The Guardian, Tue 22 Mar 2011 07.30 GMT

The onslaught by the US, Britain and France to impose regime change in Libya – for that is what this war is about – has little to do with saving lives and less with supporting democracy in the Arab world. It is about controlling, not sustaining, the drive for change in the Middle East, by bringing the whole process under western domination.

The belief of the rulers of Bahrain and Yemen – that they have the west's blessing to do whatever is necessary to crush protest while Colonel Gaddafi is to be obliterated for doing much the same – is the starkest sign of this.

The UN security council decision has given the stamp of legality to an essentially lawless project. This situation calls for assertive mediation, not massive bombardment, if saving lives is really the concern – as the second thoughts already gripping Russia, China and some Arab leaders indicate.

The UN decision was taken at the instigation of the frightened autocrats of the Arab League, few of whom can claim any mandate to rule superior to that of Gaddafi's brutal regime. Behind a transparent Qatari fig-leaf, its implementation has been subcontracted to the same powers who have spread such havoc throughout the Arab world for a century and more, up to and including Iraq.

Bombing may entrench an armed standoff, a situation bound to lead to endless excuses for throwing more military weight behind the rebellion, not excluding "boots on the ground". This could result in a de facto partition of Libya, with foreign occupation of its eastern parts. But if Gaddafi is overthrown, any successor regime sponsored from abroad will lack legitimacy for many Libyans and become a focus for continuing civil conflict.

Against this background Angela Merkel's concerns about a wider conflict and civilian casualties – now shared by growing sections of world opinion – seem sensible. Others, however, are more concerned with saving their own skins. First prize for barefaced lack of self-awareness must go to the hereditary despots of the Gulf Co-operation Council – the Saudi oligarchy and its royal satellites – who declared Libya's regime illegitimate. They then resolutely denounced any external interference in their own internal affairs while signing up for intervention in Libya.

Why the Bahraini royals and Yemen's President Saleh should be left to massacre protesters without so much as a no-arms sales zone being imposed is a question Cameron seems reluctant to address. Some humans are more in need of humanitarianism than others, apparently, and if you are rebelling against the wrong dictator you are bottom of the heap. But the assorted emirs are not the only ones caught in a conundrum. The Economist last week ran editorials demanding the shrinking of the state across the world and urging military intervention in Libya. The calibration of a state big enough to impose its military will on the Middle East but too small to keep the local library open is a study in the contradictions of neoconservatism worth pondering as David Cameron brings the "big society" to Benghazi with a bang.

Cameron's invocation of the national interest is suspect, too. It has been used too often to justify war for oil – a cliche of the left, to be sure, but even cliches are true sometimes. Britain needs a man to do business within Tripoli, and that can no longer be Gaddafi.

Stop the War has been campaigning against the drive to impose western will on the Arab and Muslim world, of which this is the latest twist, for nearly 10 years. On Iraq and Afghanistan, we speak for the majority of British people – and as the war over and in Libya turns sour, opinion about this conflict will shift, too.