Rearming foreign rebels is it violation of Law?

This issue has been brough to light by UN Seccurity Council Resolution 1973.

1973 was voted by all non permanent members, including Portugal (currently serving one year), and abstentions of Russia and China (which doesnt veto the procedural voting matter). This decision to implement an air haven against lybian pro regime air strikes on their own populations, is only short of an invasion, as it is configured in the Resolution, since it allows to use any means necessary to prevent or help sustain a wave of humanitarian crisis.

The US, through Sec Clinton, already admited in London, that it is the US reading of this UN Council Resolution, that the US reserves itself the right to consider arming the civil populations against the regime forces, whether or not the situation of need arises.

This UN Resolution is actually coherent with the Principle of Self Defense and legitimate Defense in the name of third parties. Much like the same principle that presided the US intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo in 1999.

In some national constitutional regimes, this is further developed under the Principle of State of Necessity, to enhance to prevention for a further crisis to demand bigger measures or incur in bigger losses.

Whether this arming process may or may not go against the rigidity of arms embargo imposed by the same Council and supported by at least 9 out of 15 Members, is another question. UK PM Cameron was accused to continue selling arms to the Gaddafi regime right after the outbreak of violence. Berlusconi reinstated his cumplicity with Gaddafi up until when hostilities broke up and Sarkozy, being France a long firm ally of all the Magrebian countries, with particular focus on ex french protectorates, also kept a very low profile in taking sides before the US started calling for an international coalition, outside NATO. Merkel in Germany, one of the current non memebr states in the UN Council, strongly supported the Res 1973 but opted out the Coalition, in a realistic stance of budgetary constraints, setting an example in Southern Europe, of whom Germany is and has always has been the major donor and financial banker.

So the question is:

1- is 1973, according to the US interpretation, a violation of the arms embargo general prohibition?

2- are citizens an actor of international law outside the state, Humanity (Sea Law and Heritage) and without necessarily being so only while resorting to international institutions for their individual rights of petition and redress?

3- Outside the democratic control, in a humanitarian crisis, Media, NGO’s, Observers and Intelligence are to be taken in? And if not will the UN get legitimacy to interfere directly or indirectly in a sovereign country policy, after Gaddafi declared that any military retaliation had been stopped after Res 1973 ? (UN Criminal Court cannot start an investigation before 12 months after a case has been refered to it by the UN Council).  

4-Should the US create a bigger gap between Congress and the Senate, when the budget deficit discussions are reaching a breaking point (Brazilian subsidies for drilling and the middle east crisis against rising oil prices and dollar depreciation) and when theres no clear leadership about what to expect from the US and its role on the Lybian crisis? Is NATO out finally? Is UN Peacekeeping too expensive? Is the Arab League resourceless and the European Union powerless to limit this to a regional affair?

5- Will a foreign intervention taint the legitimacy rolling in the Middle east toppling regimes or even create a false sense of security among other states in the region for rebellion?

To any of these questions, one thing remains obvious. The US did not rush into interveining in Somalia or the Ivory Coast a few months back, not even after another piracy attack was made on one american boat, against american citizens recently.

Would the US participate in a task force against Saudi Arabia, if the protests extend to there and grow up to a point of no return?

In what sense does this role of the US as a international power for democracy and capitalism, in a volatile OPEC region, might hurt China and Russia oil and gas contracts and their respective role as growing economies, against the always controversial green economy projected by democrats, but hated by libertarians and liberals in the GOp and Tea party?

What changed in this operation, where European forces seem to be active and the majority in the theatre of war?

It seems to me that the international community is very efficient in the first phase of containing the conflict by securing sanctions, providing for evacuation of foreign nationals from the conflict area, impose travel and financial bans whenever diplomatic efforts fail, trade embargos, arms boycot, etc.

But when the situation is such that not all international community members are on the same side or opt out from taking things to the last consequence, or simply refuse to work alongside, this shows the weaknesses of international law, legitimizing the revolutionary actor to bend rules or ignore them altogether.

During Cold War the stakes were high enough that both SuperPowers could not afford to wait on a case-by-case to depend upon the international institutions, thus the containment in the US threatening mutual assured destruction if vital targets or allies were tampered with, with a substantially more conservative and yet dynamic iron curtain or sanitary chord from the other side in a counter cycle dynamic of expanding/abandoning positions from Europe to Africa, to Cuba, forcing the US to revise their foreign policy to a Roll Back doctrine until Reagan played the ultimate bluff with the Strategic Defense Initiative and won over the russians.

Now that the balance of powers seems to be much more difuse, its still unclear whether International Law is to play the biggest part in international relations, when States still have the monopoly of violence in the anarchiq international system of power struggle.

Until all the world trade is made without tariffs and contingents, across the globe, meaning: all 5 continents and outter spaces are the prerrogative of a supranational political organ, by region, we will still be citizens without international personality and capacity beyond simple petition, right of freedom of association (in some countries).

The US might be right that Lybia does not have an army and that mercenaries will not take over after the dictator Gaddafi, but how is a 40 years oppressed population, without a true sense of nationality, without free media, without civil society, where tribal clans are all corrupted by gaddafi and bordering volatile countries, like Algeria and Sudan, how can all this be armed and how will this prevent war crime and and the worsening of the situation altogether. Is the US seeking a lait motif to invade?