Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

By comparison to Iraq and Afghanistan, Libya has been a triumph of arms and politics, especially for France and Britain, who led the calls for intervention. The difference between the hot headed, ill thought out and destructive adventures of Bush and Blair could not be more obvious.

The universal jubilation in Libya at the death of Gaddafi is extraordinary. It provides eloquent testimony to the covert hatred in which this dictator’s subjects held him, in spite of his declarations of their love for him. It is testimony also to the cruelty and suppression of the Gaddafi years, with the murders, torture and beatings. There is controversy over the apparent summary execution of a pleading Gaddafi by a seething mob of freedom fighters and this disturbs all those in the world who hoped for formal justice and retribution. What happened is similar to the end for Mussolini, whose rigid corpse was strung from a lamp post after execution by partisans. Italians shed few tears at this barbarity. What matters to Libyans, indeed all that matters, is that their tormentor is dead. How he died is beside the point, if it was cruel he deserved it.

The NTC has tried to put a gloss of cross-fire to explain. This kind of public relations cannot work in the age of the smart phone. In any case the NTC has no real control over the fighters who caught him and killed him. This is the nub of everything.

Whether Libya will be remembered by history as a triumph or a disaster, depends on what happens from now on. Can this enthusiastic and likable people, who formed themselves into one of the most ill disciplined military forces in history, equipped with the oddest mixture of home-made weapons ever seen, yet who relentlessly attacked and defeated well equipped government forces and wiped them out, make that leap from revolution to democracy without chaos and bloodshed in between?

The answer is yes they can. But not alone. Just as their victory was dependent on the West using its military assets to support them, so their reconstruction into a modern and inclusive democracy will require the support of the whole of the West’s structure of governance and institutional expertise to create the framework in which the goal can be made real. It is over for the uniforms, but time for the suits. If they help the Libyan people to do it their own way, just as the military did, the future for all Libyans could be golden.

It is now accepted worldwide that there is a political as well as financial crisis facing the Euro zone. This crisis has global potential. At the heart of it is an acceptance of Germany’s economic authority by France. Once these two agree, the rest will fall into line. But to work, to have effect, to be seen to have effect and to set the euro on the path to recovery, France must concede to Germany. The world is beginning to wonder whether this will happen.

Germany’s economic power in Europe is overwhelming. It contributes half of its bailout funds. Its political view, supported by the mass inclination of its voters, is for a model of financial rectitude based upon hard work, thrift and sound money. This jars with the less austere and more permissive financial regime which France has always preferred, favoured too by Italy and taken to extremes by others, notably Greece.

Germany did not get here in one easy bound. Its history is the most brutal and tormented in Europe. It has unleashed destruction upon others and itself been destroyed. He has known hyper-inflation when a loaf cost trillions of a currency which had been made worthless. It has had military, political, economic and social baptisms of unprecedented fire. Yet though it all it has emerged as Europe’s foremost economic power. It will not surrender what it has gained at such cost to pay the debts of economic playboys.

Europe had the option, long since gone, to set up structures which would create a democratic framework for unified economic governance within the euro zone. Now Greece is going bust, a sixty per cent write off is being canvassed, the banks are in peril and nobody can agree. It was thought that the spendthrift might have to leave and the northern countries would make a go of it together. But this cannot happen if France and Germany are not in accord. There are now two possibilities for an outcome of the multiple summits now in progress. Once is a fudge of committees and fiddles which will avert calamity now, but make it certain later. The other is to do it Germany’s way.

There is a third prospect, looming like an ogre in the shadows. No agreement of any kind. This means calamity now. Mayhem by next weekend.