Motives behind American Intervention in Libya

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
1

So what might be the possible motives and reasons there for US intervention in Libya besides the oil? Keeping in mind that there were never any direct intervention by the West in Gaza, Congo, Darfur and Somalia.

I hear it’s about China’s growing influence in Africa through trade and Chinese economic role in the region, America wants to establish its military basis (AFRICOM) but no African country wants to host it but this could be changed after America’s involvement in Libya.

Anyone with more information on this?

2

Re: Motives behind American Intervention in Libya

I think its more of a political move of Obama to gain popularity with in USA. Remember that in spite of all the disliking that Bush had, he ended up getting reelected because he used the patriotism card and started that war against terrorism. Obama is pretty much doing the same to gain the approval of USA public

3

Re: Motives behind American Intervention in Libya

Interesting point but Bush Administration did have other motives besides gaining the popularity. Do you think majority of Western public support invasions of other countries like Afghanistan and Iraq and military interventions such as this one?

4

Re: Motives behind American Intervention in Libya

Another question I forgot to add in the first post, doesn't it seem that in future same criteria can be applied to other countries like Iran by US or UN?

5

Re: Motives behind American Intervention in Libya

as long as he is not sending the ground troops, he will have some support, but notice that how is he losing the international support on this. Europeans and Russians are totally against any military strike and he is getting a hard time from them.

6

Re: Motives behind American Intervention in Libya

It makes me think if the Baloch uprising became even stronger would they intervene in that?

This year has been a complete surprise in North Africa and the Middle East. No one would have thought Libya woudl have ended up like this. What next I wonder?

7

Re: Motives behind American Intervention in Libya


Baloch uprising. Then Pakistani armed forces should put it down/out with force.

8

Re: Motives behind American Intervention in Libya

Wait you do know France and Britain pushed for it? :hehe:

9

Re: Motives behind American Intervention in Libya

They want the OIL.

Command of the Mediterranean as well.

10

Re: Motives behind American Intervention in Libya

Awesome

11

Re: Motives behind American Intervention in Libya

It’s remarkable, when you think about it. The U.S. is already fighting two, deeply frustrating wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The public mood is isolationist; the president is by nature cautious; the federal government is nearly broke. Libya is peripheral to core American interests, and most Americans would have trouble finding it on a map, even with the name written in.
So why are we at war there? More than anything else, because of Bosnia. Ask most Americans about the Bosnian war and you’ll get the kind of answers Jay Leno elicits when he asks passers-by who won the Battle of Britain. But foreign policymaking is generally an elite affair, and Bosnia was the crucible in which a whole generation of American and European elites forged their view of the world. It was Bosnia where Western liberals decided, 20 years after the fall of Saigon, that Western military intervention could be both moral and effective. It was Bosnia where civilian elites learned to distrust the Pentagon’s warnings that limited war was impossible. It was NATO’s success in Bosnia that convinced so many that the West could have intervened successfully in Rwanda, and which set the stage for the humanitarian war in Kosovo in 1999.
Look at the people who reportedly influenced their governments to back a no-fly zone: Samantha Power at the White House, who began her professional career reporting from Bosnia. Bernard-Henri Levy in France, who made a 1994 documentary urging military intervention against Slobodan Milosevic. “Europe’s shameful failure to prevent genocide in the Balkans was a formative experience for a whole generation of British ministers,” explains The Economist. “Some close observers of Balkan suffering now hold key posts in the present-day coalition government.”
As in Bosnia, the West’s motive for intervening in Libya is not purely humanitarian. In the early and mid-1990s, U.S. and European leaders decided that what happened in the Balkans might well determine of the fate of the broader revolution that was remaking Eastern Europe. They decided that taming Milosevic was crucial not only to the fate of democracy and human rights in the former Soviet Bloc, but to the expansion of Western power. That’s the case today as well, both for the U.S., which wants to stay on the right side of the Arab democracy struggle, and especially for Mediterranean countries like France and Italy, whose fates are deeply bound up with North Africa’s. Libya, like Bosnia but unlike, say, Congo, sits on NATO’s doorstep. And Libya, like Bosnia but unlike, say Bahrain, does not reside near the orbit of a hostile regional power.
Twice in the Balkans, Milosevic caved just in time. We should all pray that Gaddafi does the same.
So what are the lessons of Bosnia and the Western air wars that have followed? First, that humanitarian wars are not won purely in the air. What turned the tide in Bosnia—at least as much as NATO bombing—were the arms shipments and military training that allowed the Bosnians and Croats to best Serb forces on the ground. In Vietnam, by contrast, Saigon could never field enough motivated troops to take advantage of U.S. air attacks, which was why American GIs largely had to take over. The Libyan rebels seem to have plenty of motivation. The question is how much weaponry and training America and its allies can get them in a short period of time. Luckily for the U.S., Egypt appears to be facilitating the transfer. If Western governments don’t already have military trainers on the ground in Libya, I’d be amazed.
Second, the more successful an air war is, the less control America has over its allies on the ground. The U.S. didn’t want the Kosovo Liberation Army to cleanse the province of Serbs or to declare independence. They did both. We wanted the Northern Alliance to stop short of Kabul when the Taliban fled the city. They ignored us. If we’re lucky, the Libyan rebels will soon be a much more powerful force, and if we’re really lucky, they’ll be a powerful force capable of unifying Libya behind a reasonably humane regime. But the latter will be mostly out of our hands.
Finally, Western planes will kill innocent people, and the war will drag on longer than Western leaders want. And sooner or later, Barack Obama and his European counterparts will likely confront this question: Would they rather lose than go in on the ground themselves? It doesn’t really matter that Obama has already ruled the latter out. So did Bill Clinton in Kosovo, and according to some accounts, it was only because and Tony Blair reconsidered that Milosevic let Kosovo go.
In a way, that is the question that Bosnia hawks (a category in which I include myself) were always able to evade. Twice in the Balkans, Milosevic caved just in time. We should all pray that Gaddafi does the same. Because if he does not, humanitarian hawks will be forced to face a painful truth: Americans will tolerate a lot of casualties in a humanitarian war, just so long as none of them are ours.

12

Re: Motives behind American Intervention in Libya

*Imperialist Motives in Libyan War: It is an important question to pose that why no military intervention was carried out in Egypt and Tunisia but has been carried out in Libya? The excuse given by the western imperial powers is regime change like in Iraq and Afghanistan in past to ‘help and support’ the popular uprising against the ‘human rights violator’ Gaddafi and to establish ‘peace’ and ‘democracy’ in Libya. However, the main motive of this imperialist war in Libya is surely oil. Libya is among the top oil exporters in the world and the US-UK-France are among the top oil consumers in the world. Libya is a better investment for imperialism for its oil resources than Egypt and Tunisia. *

Secondly, if 'Democracy' is the justification for NATO strikes in Libya, then Anglo-American-French governments should first question the legitimacy of monarchical regimes in Saudi Arabia and Jordan (both of which are faithful allies of the same imperial powers). One cannot possibly think of US supporting a popular revolt against the Saudi monarchy despite the fact that such structural conditions of a revolt exists in that country with high degree of exploitation of the foreign-expatriate working class and inhuman working conditions. This only shows the hypocrisy of imperial powers.

**
**Thirdly, the NATO strikes cannot be described as 'help' to 'popular revolution' in Libya. Rather, it would help to divert the anti-authoritarian thrust of the popular outbursts in Libya. Moreover, it would only ensure an opportunity for the authoritarian Libyan government to renew its legitimacy under an imperialist offensive by appealing to the Libyan people to fight against imperialist aggression. The aggressive western intervention is counter-productive since it has the potentiality to divert the real democratic assertion of the Libyan people against authoritarianism. The NATO has time and again given this justification of 'help' to import democracy whereas everybody knows that it is simply doing business to capture oil fields as was the case in Iraq.

Fourthly, the motive behind the imperialist intervention is possibly to settle scores with Gaddafi, a dissenting voice in the past who dared to drive out the Anglo-Americans and other Europeans from the Libyan soil as previously mentioned in this article. Therefore, it is now apt time to take imperialist revenge against the person, whom former US President, Ronald Raegan once described as ‘Mad dog of Middle-East’. The NATO is thus sending signals to ‘other’ dissenters, possibly the ‘axis of evil’, Cuba and Venezuela about such a fate if they do not fall in line.
**
*Fifthly, imperialism is today using factional feuds in an overwhelmingly tribal population of Libya. These factional fights have always helped imperial interests like the Shia-Sunni-Kurdish rift in Iraq and Pashto and non-Pashto antagonism in Afghanistan. Imperialism has always used such time tested strategy of divide and rule by fanning divisive tendencies among a given population to frustrate any scope of united resistance to imperialism.
*
**Sixthly, the West is giving a faulty logic that without military intervention, there is no alternative to Gaddafi. The motive of such a faulty logic of the western media and imperial establishments is to create a world of false binaries: Gaddafi vs West or Saddam vs Bush or Bush vs Osama etc. by trying to hide the real antagonism between the ‘people’ and ‘imperialism’. This kind of binary logic is a construction of the imperial establishments and western media over the years to justify the imperialist penetration in the Muslim world in recent past. This logic only attempts to snuff out any other democratic space which can at the same time be critical and opposed to both imperialism and third world dictatorships. There are numerous people in Libya who do not subscribe to such binary traps and are against both imperialism and authoritarianism for a progressive and democratic Libya.

Seventhly, this war is also a result of the domestic political dynamics of western powers and an attempt to resolve the emerging political contradictions within US-UK-France. The bottom-line of this imperialist intervention is not only oil in Libya as previously pointed out but also to get the reconstruction deal for Anglo-American-French companies just like it happened for Iraq and Afghanistan in the past after it carried out the destruction, ravagery and savagery of war. Therefore, this imperialist aggression in Libya is clearly aimed to manage western financial crisis by getting hold of the oil resources in Libya (and hence some more money) in the hands of the Anglo-American-French governments. Similarly, during the reconstruction process in future, Libya would create some employment for the Western youth who are jobless in the wake of massive economic recession. Moreover, when the western governments are increasingly becoming unpopular due to massive cuts in public spending owing to the financial crunch, a war in the name of ‘exporting democracy’ with a jingoistic appeal to ‘civilize’ the ‘brown/black population’ can create a nationalist frenzy in UK-US-France and thus can make these same governments to divert the real economic issues in their own countries and in fact can re-legitimize their rule which is under threat from popular outbursts against corporate bail-outs and budget cuts in social welfare sectors.

Eighthly, this is an unjust war which has also exposed the so called ‘humanitarian’ President Obama. Those who had illusions that the call of ‘change’ by Obama is a significant shift in the affairs of US foreign policy, might today notice that there is no fundamental ‘change’ between Bush and Obama’s policy of aggressive war in the Middle-East. It is the structural dynamics of imperialism as a function of global capitalism and its global crisis that makes Obama to wage war in Libya while taking a coercive route to tackle such crisis. In the midst of a popular revolt in Libya one cannot possibly condone Gaddafi. But at the same time, it would be grossly unjust to militarily intervene in Libya by seeking to resolve West's unemployment problem by waging war and creating demand in the economy and by putting a future 'puppet' government in Libya as was the case in Iraq and Afghanistan. On a lighter note, if Libyan sky has been declared as No-Fly-Zone then NATO planes should also free the Libyan air-space! There has been no international consensus on this issue of air-raids in Libya. Even if such an international consensus was reached owing to imperial interests, it would still have been unjust to militarily intervene in the internal matters of any country rather than democratic dialogue. Democratic dialogue instead of brutal force is always helpful for resolving such a crisis like the Libyan one. If the NATO had good intentions, it could have asked Gaddafi to sit on the negotiating table or politically support the popular uprising in Libya but in no way can they use force to resolve the internal matters within Libya.

*Finally, this war serves the strategic interests of imperialism and has long term strategic implications. When the Obama administration is calling for periodic withdrawal of forces from Iraq, it is at the same time finding a new territory in the Middle-East to maintain its military presence. Thus, its motive is to get out of Iraq and move to Libya to stay long. It is in fact, now making a case by bombing Libya in the name of ideological masks like ‘peace’ and ‘democracy’ in order to prepare a ground for a future military base in Libya just it happened previously in Iraq and Afghanistan. All these old ideological garbs of 'peace' and 'democracy' were also used in both Iraq and Afghanistan. What happened there? Millions of lives have been affected in both these countries due to such military intervention. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, US air-forces carried out bombings in 1990s followed by the occupation in the new millennium. Possibly such grand imperialist game-plan is waiting for Libya. Till now, the pattern and dynamics of imperialism in the recent past is hinting that such an imperialist game-plan is not impossible in the case of Libya. *

13

Re: Motives behind American Intervention in Libya

The US has a military logistic base in Uganda. A naval base in Djibouti and one in Zanzibar. They don't need another base.

14

Re: Motives behind American Intervention in Libya

and still Somali Pirates are at loose?

15

Re: Motives behind American Intervention in Libya

That's a different scenario. These pirates,what they do is,they leave Somalian coasts disguised as fishermen,operate in the highseas.

16

Re: Motives behind American Intervention in Libya

The headquarters of AFRICOM are in some European country, either Germany or Italy, apparently no one in Africa wants to host AFRICOM's headquarters. Also, US wanted to expand the bases but postponed the plan due to whatever reasons, probably due to lack African governments' cooperation.

17

Re: Motives behind American Intervention in Libya

you mean, Indian navy can locate/find these pirates, but when it comes to American navy, who are stationed next to Somalia, who have one base kind of thing in Oman, fails to locate them, they cannot see a big oil-tanker is being out of course and is moving towards Somalia nor they can notice any other ship moving to Somalia which BTW is no way a tourist paradise and is not close to be called as economic hub???

18

Re: Motives behind American Intervention in Libya

Oil was already flowing to Europe without any interruption...

[QUOTE]
Command of the Mediterranean as well.
[/QUOTE]

Yeh like Libya was controlling it before,.. with no actual Navy & Airforce made of Soviet fighters.

19

Re: Motives behind American Intervention in Libya

AFRICOM is new, so currently the HQ is based in Germany. NATO Eastern Command Center is located in Sicily, Italy with forward military bases in Greece & Cyprus - from their they are controlling the operations.

[QUOTE]
Also, US wanted to expand the bases but postponed the plan due to whatever reasons, probably due to lack African governments' cooperation.
[/QUOTE]

Their is no reason for US to expand bases, where they don't have, French & British are present. For example Gibraltar, Cyprus, Chad, Dakar, Gabon ..etc..etc..

20

Re: Motives behind American Intervention in Libya

So Mr. Firenze, then enlighten us. What is the motive behind invading Libya? Human rights violations?