Libya has become a multipolar battleground unusual in the era since 1946. The UN-recognized General National Assembly (GNA) government in Tripoli is ranged against the forces of Benghazi-based Gen. Khalifa Haftar.Of course, oil is involved! Cole notes that the policy of Bunker Boy's Administration is incoherent.
Haftar is supported by the Russian Federation, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and diplomatically, France.
The GNA is supported by Turkey, which has sent in a few thousand Syrian mercenaries (battle-hardened rebels who lost in their home country and who skew to the religious Right). Although ordinarily the Turkish backing would also implicate NATO, Turkey’s Libya position is opposed by Greece, Italy and France and so Ankara is isolated on this issue. Turkey in Libya helps create an Eastern Mediterranean strategic position for that country, stretching east from Tripoli to eastern (Turkish) Cyprus and thence Turkey itself. Turkey is interested in gas deposits off Cyprus that Greek Cyprus, Greece, Italy and France also have their eye on. It is also interested in Libyan oil, which is at the moment not being much pumped and is under Haftar’s control.
The two sides, the GNA and Haftar, are gearing up for a big battle over Sirte, which would be the GNA’s gateway to recovering some of the oil fields.
The Trump administration is largely uninterested in the substance of geopolitics, but rather is satisfied with the appearance of willingness to negotiate US demands, as with North Korea. Curbing China and strangling Iran are virtually the only actual major Trump policies toward the rest of the world.We're at a place in the Presidential campaign were some Democrats are panicky at the thought of anything that sounds like a criticism of the Obama-Biden Administration. But they did intervene militarily in Libya in 2011. (I'll mote here that Juan Cole, who is generally critical of US interventions, supported that one at the time.)
The US turn inward and the paralysis of the country in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, has opened up new spaces for other great powers, and for regional powers, to assert themselves.
The US is irrelevant to this one at the moment.
Dominic Tierney reports in The Legacy of Obama’s ‘Worst Mistake’ The Atlantic 04/15/2020
In a Fox News interview last Sunday, Obama was asked about his “worst mistake.” It’s a classic gotcha question, but he had an answer ready. “Probably failing to plan for the day after, what I think was the right thing to do, in intervening in Libya.” This was yet another act of presidential contrition for the NATO operation in 2011 that helped to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi but left the country deeply unstable. In 2014, Obama said: “[W]e [and] our European partners underestimated the need to come in full force if you’re going to do this. Then it’s the day after Qaddafi is gone, when everybody is feeling good and everybody is holding up posters saying, ‘Thank you, America.’ At that moment, there has to be a much more aggressive effort to rebuild societies that didn’t have any civic traditions.” In recent interviews with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on the “Obama Doctrine,” the president bluntly said the mission in Libya “didn’t work.” Behind closed doors, according to Goldberg, he calls the situation there a “shit show.” [my emphasis]In the first bolded passage, Obama is repeating the stock excuse of the generals and the foreign policy establishment for failed military interventions: everything would have been better if we had just killed more of those foreigners and killed them faster, everything would have worked out. Even spectaular disasters like the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan War, and the Iraq War haven't seemed to deterred them from using it.
The second bolded passage is a better description.
The US-NATO intervention nine years ago can't be said to have led directly to the current situations. Other international players made they own decisions in the process. But it contributed mightily to the developmentof the current situation. As the Quincy Institute's July 2020 report New U.S. Paradigm for the Middle East: Ending America’s Misguided Policy of Domination observes:
The military intervention, with U.S. support and involvement, that led to the overthrow of Muammar al–Gaddafi in 2011 has left Libya in chaos. The continuing civil war has had a destabilizing effect beyond Libya’s borders, including a notable increase in terrorist groups operating in the Sahel and West and Central Africa. Furthermore, the involvement of Turkey and European governments in support of opposed Libyan factions has deepened rifts within the E.U. and NATO. [my emphasis]None of this means that Bunker Boy is displaying some kind of dovish inclinations in his Libya policy. Cole's analysis that he doesn't much know are care what is happening in Libya is very plausible. Not much market for new Trump Towers there at the moment. The Orange Clown in fact weighed in on Libya in 2011 in a statement that hardly sounds dovish, Donald Trump Vlog - Deleted: From the Desk of Donald Trump - Gaddafi, Libya - February 28, 2011 Factbase Videos 03/11/2018:
He is also in that video applying the same kind of deep and incisive analysis with which the world has now become so familiar.
Competence matters in foreign policy. And the US could have some actual constructive influence - without additional military interventions - in discouraging an Egyptian invasion and pressuring both Turkey and Russia to back off. Turkey is an ally of the US in the NATO mutual-defense pact, so what countries Turkey is invading is an important matter for US policy.
The EU and the members who are also NATO allies have their own responsibility in this situation. They should all be trying to de-escalate the civil war instead of fueling it. Especially since Turkey has also been escalating tensions with fellow NATO member Greece. The EU is also particularly vulnerable to blackmail by Turkey because the EU steadfastly refuses to develop a more reasonable and humane policy for housing and processing refugees. Under the 2016 Angela Merkel negotiated, the EU is paying Turkey to hold up to four million refugees. Turkey used the threat of sending refugees into the EU to pressure the Union earlier this year. (Chris Baynes, Turkey’s Erdogan threatens to send millions of refugees to Europe unless it backs Syria ‘safe zone' Independent 10/26/2019
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