Escalation Without Consequences on the Op-Ed Page

The United States implemented two “no-fly zones” over Iraq between 1991 and 2003, at which point the US and its partners moved on to the full-scale devastation of Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands in the process. NATO created “no-fly zones” in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and later over Kosovo, during the period in which NATO was dismantling Yugoslavia. In 2011, NATO imposed a “no-fly zone” in Libya, ostensibly to protect the population from Muammar Gaddafi: The result was ethnic cleansing, the emergence of slave markets, mass civilian casualties and more than a decade of war in the country.