Toppling Qaddafi: Libya and the Limits of Liberal Intervention

Toppling Qaddafi is a carefully researched, highly readable look at the role of the United States and NATO in Libya's war of liberation and its lessons for future military interventions. Based on extensive interviews within the U.S. government, this book recounts the story of how the United States and its European allies went to war against Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, why they won the war, and what the implications for NATO, Europe, and Libya will be. This was a war that few saw coming, and many worried would go badly awry, but in the end the Qaddafi regime fell and a new era in Libya's history dawned. Whether this is the kind of intervention that can be repeated, however, remains an open question – as does Libya's future and that of its neighbors.

Christopher S. Chivvis is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation and teaches international history at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at The Johns Hopkins University. Chivvis has served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy and worked for more than a decade on international security and political economic issues in the United States and Europe. He has written for several top policy and scholarly journals including Current History, International Affairs, the Journal of Contemporary History, Foreign Policy, The National Interest, Survival, The Washington Quarterly, the International Herald Tribune, The Washington Times, the US News and World Report, The Christian Science Monitor and CNN.com.