ABSTRACT
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 (lOs), 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
For helpful comments on earlier drafts, I wish to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers of this journal, as well as Jose Alvarez, Stephen Brooks, Michael Doyle, Daryl Press, Henry Shue, Benjamin Valentino, Jennifer Welsh, William Wohlfarth, and seminar participants at Columbia Law School, Dartmouth College, Oxford University, and ISA Montreal 2004.
