Of course it is a good thing that another despot has been removed from power although there are a few causes for concern.
The first is that the rebels only stopped fighting each other to take on Gaddafi and now that he is gone, the possibility that they will go back to warring against each other as they divvy up the seats of power must be very high. Libya may well have jumped out of the Gaddafi shaped frying pan into a rebel shaped fire.
My other concern is that once again the United Nations was duped by leaders with ulterior motives.
The UN Resolution was to enforce a no-fly zone to protect civilians but it very quickly slipped into being about regime change and NATO being the air support for the rebels.
This is the second time in recent years that a UN Resolution to go to war has been sold to us as one thing only for it to be stretched way beyond its intended purpose. How can we trust anyone the next time they go to the UN wanting to launch an offensive under humanitarian grounds? We won't be able to, especially if the country concerned has oil beneath its sand as Iraq and Libya both have.
What also looks suspicious is the way Gaddafi's throne is still warm but the oil companies are already negotiating with the rebels regarding oil contracts while the French, British, Italian and American government representatives are discussing reconstruction contracts and even future arms sales. Obviously the competition to get in first is intense but it looks distastefully quick.
The third cause for concern is the way that the West have responded to the Arab Spring. With the action in Libya, the West seems to have been a guiding hand in deciding for other nations who can run their country, a complaint that has been coming from that area for years. In the past decade we have removed the ruler of Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya while doing our best to take down the rulers of Iran, Palestine and Syria. We have shored up repressive regimes in places like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Tunisia and how we continue to back Israel in its murderous repression of the Palestinians is criminal.
The Arab spring looked as though it would sweep away the oppressive Western backed leaders and replace them with democratically elected Governments who would not curtail human rights of their own citizens in order to appease the West but it seems we are again meddling and deciding which leader to back and which to help remove according to our own interests. Even the Arabs must see that we are not doing this out of some altruistic motive, we demand our pound of flesh for helping and that generally involves providing a reliable source of oil, buying our military hardware and bending over and just taking it when we demand.
2 comments:
To be sure, the Libyan rebels have announced in advance their intent to use oil concessions to reward their NATO friends and punish their political enemies. But the campaign against Libya began about the same time as a new wave of economic crisis. The freezing of Libyan assets in February-March of 2011 may have prevented the collapse of the UK's HSBC and Italy's UniCredit. Even the Dutch look to be keeping a few billion if the current Libyan regime collapses.
More importantly, after months of stalemate fighting, Venezuela's Chavez apparently took note of this looting and told the Bank of England and Chase in the US that he wanted to withdraw his $11 billion in gold reserves for relocation to safer harbors such as Moscow and Venezuela. Curiously, the stale tide in Libya suddenly took a decisive turn. Perhaps the 144 tons of gold held by the Libyan Central Bank is needed to help pay Chavez and maintain the veneer of western banking's financial viability.
The pressure is now on Chase and Bank of England to actually produce the bullion. If they can't, it risks producing a run on the banks, thrusting these teetering powers into economic crisis. Perhaps these banks will be able to deliver the gold, as apparently they did in 2009 when Hong Kong too wanted its gold back. If so, Venezuela will have less exposure to the risks of frozen assets and US/EU economic collapse, and western banks will have less gold in the vaults to support their ponzi schemes. I suspect that other sovereign powers will take Venezuela's cue and start repatriating their gold and other assets while they can still be recovered.
After the twin disasters of our interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, we’re undoubtedly correct not to trust what our leaders tell us, in regards to the reasons why... (‘follow the money’ is much likelier to lead us to the real motivations)... However, from what I hear, Libya might not be as likely as the others to explode into civil war, mainly because divides the various factions in this country isn’t really historical religious differences – so hopefully a government of genuine national unity (i.e. unlike the one led by the stooge Karzai in Afghanistan) will result from the coup.
Post a Comment