevitably partial, embodied and political, the purported ‘universality’ of human rights has made this discourse ripe for exploitation in imperial and colonial practices.

Returning to the LHI assemblage and it is the capacity – not to mention willingness – of Western governments to invoke R2P and ‘universal’ human rights in the name of the Libyan population which perhaps marks most clearly their agency within this arrangement. Moreover, we can see how this follows a similar pattern seen in past colonial practices, which have incorporated racialised, gendered and sexualised dimensions to justify Western intervention. ⁹⁹ For instance, the intervention in Libya is racialised in the sense that Western (white) civilisation is presumed to be superior to the non-White perpetrators and victims: gendered in that intervening bodies are situated in the traditional masculine role of ‘protector’, diverging sharply from the barbaric ‘hypermasculine’ Gaddafi and the Libyan regime ¹⁰⁰ : and sexualised in so far as intervention is required to protect against the deviant sexual violence purportedly being perpetrated by Gaddafi and loyalist forces. ¹⁰¹ It is in these ways, steeped in Western imperial and colonial historicity, that the LHI assemblage is being put together and legitimised. ¹⁰²

Western governments’ active participation in the production of the LHI assemblage is both crucial and restricted by broader structures of signification, and yet there is something more profound in operation here still. The confluence of the different bodies of the LHI assemblage, on the one hand, and the discourse of R2P on the other, is being piloted by a biopolitics abstract machine, which, concurrently, constitutes the generalizable diagram of power actualised and effectuated by the LHI assemblage. ¹⁰³ It is worth recalling here how in global liberal governance discursive frameworks R2P has featured as an important part of the ‘freedom from fear’ dimension of human security. ¹⁰⁴ Both human security and R2P are biopolitical for the ways in which they seek to administer, secure and promote human species’ life by enabling interventions at the aggregate level of population. ¹⁰⁵ Thus, it is not simply that the LHI assemblage is being put together to provide protection to a beleaguered Libyan population ¹⁰⁶ ; rather, the arrangement reflects a broader desire to implement a biopolitical solution to the multiple risks, dangers and opportunities posed by the Libyan population amid the ongoing deterritorialisation of the Libyan state.

For that, how does the LHI assemblage actually aim to achieve this? In relation to the majoritarian standard face of Western liberal politics certain actions are sanctioned as part of the LHI assemblage. In effect, a new territory of action or authority for Libya is being produced. Libyan territorial space is effectively being re-made in this process; that is, authority is usurped from Gaddafi and his Libyan government, and displaced on to the heterogeneous actors comprising the LHI assemblage. The territoriality of the LHI assemblage is thus correlative with Libyan territorial space, yet there are clear conceptual limits to the actions sanctioned at the UNSC. Resolution 1970, for instance, imposed an arms embargo, an assets freeze and a travel ban on high profile officials within the Libyan government, along with a referral to the International Criminal Court and a commitment to further monitor the situation. ¹⁰⁷ Soon afterwards, Resolution 1973 was approved authorising the imposition of a no-fly zone along with, ominously, ‘all necessary measures’ to protect ‘civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya’. ¹⁰⁸ It is through this set of biopolitical, disciplinary and sovereign forms of power, which aim to restrict the capacities of Gaddafi, the Libyan government, and Libyan security forces, that a biopolitical solution to the problems posed by the Libyan population can be pursued.

Drawing Creative Lines of Flight: From Humanitarian Intervention to Regime Change

Responses to complex international crises are always fraught with unpredictability and danger, and perhaps also in a certain sense doomed to failure. ¹⁰⁹ When the LHI assemblage was being put together, it simply could not have been known how events would later transpire; for instance, whether Libyan leader Gaddafi would bow to international pressure and relinquish power on his own accord, or whether opposition militias would quickly gain the upper hand over loyalist government forces and oust him. ¹¹⁰ As it happened, none of these two outcomes were forthcoming. Indeed the violence would continue unabated even after the approval of UNSC Resolution 1973, as media reports of an imminent assault by loyalist forces on the eastern city of Benghazi indicated. ¹¹¹ The commencement of Western-led air-strikes on Libyan territory swiftly followed as French, British, and United States military aircraft pounded a range of targets from the sky. ¹¹²

With these developments on the ground it soon became clear that the relative ease with which the LHI assemblage had been arranged nonetheless belied the fragility of the relations sustaining the whole. In calling for an immediate ceasefire Chinese President Hu Jintao insisted: ‘history has repeatedly proved that the use of force is not an answer to problems’. ¹¹³ Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin controversially compared the military campaign to ‘the crusades’, lamenting the ‘defective and flawed’ nature of UNSC Resolution 1973 in that it ‘allows everything’ ¹¹⁴ . Meanwhile, South African leader Jacob Zuma displayed a definite change in posture following his government’s original support for UNSC Resolution 1973: ‘as South Africa we say no to the killing of civilians, no to the regime-change doctrine and no to the foreign occupation of Libya or any other sovereign state’. ¹¹⁵ Perhaps more significant still, given the central importance attached to ‘regional support’, Arab League General Secretary Amr Moussa expressed his discontent at coalition actions: ‘what has happened in Libya differs from the goal of imposing a no-fly zone and what we want is the protection of civilians and not bombing other civilians’. ¹¹⁶

An assemblage approach offers a novel vantage point from which to view these statements insofar as they all point to a breach of the territoriality of the LHI assemblage. On the one hand, the materiality of the military campaign seems to exceed the degree of deterritorialisation permitted by the central signifying sign R2P, as both the scale of the assault and reports of civilian casualties are at odds with a mandate to ‘protect’ the Libyan population. ¹¹⁷ Moreover, should Gaddafi not step down of his own volition, one could already foresee how greater and greater degrees of military power would logically be required to topple him. Such an augmentation of the military campaign could quite feasibly lead to greater unpredictability and chaos, certainly, but perhaps more importantly the LHI assemblage would also morph into something divergent from what humanitarian intervention and R2P are ontologically supposed to be. Forcible regime change was of course not sanctioned by the UNSC, and would clearly violate the ‘strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national unity of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya’. ¹¹⁸

To account for the deterritorialisation movement evinced through the initiation of the Western-led military campaign it is useful to return to the biopolitics abstract machine of the LHI assemblage. It has been argued that the functioning of this abstract machine reveals the purpose of the LHI assemblage to be at bottom a biopolitical solution to the problems and opportunities posed by the Libyan population vis-à-vis the ongoing crisis. The refusal by Gaddafi to leave power, along with a potentially imminent military assault on Benghazi, erects distinct obstacles to this very purpose, and thus for leading Western governments cannot be tolerated. Moreover, for these bodies the production of the LHI assemblage is clearly not just about securing human life; these bodies concurrently form part of state assemblages, meaning that this particular aim cannot be viewed in isolation from their own geopolitical and national security objectives. ¹¹⁹ This linkage is at times articulated plainly by high-ranking officials such as UK Foreign Secretary William Hague: ‘if many of the countries of the Middle East turn into stable democracies and more open economies, the gains for our security and prosperity will be enormous’. ¹²⁰ Human security coincides with national security, just as biopolitics becomes intertwined with geopolitics. ¹²¹ One begins to perceive, therefore, how the ‘face’ of Western liberal democracy not only serves as the condition of possibility of the signifier R2P and concomitant modes of subjectification, but also marks the point of deterritorialisation of the LHI assemblage.

Yet herein lies the predicament faced by leading Western governments. On the one hand, any strict loyalty to the signifying sign R2P is likely to also be stasis-inducing, with the prospect of Gaddafi ultimately clinging on to power; on the other, the full deployment of sovereign military force necessary to remove him implies the contravention of the territoriality of the LHI assemblage, which in turn would likely attract more unwelcome criticism and risk losing crucial international support. ¹²² This particular outcome was something that Western leaders like US President Obama were seemingly keen to avoid: ‘Of course, there is no question that Libya – and the world – would be better off with Qaddafi out of power. But broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake. . .If we tried to overthrow Qaddafi by force, our coalition would splinter’. ¹²³

To grasp how Western governments strive to overcome this quandary it is useful to return to the imminent assault on Benghazi by loyalist forces. It is at this point we can discern a tangible erosion in the dominance of the signifying regime of the LHI assemblage, and the concurrent imposition of a hegemonic postsignifying regime of signs. This event serves as a ‘point of subjectification’ through which leading Western governments can affirmatively constitute their subjective identities in positive ways as the unequivocal moral guardians of human rights, freedom and democracy. This is at times expressed as an impassioned raison d’être, as can be seen in this quintessential display of US exceptionalism from US President Obama: ‘some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different’. ¹²⁴ From this ‘point of subjectification’ Western governments set off on a ‘proceeding’ or impassioned line of flight away from the circular network of the signifying regime. While these lines of flight will be constituted in positive ways, as shall be seen they will also be marked by betrayal and a turning away from the signifying regime and its central sign R2P.

Nonetheless, to unleash their full potentiality it will also be necessary for leading Western governments to elicit a release of pre-subjective desire, intensities and affects, and for that, in turn, it will be required to evade the powers of signifiance and subjectification being imposed by the ‘face’. This requires the dismantlement of the ‘face’ itself, which ultimately hinges on engendering a destabilisation of the central signifying sign ‘protect’. To be sure, this signifier’s inherent ambiguity makes it ripe for exploitation insofar as it can be extended to signify all manner of coercive and violent military actions. ¹²⁵ Accordingly, the supplementary signifier ‘all necessary measures’ can also be detached from the signifying regime, where it refers specifically to civilians ‘under threat of attack’, and redeployed for similar purposes. Dismantling the ‘face’ thus equates with extending what it actually means to ‘protect’ so that any intensification of the military action deemed necessary can ostensibly pass undetected by the gaze of the ‘face’. In short, a consummate becoming-imperceptible is being effectuated, whereby Western governments and their military actions seek to go unnoticed; that is, where they cannot be apprehended within the binary operation of the ‘face’ – either democratic or non-democratic–, or plotted on the scale of compliance-deviance from the majoritarian standard of liberal democracy. Not only does this make possible a necessary intensification of the military campaign, but it also permits a burgeoning nexus of affirmative interconnections with other bodies, and ultimately the production of a new Libyan regime change (LRC) assemblage.

I argue that all of this can be traced in the series of international meetings held under the name the Libyan Contact Group (LCC). ¹²⁶ In the first place, the transformation taking place comprises a movement towards a greater dispersion of power, whereby it shall no longer be hierarchical, concentrated and centralised in the figure of the UNSC. Moreover, the boundaries of this new LRC assemblage are notably more fuzzy and indeterminate. The signifier ‘protect’ is redeployed alongside ‘all necessary measures’ in this arrangement but its precise meaning is somewhat elusive. It is just that now any protection of the Libyan population seems to be only attainable by Gaddafi leaving or being forced from power: ‘Gaddafi and his regime has lost all legitimacy and he must leave power’. ¹²⁷ Meanwhile, we can see the desire of leading Western governments is now free to branch out and strike up productive connections with bodies in the exterior milieu. For instance, it is the military alliance NATO who shall take over the military operation. ¹²⁸ While the governments of France, the United States and the United Kingdom will continue to execute the majority of air-strike sorties, the involvement of other NATO partners increases these bodies’ capacities to act through resource and burden-sharing. ¹²⁹ Collectively NATO forces will be able to dominate the geographical territory of Libya from the skies, constraining and degrading any loyalist resistance when necessary.

In addition, crucially, connections are made with the Libyan opposition National Transition Council (NTC) – and by extension the various anti-government militias under their command. ¹³⁰

Indeed, it is the alliance with this body which signals most clearly that we are before a novel LRC assemblage. In this new arrangement leading Western governments have the capacity to positively affect the NTC and opposition forces by providing military, political and economic support; conversely, the NTC and rebel militias increase the capacities of these Western governments and NATO forces to overcome any remaining resistance on the ground and ultimately force Gaddafi and the Libyan regime force from power. ¹³¹ The Libyan opposition are duly constituted as inherently democratic, as a ‘legitimate interlocutor’, and as ‘representing the aspirations of the Libyan people’. ¹³² On the one hand, this serves to dissimulate the evidently partisan nature of the ensuing NATO military campaign, and the decisive role that external military force will play in tipping the balance in favour of the Libyan opposition and rebel militias. ¹³³ On the other, it can be asserted that it is in fact the ‘Libyan people’ or ‘Libyan population’ themselves who are bringing about a change in the regime. At times these signifiers are imbued with a transcendental linear temporal identity, which, while underdeveloped by Western liberal democratic standards, nonetheless denotes a people heading inexorably towards the self-realisation of their own ‘destiny’ of freedom and democracy. ¹³⁴

For all that, bringing an end to Gaddafi’s reign was never going to be such a straightforward matter. Indeed, at one stage stubborn resistance from loyalist forces would lead to the materialisation of a broadly acknowledged ‘stalemate’ situation on the ground. ¹³⁵ Having played an active role in transforming the LHI assemblage, however, the government of the United Kingdom was by now quite candid about the escalation in force being undertaken: ‘time is not on Gaddafi’s side’, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague assured, since ‘the diplomatic, economic and military pressure on him will only intensify in the coming weeks’. ¹³⁶ Elsewhere Hague elaborates on precisely what that ‘military pressure’ might entail: ‘we will continue in that way, intensifying what we’re doing – the Apache helicopters are an example of that’. With the intensification of coercion and military violence now being circumscribed within the extended signifying parameters of the signifier ‘protect’ and its correlate ‘all necessary measures’, for Hague even the alleged targeted assassination of Gaddafi by coalition forces can be justified: ‘people are targets depending on the way they behave. It depends on their behaviour not on who they are. It depends whether providing all necessary measures to protect civilians in Libya requires them to be a target’. ¹³⁷

While an intensification of the military campaign was underway through NATO, a concomitant increase in other kinds of support was being provided to the Libyan opposition NTC. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was keen to emphasise the flourishing of these new relations: ‘the kind of support that we saw forthcoming for the Libyan opposition at the recent LCC meeting in Abu Dhabi was very heartening. Money is flowing, other support is available’. ¹³⁸ The pledge of ‘international support to help the NTC to resume the production and export of crude oil’ is a pertinent example of this. ¹³⁹ The capacities of powerful Western governments to affect the NTC in positive ways is compelling. More significant still, though, was the political patronage being granted. Official recognition of the NTC as the ‘legitimate’ governing authority in Libya was duly awarded, being announced first by the government of France, and later collectively by the LCC. ¹⁴⁰ In this way, a further reconfiguration of the territorial space of Libya is performed; any authority remaining with Gaddafi and the Libyan government after the approval of UNSC Resolution 1973 is being usurped. The beginnings of a new state assemblage for Libya is in formation, but this time with the NTC at its helm.

Conclusions

The main purpose of this paper has been to make the case for a Deleuzoguattarian assemblage framework calibrated to capture human agency in global security assemblages. Amongst other things it has been maintained that this makes it possible to distinguish between different forms of human/non-human and active/reactive agency, to grasp how human agency is determined and restricted by broader systems of meaning, and also to assign political and ethical responsibility.

The military intervention in Libya has been chosen as a case study to illuminate the utility of this particular assemblage framework. Firstly, it has been possible to show how Western governments the United Kingdom, France and the United States were active in bringing together the different constituent parts of the LHI assemblage, and shaping the specific form that the arrangement would take. It was also highlighted how these bodies must operate within a system of signification corresponding to the signifier R2P and the majoritarian standard ‘face’ of Western liberal democracy. Next, in response to Gaddafi’s refusal to relinquish power, it has also been elaborated how these same bodies assume an active role in transforming the LHI assemblage into a more useful arrangement: the LRC assemblage. This agency entailed drawing creative lines of flight through which the LHI assemblage’s limits can be perspicaciously transgressed, existing relations reconfigured and new connections established with external bodies like that of the Libyan opposition NTC.

More than this, though, it is through a theoretical sensitivity to human agency that one can capture how the production and transformation of the LHI assemblage forms part of a single strategy. In the case of Libya it is insufficient to argue that the governments of the United Kingdom, France and the United States simply exploit the agreed UNSC mandate in pursuit of their own geopolitical objective of regime change. Such accounts may seem logical – the temporality of events having seemingly transpired in this way–, and yet hegemonic conceptions of humanitarian intervention and R2P can remain dubiously intact here – that is, it is not R2P that is problematic, but rather the treacherous circumvention of the original agreement by Western governments. Yet it is only by strategically positioning themselves at the heart of the territorialisation process of the LHI assemblage that these bodies can bring about its subsequent transformation. They organise the LHI assemblage around the signifying sign R2P, assuring at one and the same time the potential for future lines of flight – for example, through the ambiguity of the signifiers ‘R2P’ and ‘all necessary measures’. The capacities of these bodies to affect and be affected by each other, and moreover bodies such as the Libyan opposition NTC, then make it possible to transform the LHI assemblage into a new regime change arrangement that has the capacities to topple Gaddafi: the new LRC assemblage. In short, the production of the LHI assemblage constitutes a necessary first step in what is essentially a broader Western-led biopolitical-geopolitical strategy.

Finally, the case chosen illustrates the political and ethical implications of a theoretical sensitivity to human agency in global security assemblages since it becomes possible to effectively assign responsibility. While the leading efforts of the governments of the United Kingdom, France and the United States would ultimately prove successful in changing the Libyan regime, the enduring cycle of political instability, violence and chaos experienced in Libya and beyond has cast a shadow over the strategy pursued. There were of course no guarantees that the original LHI assemblage would have brought about a more peaceful and stable political transition in Libya; nevertheless one can reflect upon the prudence of abandoning this arrangement in pursuit of a more violent and forcible regime change. The concept of the line of flight hitherto used to grasp this movement urges caution in this regard since it may not be possible to create the productive conditions for a new and stable future arrangement. In the case of Libya, arguably, this was indeed improbable. With the predictable crushing of Libyan state security forces, the dismantlement of any albeit defective political institutions, the proliferation of armed militias and a range of other aggravating internal and external factors, the formation of a viable Libyan state under the stewardship of the NTC always seemed something of a remote possibility.