Libya Intervention — Gaddafi Toppled, State Collapses

Sarkozy led the diplomatic push for NATO military intervention in Libya, securing a UN no-fly-zone resolution and beginning airstrikes on 19 March 2011 that ultimately toppled and killed Muammar Gaddafi. The intervention prevented an imminent massacre of civilians in Benghazi, but the absence of any post-war stabilisation plan left Libya without a functioning state, fracturing into militia rule, becoming a major hub for migrant trafficking to Europe, and — by 2017 — the site of documented open-air slave markets.