Letter from Lhasa, number 250. Libya Another NATOlution, alias Another Case of State Destruction
by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi
State destabilizations and State destructions have an implacable logic. They are all equal and all different. Goals and basic techniques are equal. Their adaptations to different contexts are different.
In the Mediterranean area, a classic case of permanent destabilization is Italy. Italy was created from the British in 1860-61 by a terrorist operation. From then, as a British province, it was managed from the British, ‘fascism’ included. It was ‘lost’ from them only for a short while, for permitting a better destruction of Germany (Italy was German heavy and devastating burden, during WWII). Italy was submitted to permanent heavy destabilization since the 1960s (the 1950s Italian economic miracle was developing Italy too rapidly and too much) with the complement of ‘black’, ‘red’ and ‘mafia’ State terrorism. With the 1992-93 de facto coup d’État, the Italian Constitutional order, coming out from the late 1943 Tehran agreements, was definitely collapsed. The Italian politico-Constitutional system was centralized in the Presidency of the Republic’s comprador iron dictatorship. In Italy, since the Constitution and Constitutional laws, the President of the Republic has dictatorial powers over the judiciary. Since 1992, the Italian real government is the Presidency of the Republic in permanent war (a generally cold State terrorism, a regime of permanent purges) against formal government and parliament.
State/government destructions are a different case with different patterns, various goals, distinct backgrounds and even unpredictable outcomes, despite the Imperial puppet masters’ intentions. It is decidedly easier to collapse a State/government/regime than to build a new order or disorder.
Key first element, an Imperial decision (with its implementation) is essential. The target must know that it will be nearly certainly destroyed. That makes easier States/governments/regimes’ implosions.
The world Empires have always been two, in the last centuries, with some constraint (the Tehran agreements, with the WWII creation of a para-Anglo-American sub-Empire, the Soviet sub-Empire) until November 1989 (Berlin wall ‘fall’). The US and the British Empires have antagonist interests, although frequently masked behind an apparent cooperation. The USA are a heavy militarist Empire. The UK, on the contrary, has a relatively light military although with extremely numerous and diffused intelligence apparatuses unrestrainedly employed both internally and around the world, even exploiting, in various ways, the US overwhelming military. It is sufficient to analyse the UN Security Council decisions, even at the times of Soviet Union, for understanding that, already then, the ‘communist’ areas were subordinated to the US-British will.
It is not really relevant whether the French government have planned the assault against Gaddafi’s Libya since some French political cycle and/or for its Mediterranean expansion striking the Italian interests in Libya or for whatever other reason. International politics and policies are led from material interests and/or from the perception of one’s own material interests. Perceptions may be wrong. Interests may be a too complex multivariable system. Finally, some powerful oligarchy (not necessarily the cleverest) decides according to some immediate convenience.
However, the French operation against Libya could not really be implemented without the British and US authorizations and active support. France was authorized to act. The UK and the USA immediately joined its military efforts when the moment of the final assault came.
There are States/governments/regimes rapidly collapsible from the inside or, more likely, where key military-bureaucratic oligarchies simply replace some people in key official positions and simulate complaisance with some imperial intimation. Recent Egypt (a US and British client) is a typical case where nothing has really changed and, where, very likely, the strike against Mubarak (the army) and ‘for democracy’ will possibly rapidly lead to an Iranian-style Islamic Republic of Egypt. Democracy will triumph, although not really according to what claimed on the world media from imperialist propaganda. Probably, that was in the British intentions, for better trying destroying Israel, dissolving key positions of the US Empire and striking the euro, alias the German sub-Empire. Impossible to imagine that the USA have any real foreign affairs’ thought.
There are States/governments/regimes not collapsible from the inside or where, simply, the UK-USA would pretend too much, impossible levels of submission. In such cases, a frontal assault is nearly inevitable in the current paranoid Imperial visions.
Actually, from a rational point of view, it would be considerably easier to achieve whatever Imperial goal by peaceful ways, pressures, and a very limited use of force. However, violence and destructions have an internal essential dimension, for paranoid visions and practices of State and society. As a consequence, the same Imperial populations are less rich, and they are terrorised and transformed in obedient butchers. Too affluent and happy people are supposed to be less submitted to paranoid States/governments/regimes. So, wars, terrorism and destructions have Imperial purposes as well as they are considered a key factor of internal consensus.
The French began to bribe and buy different Libyan tribes (ethnic and sub-ethnic groups) for creating some internal front against the Libyan central government and for some initial uprising. What was immediately clear was that the bought tribes and mercenaries would have not been sufficient for overcoming the Libyan State/government/regime and that the Gaddafi Libya would have inevitably reconquered the uprisen areas. Even massive foreign help to the Benghazi Commune would have been useless without any direct foreign intervention.
At this point, French, British, US and other (Canadian, Qatari, UAE etc) advisers, military instructors, Special Forces and professional mercenaries, regular armies and massive bombardments were indispensable. For instance, the international press reported that the CIA would have recruited over 1’500 men from Mazar-e-Sharif (Afghanistan) and trained them perhaps in Uzbekistan, where the USA usually train ‘Islamic’ terrorists. They were sent to Libya. As a cover for the Western presence, Qatari troops were deployed when assault units were indispensable.
Without an extensive ‘NATO’ air cover, no ground effort would have been sufficient. Until now, there have been about 23’000 air sorties and 8’600 air strike missions, from the ‘NATO’ side. The context is that of a country with a population of about 6’600’000 and a surface slightly larger than Alaska (more than seven times the UK).
A few expensive cars and vans full of ‘rebels’ could not fight and win any war. Libyan ‘rebels’ are needed only for a mob scene. Conquered an area form the ‘NATO’ military machine, ‘rebels’ are called for firing in the air and joyfully waving flags in front of foreign TV cameras. It is for the war propaganda spread by media. Later, tribal armed militias in borough and villages are at the level of organized criminality militias and eventually functional to a Lebanization of Libya.
Collapsed a central State/government (actually not so centralized), to invent a centralized State after a tribal uprising will not be easy. It will be nearly impossible. Even if, hypothetically, Gaddafi (or somebody of his circle) regained the control of Libya, what have been destroyed (a tribal equilibrium with a formally centralized State) could not be easily restored. The UK, the USA and France are not State builders. They are not Japanese. They are just myopic colonialist exploiters and nothing more.
In addition, there are extended material devastations. Since Libya has very good oil resources, an eventual reconstruction (improbable until law and order will not be restored) will be largely, or nearly essentially, paid by Libyan funds. The foreign powers which have driven to office, or nearly to office (the Libyan situation is now very fluid), the new rulers will try to take advantage from that by reconstruction contracts, and overall by contracts defining a permanent foreign domination over Libya. However, all that is hypothetical until some stability will not be reached. Oil extraction, trade and businesses need some equilibrium, be it even only a feudalized, or a split, new Libya. In addition, it is not sure that the comprador leaders bought from ‘NATO’ will not be taken over by others without any intention to accept any foreign domination.
Apart from the USA, which are a big militarist country, a critical point, for the main protagonists of the Libyan adventure, will be the sustainability of a prolonged military intervention, if there will not be a rapid pacification of the now devastated Libya. Without advantageous contracts for ‘reconstruction’ and oil imports, France and the UK will not be able to rapidly take advantage from the Gaddafi Libya destruction.
To destroy may be frequently a sign of impotence, although, very probably, it was precisely what the British wanted, also in Libya, for their Middle East destabilization (with the final collapse of the ‘laic’-military regimes) and for striking the euro area in its soft Mediterranean underbelly. For instance, a financially devastated Italy was obliged to a war against its own interests (it was the main trade partner of Libya) and which it could not afford, since the conditions of its budget and public debt, budget and public debt now dramatically aggravated since the war costs, and since the uncertainty and worsening that war has created in its trades with Libya. That France and the USA may have any real advantage is not at all sure, if both Egypt and Libya will rapidly evolve into really independent Islamic Republics, what is not improbable. Although, in a logic of permanent war, all the warmongers of the world are and will be happy to instrumentally create new enemies to aggress and to fight. A state of permanent war needs to continuously create new enemies.
