If liberal interventionism was crippled in Iraq, it died in Libya. Iraq showed the world how easily liberal language could be attached to regime change, then Libya showed that even a more recognisably humanitarian intervention could still end in collapse. This is not to say the instinct behind liberal interventionism was wrong. The principle behind it is one of the most attractive features of liberal theory: sovereignty cannot be a license for mass slaughter, and dissidents should be protected from tyrants.