Before you make the first move, you must commit to the last. This is a cardinal rule of military intervention.

Imposing a no fly zone is an act of war. It shouldn’t even be contemplated unless those proposing it are prepared to take that act to its logical conclusion. That conclusion is: the occupation and administration of Libya and its people.

We’ve had a lot of discussion here recently about sovereignty and what it means to us in Ireland in the wake of the IMF/EU bailout agreement.

In strict post-Treaty of Westphalia terms, to have sovereignty over one’s territory is to have a monopoly on the use of force, both internally and against external aggressors. A police force controlled by a central power responsible for defending the state’s sovereignty internally, and an army responsible for defending the state against external aggressors.

Libya is in turmoil. If not yet in full blown civil war, it is close. Elements of the state’s security apparatus have turned against the centre of power of the state. Not all citizens are now ruled by that power. Geographical areas of the country are no longer controlled, undermining the legitimacy of external borders.

From the outside looking in, the country no longer has any formal envoys or diplomats (and therefore no legitimate foreign relationships); and its leadership – its sovereign – is no longer recognised by one of the top five authorities in the world on such matters: France. (France holds such distinction internationally as it is one of only five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council).

Can you declare war on a country if it’s not a country anymore? And if it’s not, could this potentially be the first legitimate intervention on foreign soil since World War II?

These are academic questions but they’re worth asking. In a way they help to determine the propriety of action (or inaction) beyond the usual ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ that is often bandied about in such cases.

If a foreign power wants to go in to Libya it will claim it is doing so for the ‘right’ reasons. But it will also find the ‘right’ reasons to stay out if that is its preferred course of action. And then we have the many interpretations of what is ‘right’… The people of France may think it right to intervene on behalf of the subjugated Libyan people. And the government of France my think it right to intervene to get its hands on all that oil that Italy currently has access to. Can they both be right?

We live in a complex world insofar as questions of sovereignty and statehood and international morality are concerned. (But don’t be fooled: the centuries-old ‘raison d’État’ that has governed international relations so strictly to date is still very much there in the Libyan case.)

Why not install a no fly zone as a stand alone intervention and let the Libyans sort it out themselves? This would be an attempt to level the playing field between the rebels and state forces, so that a more balanced civil war might be allowed to play itself out.

That might sound very well in theory but you will need someone to actually fly in and bomb Libyan radar equipment. To do that safely you will need to first take out their air defence systems: missile sites, runways and aircraft. And that’s all missile sites and missile launchers. Not just the defensive ones (after all, what’s the difference?). Once the no fly zone is in place, you then have to constantly patrol Libyan air space to enforce it and until such time as it is no longer deemed to be necessary.

It’s easy to call for a no fly zone. It’s a whole different reality actually implementing one. And any form of foreign military intervention will change the dynamic of the conflict in Libya, and likely not in a good way.

Libya might just be the first legitimate case in a long time for some form of intervention, but that doesn’t change the nature of what that intervention must be. And it certainly doesn’t alter the traditional motives of those calling for it.