- (May 2006)
Why Libya now.
The USA has decided to restore full diplomatic links with Libya after a
quarter of a century of hostilities. Given that Qaddafi has hardly relaxed
his dictatorship, this is surprisingly inconsistent with Condoleezza Rice's
policy of promoting democracy around the world.
The real news is that the USA is back to Realpolitik. The democratization of
Iraq has failed largely because Realpolitik won over idealism:
France and Russia messed up the invasion of Iraq, the Arab regimes played
friends while helping the enemy, Al Jazeera started a civil war and blames it
on the USA, etc. The USA learned (once again) that
nobody talks straight in the world and that there are no real friends.
The moment you make a move, one hundred countries start thinking how to take
advantage of it.
One country that tried to outsmart the USA was and is Iran.
Iran's regime decided
that this was the right time to provoke the USA. In fact, the current
provocation over nuclear power is the biggest ever by Iran. Khomeini himself
never dared that much.
Iran has been convinced that the international community cannot afford to
put in place sanctions against Iran, given that everybody is gasping for oil
and Iran is a main supplier of oil.
Before the invasion of Iraq, the USA would not have hesitated to strike
Iran. Now they have no desire (and probably no soldiers) to start a new front.
Iran's president is treating the USA's president like an amateur bluffer.
Thus Libya. Iran thinks it can call the bluff of the USA. The USA responds
by calling Iran's bluff: removing the sanctions against Libya can provide
the world with the oil that would stop coming from Iran if sanctions are
approved against Iran. (Libya does export all of its oil production, but foreign
investment will allow Libya to dramatically increase production).
Iran has just lost its main weapon: if Libyan oil starts flowing at a higher
rate, the West will not miss Iran's oil that much.
But the chess game between the USA and Iran is not over. Iran has another
wild card. At best, the USA will obtain from the United Nations sanctions to
limit Iran's exports of oil but not to shut them down completely.
In the current tight oil market any uncertainty abou the supply
of oil, for example one caused by sanctions against Iran, translates into
a wild increase in the price of oil which in turn translates into record
revenues for the oil-exporting countries such as... Iran.
In the case of Iran each $1 increase in the price of oil yields almost $1 billion in additional oil export revenues per year.
In other words, sanctions against Iran may make Iran richer instead of poorer.
Iran, like Libya, would suffer from sanctions only because of the technology
that cannot be sold to it. Unlike Libya, though, Iran seems to have found
a way to obtain the technology it needs without any help from the USA: the USA
sells it to China, China sells it to Iran, and there is little that the USA
can do about this triangular transaction because the USA owes China huge
amounts of money in trade deficit. (See
How the USA funds the dictatorships of Iran and China).
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (March 2004)
Why Qaddafi wants peace.
Libya's dictator Muammar Qaddafi was certainly intimidated by the fall of
Saddam Hussein (who at one point had a much more formidable army than
Libya's), but the
the Sierra Leone war crimes court that opened in march 2004 may also have
something to do with Qaddafi's desire to make peace with the West.
The court is likely to find out that Libya funded all the civil wars in
that part of Africa, not only in Sierra Leone.
In fact, Qaddafi is likely to be personally responsible for unrest that
destroyed entire economies, and caused the deaths of
tens of thousands of civilians.
Qaddafi dreamed of exporting the revolution to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, etc.
The military leaders of those insurrections were trained in Libya, a fact
that has been confirmed by David Crane, chief war-crime prosecutor for the United Nations court.
Hopefully, the millions of "pacifists" who marched in the streets to oppose
the USA when the USA decided to depose Saddam Hussein will now march in the
streets to oppose the USA when the USA has decided to forgive an equally
murderous dictator, Muammar Qaddafi.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (December 2003)
Qaddafi surrenders to the USA.
Qaddafi announced that Libya accepts immediate and unconditional dismantling
of all of its weapons of mass destruction and assorted missiles.
For all purposes, this is equivalent
to the immediate and unconditional surrender that Saddam refused eight months
ago. De facto, this could mean that Libya, the old enemy, has now become a
close ally of the USA and Britain. Deals on oil and just about everything
else may just be round the corner.
Is it a coincidence that the fearless Qaddafi capitulated just days
after the USA broadcast worldwide the images of Saddam Hussein hiding in a
rathole? Is it a coincidence that Qaddafi's change of heart happened, of all
possible times, just after the USA demolished Iraq?
The loser, once again, is France. Chirac has spent his entire career courting
Arab dictators like Qaddafi to win their friendship. It looks ever more
obvious that those very Arab dictators now prefer to side with the winner
than with the loser. Maybe there is emerging a view in the Arab world that
it is pointless to fight the West: why not ally with the West, become part
of it, and create a peaceful world instead of a world where jihad and
democracy face each other day after day?
Another loser is the United Nations. It will not take long before the entire
world realizes the implication of this deal: the USA and Britain found out
that Libya had weapons of mass destruction (something that the United Nations
never realized) and then found a peaceful way to disarm Libya (something that
the United Nations would have never accomplished). The United Nations was
totally irrelevant. It is the USA and Britain that are cleaning up Libya so
that Libya can rightfully belong to the United Nations.
The world is a safer place today thanks to the war in Iraq. Period.
And it is more than ever an American world, for better or for worse.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- Libya's Qaddafi from bandit to world hero? (July 2001)
Qaddafi used to be the second main sponsor of terrorists around the world
(after the United States, that supported the IRA in Ireland and several
terrorist groups in Latin America). After one too many bombings, the
United Nations imposed sanctions on Libya that all but isolated the country
from the rest of the world during the 1990s.
Now we are witnessing a rebirth of Colonel Qaddafi, and a singular one
it certainly is.
Qaddafi has completely abandoned support of terrorist groups. In fact, he
has expelled radical Palestinian groups such as Abu Nidal,
he has severed ties with most nationalist Arab groups (eg, the Palestinian
Islamic Jihad)
and has even declared "I have no time to lose with Arabs" (march 1999).
Qaddafi's new-found mission is pan-africanism.
Most important, Qaddafi has thrown his support behind the moderate ministers
in his government, the ones who advocate international cooperation and
economic reforms, and has rebuffed the extremist views of
Abdessalem Jalloud and the Revolutionary Committee.
This year alone, Libya has paid off debts owed by small African countries.
It was Qaddafi's support (and money) that helped rebuild the Organization of
African Unity into the African Union.
There is also a general process of coming clean on Libya's past.
Libya started by paying compensation to victims of terrorism in France.
After Qaddafi finally surrendered the suspects, this year
a Scottish court found a Libyan intelligence officer guilty for the 1988
Pan Am bombing.
That closed a controversy with the United States and now it
is up to the United States to recognize that Libya poses no threat to world
peace anymore. In a sense, Qaddafi turned the table on its number one
prosecutor: now the United States has to justify why it still imposes sanctions
on such a benefactor.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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