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Title: War in Libya Author: Ron Tabor Date: March 28, 2011 Language: en Topics: Libya, war, Arab Spring Source: Retrieved on 2012-01-20 from https://web.archive.org/web/20120120225728/http://www.utopianmag.com/updates/war-in-libya
As I write this, it’s been a little over a week since the United States
and its NATO allies induced the UN to declare a “no-fly zone” over
Libya. Ostensibly intended as a humanitarian gesture — specifically, to
protect the Libyan people from assault by the government of Muammar
el-Kadafi — the no-fly zone was really meant to protect the Libyan
rebels from imminent defeat. In the early stages of the revolution, the
rebels had been on the offensive, seizing control of the eastern city of
Benghazi and other cities and towns (mostly in the eastern part of the
country) and even threatening Kadafi’s hold on Tripoli, the capital. But
eventually, Kadafi managed to mobilize his forces and put the rebels on
the defensive. It even looked as if Kadafi’s troops were going to be
able to retake Benghazi, the rebels’ de facto capital. This would most
likely have led to a complete rout of the untrained, poorly-armed, and
poorly-led anti-Kadafi forces and a subsequent bloodbath throughout the
country. It was to prevent this outcome that the US and the other member
countries of NATO decided to act.
The no-fly zone, under which US and NATO fighter planes can attack
Libyan civilian and military targets virtually at will, seems to have
succeeded in halting Kadafi’s offensive and saving the rebels, at least
for now. Yet, although the anti-Kadafi struggle has been rescued, this
may come at considerable cost. This is because the aims of the United
States and the other NATO countries may not coincide with those of the
opposition forces, or at least of some factions among them.
Although it appears to have been forgotten since the election of the
liberal-sounding (and Nobel Peace Prize winning) Barack Obama, the
United States is still an imperialist power. It rules over an informal
empire that spans the globe, guaranteeing US banks and corporations, and
those of its allies, access to raw materials, markets, and investment
opportunities. This empire is defended through a world-wide network of
military bases, along with fleets of warships that patrol, and
ultimately control, the oceans and major waterways of the world.
Of major concern to the US ruling class is, and has long been,
protecting its control over the Middle East. This is primarily, although
not exclusively, because of oil, upon which, as most people know, the US
economy is greatly dependent. Although the majority of US oil imports
come from Canada and Mexico, a significant portion also derive from the
Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia. To guarantee the uninterrupted
flow of this “liquid gold,” it is essential that the US have unimpeded
access, not only to the sources of supply and to the ports in which the
oil is loaded onto tankers, but also to the Suez Canal, through which
the ships pass on their way from the Persian Gulf to the United States.
The other side of maintaining US control over oil supplies and shipping
lanes is preventing countries perceived to be current or potential
enemies from gaining access to the oil.. For 40 years after World War
II, this was primarily the Soviet Union and its allies, but with the
collapse of Communism and the breakup of the USSR into its constituent
parts, these enemies have become more diffuse. Although the Cold War is
over, Russia is still one of them. Among them, too, is the theocratic
regime in Iran, and other forces currently hostile to the US that are
usually included under the rubric of “terrorists,” some of which, such
as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, are allied with
Iran. And let’s not forget al-Qaeda.
Also included on the list, but rarely mentioned as such, are the vast
masses of the Arab people and the other Arabic-speaking peoples of the
Middle East and North Africa. These people have long resented the
exploitation, domination, and control of the region by the United
States, which is correctly perceived as only the latest in a long line
of imperialist conquerors and hegemonic powers, such as the Ottoman
Turks, the British, the French, the Italians, and the Germans. The
Zionist occupation of most of Palestine (in the form of Israel) and the
resultant dispossession of the Palestinians is only the most glaring of
the Arab peoples’ grievances. Although the United States poses as the
friend, and even the protector, of the Arabs, it does not understand
them and does not trust them. Despite all its well-paid experts, the US
ruling class does not understand the Arab peoples’ historic hostility to
US imperialism, because it does not recognize that its control, its
depredations, and its support of Israel are justifiably odious to any
self-respecting resident of the region. It does not have a clue as to
why a significant portion of the people would even consider supporting
Islamic fundamentalists as a last-ditch defense against the more
obnoxious accoutrements of Western culture. Above all, it does not
believe that the majority of Arabs, especially the poor and oppressed,
are capable of running their own affairs without the control of
benevolent powers, such as the United States, or the influence of
far-seeing, charismatic leaders who are, incidentally, willing to be
loyal stooges of the West.
Given this visceral distrust of the masses of Arab people, the United
States has long relied on local ruling elites to maintain its control
over the region. And it has never been very particular about the make-up
of these elites or of the governments through which they have ruled. Its
main concerns are (1) that these regimes support US interests and
policies, and (2) and that they are stable. Otherwise, it cares not how
backward-looking these regimes are or how brutally they treat their own
people. This is why US clients in the region have included formal
democracies (Israel, Lebanon, and Tunisia), theocracies (Saudi Arabia),
secular monarchies (Jordan), conservative military juntas (Egypt), and
nationalist and ostensibly “anti-imperialist” dictators (Kadafi, Haefez
and Bashir al-Assad in Syria, and Saddam Hussein, in Iraq), however
problematical its relations with these latter figures may sometimes have
been. In other words, although the United States claims to support the
establishment of humane and democratic governments throughout the world,
it has made it very clear that this goal is way down on its list of
priorities, if it makes the list at all.
US foreign policy follows from its imperialist interests, as the
imperialists perceive them. Thus, the government of Saudi Arabia is just
as reactionary, just as brutal, and just as theocratic as the government
in Iran. But since the Saudis have long been loyal clients of the US
(selling it their oil, providing bases for its military forces, and
supporting its policies, particularly, its defense of Israel), their
crimes against their subjects are ignored, while those of Iran are
regularly denounced in the US media, and the country is subjected to
sanctions and threats of military intervention. Similarly, as long as
the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein supported US interests, particularly
by waging war on Iran shortly after the Islamic revolution in that
country, one didn’t hear anything about his brutality. But when he dared
assert his independence from US tutelage by invading Kuwait in 1990, he
was declared to be worse than Hitler (even by the very people, such as
Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense, who negotiated
and signed the deals to supply him with money and weapons), and then
Iraq was subjected to two wars that ultimately led to Saddam’s ouster.
These considerations explain the policy of the Obama administration
toward Libya. Colonel Muammar el-Kadafi came to power in 1969, setting
up a nationalist-style military dictatorship of which the prototype was
the regime of Colonel Gamal Abdel al Nasir, who came to power in Egypt
through a military coup in 1952. These regimes reflected the aspirations
of middle-class elements, based in the army and elsewhere, who resented
their countries’ total subservience to Western imperialism and sought to
base themselves on popular anti-imperialist/anti-Zionist sentiment among
the people. They also tried to achieve some degree of economic
independence and growth by balancing between the United States and the
Soviet Union in foreign policy, while pursuing statist (“socialist”)
economic policies at home. While Egypt eventually made its peace with
the United States (and with Israel), Kadafi kept up his anti-imperialist
stance for much longer, supporting radical Palestinian factions and
terrorist-style activities and generally tweaking the US and its
European allies whenever he could. But eventually, he, too, made his
peace with the United States, the capitulation occurring in 2004, during
the administration of that militant promoter of global democracy, George
W. Bush. In exchange for toeing the line, Kadafi was taken off the list
of international terrorist threats (the “axis of evil”) and received
trade deals and military aid, US military officials helping to modernize
his army. This is the very army that is now attacking the Libyan people,
for whom the US government never managed to express much concern in the
past.
Ever since the uprising in Tunisia, the problem for the US in the Middle
East is that the peoples of the region, tired of their political
oppression and their lives of poverty and limited opportunity, are
upsetting the apple cart just when it looked as if the United States was
getting things reasonably well in hand. The immediate question facing
the US political leadership in the current crisis is which horse to bet
on: the people, whose victories are not certain and whose loyalties are
not clear; or the regimes, who, it is now obvious, are sitting atop
rumbling volcanoes. Making the matter more complicated is the fact that
the revolutionaries, for the most part young people who have no
remembrance of or loyalty to the anti-imperialist pasts of their rulers,
are rebelling in the name of the very bourgeois democratic rights that
the US claims to embody, while looking to the US and its European allies
for support. While some of the more liberal commentators in the
capitalist media have been calling for the US “to be on the side of
history” and grant all-out support to the rebels, the general consensus
of opinion seems to be that the US’s general policy should be to play
its cards close to the vest, waiting to see which way the wind will
blow, searching for ways to exercise leverage over whichever party is
victorious, while constantly proclaiming its support for freedom and for
the democratic rights of the people. This accounts for the dilatory and
mealy-mouthed nature of the Obama administration’s overall policy since
the onset of the popular uprisings.
As far as the situation in Libya specifically is concerned, given
Kadafi’s long history of creating problems for the West, and given the
increasing obviousness of his regime’s murderous nature, the Obama
administration now appears to want to get rid of him, while working to
ensure the rebels’ dependence on the US and the Europeans. Hence, the
no-fly zone but no serious talk about arming the rebels.
In this context, I believe it is a mistake for the rebels to have called
for and to be applauding the implementation of the no-fly zone. Of
course, the rebels have the right to call for whatever they want and to
accept aid from whomever they want. But if they really hope to win the
right to actually manage their own affairs, it is a serious tactical
error to call for, and support, imperialist intervention, which is what
the no-fly zone amounts to. This is because the imperialists cannot be
trusted to support the true self-determination of the Libyan people.
While today and perhaps tomorrow, the NATO powers may point their
weapons at Kadafi’s forces, the day after that they may decide that it
is more in their interests to try to arrange a ceasefire and broker a
negotiated settlement. This may well be the case if forces emerge within
Kadafi’s military that would be open to forcing out Kadafi and turning
him over to the imperialists, in exchange for amnesty for themselves. A
hidden clause to any such agreement would be to keep political and
social changes in Libyan as minimal as possible. Pressure for a
negotiated settlement may almost certainly arise if a radical faction
were to gain any significant influence among the rebel forces.
Instead of supporting the no-fly zone, the rebels should be calling for
the US, NATO, and the UN to give them weapons, including tanks,
artillery, and anti-aircraft weapons, with no strings attached. The
rebels should militantly oppose imperialist intervention in Libya under
whatever pretext it occurs, and should resolutely resist efforts on the
part of outside forces to exert any kind control over their liberation
struggle.
Given the volatile nature of the entire Middle East today, the no-fly
zone in Libya and the de facto position of support to the rebels it
implies pose serious problems for the imperialists. Recently, troops of
the government of Bashir al-Assad in Syria opened fire on Syrians
protesting the regime, killing many of them. Are the United States and
the NATO countries now obligated to establish a no-fly zone over Syria?
And what about the countries in which people are revolting against the
repressive regimes the US considers to be close allies, such as the
Saudis? Almost any way it leans, US imperialism will continue to face
daunting challenges throughout the region. Already the elites are
ignoring advice emanating from US ambassadors that they should refrain
from killing their own people and offer concessions. Instead, they are
heeding the example of Kadafi, digging in and resorting to increasingly
brutal repression. Hopefully, such repression will not defeat the
popular struggle but instead motivate the people to continue their
struggles, to escalate their fight to overthrow the reactionary elites
that have oppressed them for so long and to implement not merely mild
political reforms but radical transformations of the entire economic and
social systems of their countries.
LONG LIVE THE ARAB REVOLUTION!