Libya in Western Foreign Policies, 1911–2011

189 Pages·2016·1.821 MB·English

by  Saskia Van Genugten (auth.)

Security, Conflict and Cooperation
in the Contemporary World
Libya in Western
Foreign Policies,
1911—2011
SASKIA VAN GENUGTEN
Security, Confl ict and Cooperation
in the Contemporary World
Series Editors
Effi e G. H. Pedaliu
LSE-Ideas
London, United Kingdom
John W. Young
University of Nottingham
Nottingham, United Kingdom
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Saskia   Van Genugten
Libya in Western
Foreign Policies,
1911–2011
Saskia   Van Genugten
Emirates Diplomatic Academy
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Security, Confl ict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World
ISBN 978-1-137-48949-4 ISBN 978-1-137-48950-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-48950-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016936393
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2 016
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A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would never have reached completion without the support of
others. I would like to express gratitude to all those who made positive
contributions to the research conducted during my time in the graduate
program of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International
Studies (SAIS) and beyond. I am deeply indebted to Professor Erik Jones,
and to Professor Karim Mezran, Professor Dirk Vandewalle, Professor
Camille Pecastaing and Professor David P. Calleo. I thank them for the
expertise and skills transferred as well as the guidance, trust and friend-
ship given. With regard to the research, many people gave me assistance
in several archives. I thank Anna Landolfi of ENI and Flavia Magnolfi of
UNICREDIT in particular. I also want to mention two women whose
professional and academic “tutelage” and encouragement—probably
without them even realizing it—have been very infl uential in putting me
on my current path: Professor Beatrice de Graaf and Ambassador Stella
Ronner-Grubačić. My gratitude also goes out to Dr. Timo Behr, who
has shown tremendous patience with me and who has been supportive
throughout the process of getting this text ready for publication. I am
extremely grateful to my parents, Ruud van Genugten and Marianne
Gevers, for their general and generous support. I thank my brother Paul
for his comradeship, his inexhaustible wit and his great editing skills and
I thank my brother Richard, who has remained with me in spirit during
this entire project after teaching me that one should live in the moment,
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
and make it matter. I would like to add that the research that formed the
basis for this book would not have been possible without the fi nancial
and material support of SAIS Johns Hopkins University—in particular the
Bologna Center, the Compagnia di San Paolo, Mr. Robert J. Abernethy
and the Royal Dutch Institute in Rome.
C
ONTENTS
1 Introduction 1
2 Libya’s Origins: The Colonial Scraps of North Africa 7
3 Libya During the World Wars: Other People’s Battlefi eld 2 5
4 Libya: A By-Product of Great Power Politics 4 5
5 The “Cyrenaican” King and the Anglo-A merican Alliance 5 9
6 Qaddafi ’s Coup: Erasing Historical Deviations 8 1
7 Reagan and Libya: Bullying the Rogue 105
8 Reconciliation and Fighting Islamic Extremism Together 1 27
9 Post-Qaddafi Libya: Wishful Transitional Thinking 1 47
Bibliography 1 65
Index 1 79
vii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Libya has a short but volatile history. The desert lands between Egypt
and Tunisia have undergone major changes ever since Italian colonialism
imposed on the local inhabitants the idea of belonging to a territory with
defi ned boundaries and a centralized authority. After the Second World
War, external powers established Libya as an independent state, a deci-
sion made in the framework of the United Nations (UN). The UN itself
was, back then, an experimental way of trying to impose on international
politics some form of global governance through interstate consultation
mechanisms. In the newly invented United Kingdom of Libya, a reluctant,
British-backed monarchy replaced ruthless colonial rule. After 18 years
in power, in 1969, a group of young military offi cers overthrew the rule
of King Idris al Sanussi and replaced it with a radical, overenthusiastically
authoritarian and anti-Western republic.
Mu’ammer el-Qaddafi then brought 42 years of oppressive stability
to Libya, based on a cult around his personality, around shared griev-
ances against the West and the forceful suppression of dissent. His regime
disposed of an effective manipulative mechanism to retain authority as
it could control the top-down redistribution of wealth from the export
of natural resources.1 By consequently absorbing the great majority of
1 See for example Hazem Beblawi, “The rentier state in the Arab world”, in Giacomo
Luciani (ed), The Arab state, University of California Press, 1990, pp. 85–98; and Michael
L. Ross, “Does oil hinder democracy?” World Politics 53 (3) 2001, pp. 325–61. Applied to
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1
S. Van Genugten, Libya in Western Foreign Policies, 1911–2011,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-48950-0_1
2 S. VAN GENUGTEN
Libyans as employees of the state bureaucracy, the regime made a criti-
cal mass dependent on its goodwill. Political opposition could not only
lead to prison or worse, but also to job loss or the withholding of social
benefi ts affecting entire families. At the same time, Qaddafi knew to keep
the Libyan bureaucracy and especially the security institutions in a state
of continuous fl ux. The chaotic changing of institutions and a myriad of
reporting lines was part of a strategy to mitigate the risks of coup attempts
as it prevented the development of alternative power centers within state
institutions.
Libya’s fate turned again when in 2011, in the wake of popular upris-
ings in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt, Britain and France initiated and
led an intervention that empowered a plethora of Libyan opposition
groups, both abroad and within the country. In the absence of any well-
established or uncontested state structures, the opposition organized itself
through local, informal networks of loyalty, establishing local militias and
local governance structures. The short-term political objective of toppling
Qaddafi initially united the rebels. However, beyond that shared goal lin-
gered irreconcilable visions of what a future, post-Qaddafi Libya should
look like. The international coalition that ultimately triggered the down-
fall of Qaddafi and his regime expected their military intervention and the
following political transition to be short and successful, with a change of
regime causing few negative regional and global consequences.
Ideas about developing a new Libya were simplistic: the West and its
partners would back the National Transitional Council (NTC) and the
loosely related militia. The West expected the Libyans – wealthy and
highly educated on paper – to need little postwar assistance and imag-
ined that they would work together towards a more liberal and more
business-friendly future. Unfortunately, the assumptions underlying that
best-case scenario turned out to be utterly fl awed and post-Qaddafi Libya
descended into civil war. Libya remained marred by centrifugal forces
pulling the country apart. Once again, the United Nations had become
the framework through which the international community tried to fi nd
common ground between the warring parties and the different regions,
in order to prevent the break-up of its own creation – the independent,
unifi ed state of Libya.
Libya, see Dirk Vandewalle, Libya since independence: oil and state-building , I.B. Tauris,
1998.