Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

This makes little sense. The purpose of the entire UN/NATO operation is to protect civilians. Several, indeed most, participating countries want Gaddafi gone, but that is not the official aim of the undertaking. The quickest way to end the bloodshed is to hold peace talks so that the Libyan people, who have grown tired of killing each other, can work something out.

The Gaddafi side refuse to talk (officially) until the NATO bombing stops. This is not insurmountable, as sooner or later it has to stop anyway. The rebels refuse to talk unless Gaddafi goes. He and is family may soon see little future for themselves in Libya and a deal might be struck. Or might have been until the issue of this inane arrest warrant by an organisation with no power to carry it out. This is because the power lies with the host country and Libya is not signed up to the ICC. On the other hand if Gaddafi and co step over the Libyan border it will now be into handcuffs and jail.

It is not clear to this blog why they should want to do that. There are many countries who are not signed up to the ICC and many who have signed but not ratified. Among them is the United States of America. Nevertheless a welcome there for the Gaddafi clan seems very unlikely because of Lockerbie. Somewhere a haven has to be found, if the suffering of the Libyan people is to be brought to an end before a long and costly fight to the finish.

Beneath the high drama of politics and protest, there are, beneath the surface, currents flowing through the Euro crisis, presently centred on Greece, which give an altered perspective to those who delve.

First, the bail out of Greece is actually a bail out of, mostly European, banks. Many would be in very serious trouble if Greece went into an uncontrolled bust. Therefore when Euro zone finance ministers hold their regular crisis meetings, they are more focused on the survival of their banks than they are the trials of the Greek people. In giving Greece more money, they are buying time for their banks, hoping to put off the inevitable  default until a point down the line when the banks can cope.

Meanwhile the Greek people sense this and have had enough austerity which goes nowhere but to even bigger problems. Even if the Greek parliament passes the package, there is no certainty that the government can put the statute into effect. This is the next layer. Greece is fast becoming ungoveranble by democratic means, but even at its best, it is only partially governable anyway. People do not pay their taxes, especially the better off and there is a mixture of corruption and ministerial rivalry at the heart of government which hobbles the Greek economy, no matter what. Although the symptom of these problems is massive debt, the cause is political.

For the euro zone, although the crisis is indeed financial, the cause is, again, political; the lack of political will to install economic governance across the euro zone to give the euro the foundation needed by any currency the world over, a reliable government. In some ways it may be that a chaotic exit of Greece from the Euro, with vast knock on effects across Europe especially, but also the world, would bring about that necessity more quickly than  a slow write down of the majority of Greek debt, in a dance of the veils called re-structuring. It may also summon the finest qualities of the Greek people to establish a style of government they all respect, whose laws, all of them, they are willing to honour.