Harry Targ
I
think President Obama made the right decision at the time. And the Libyan
people had a free election the first time since 1951.And you know what, they
voted for moderates, they voted with the hope of democracy. Because of the Arab
Spring, because of a lot of things, there was turmoil to follow.”(Hillary
Clinton quoted in Conor Freidersdorf, ‘Hillary Defends Her Failed War in
Libya,” The Atlantic, October 14,
2015, theatlantic.com).
Nearly
three and a half years after Libyan rebels and a NATO air campaign overthrew
Muammar al-Qaddafi, the cohesive political entity known as Libya doesn’t
exist.” ( Frederic Wehrey quoted in Conor Friedersdorf)
Building
an Empire
In a recent book by distinguished diplomatic
historian Lloyd Gardner (“Three Kings: The Rise of an American Empire in the Middle
East After World War II,” The New Press, 2009), the author describes the last
day of the historic Yalta Conference just before the end of World War II in
which the leaders of the allied powers met: President Franklin Roosevelt,
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
The President informed his colleagues that he had to
leave the next day to fly to Egypt. Stalin, according to Gardner, protested
saying that there was still unfinished business to discuss (The Yalta
Conference in February, 1945 was the last conference the three leaders held
before the end of World War II in Europe. In it they were deciding on the shape
of the post-war international system).
Gardner reports that FDR explained his surprising
departure by saying that he had “three kings waiting for him in the Near East,
including Ibn Saud.” Churchill correctly believed that the premature departure
and visit to Egypt was part of a United States plan to, in Churchill’s words,
develop “some deep laid plot to undermine the British Empire in these areas”
(16). And Gardner goes on: “It did not take a suspicious mind to observe that
World War II had provided the United States with economic and political
weapons—starting with the prewar Lend Lease Act—for Uncle Sam to commence
rearranging remnants of the old European empires into an American-styled world
order” (17).
What is called the Middle East today for centuries
had been the cross-roads of civilizations and the center of worldwide
religions. From the thirteenth to the twentieth century much of the area was
dominated by the Ottoman Empire, of which Turkey is the current survivor. That
empire, weakened and destroyed during World War I, was replaced by the
declining British and French empires. After the war Britain and France secured
“mandates” to divide up and rule the countries formerly under the yoke of the
Ottoman Empire. The Sykes-Picot agreement (a secret arrangement between these
countries) divided up the region such that France would dominate Syria and
Lebanon while Britain would control Palestine, Iraq, and Transjordan. The
British already had influence over Egypt, Iran, and Aden (Yemen). Minor power
Italy occupied Libya in 1911. The British also promised European Zionists that
Palestine would become a homeland for Jewish people in the Balfour Declaration
and Arab leaders that Arab peoples would have sovereign control of their own
lands. The British influenced the rise of Gulf States and military/political
forces in the region led to the emergence of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the
1930s. Central to the competition for empire was the discovery of massive
reserves of oil in the region.
Roosevelt’s announcement that he was leaving Yalta
early to visit Middle East dictators presaged a major thrust of United States
foreign policy. The vision was not only to weaken the influence of the Soviet
Union but to replace the declining European empires as the hegemonic world
powers. To achieve that goal required control of oil and the Middle East and
the Persian Gulf states had the world’s largest reserves of that natural
resource.
Defending
an Empire
To build the American empire after World War II the
United States reached out to construct alliances with pliable Middle East
elites, made deals with those who were modestly independent, or undermined,
invaded, and overthrew regimes which represented a threat to US hegemony.
First, President Roosevelt constructed an informal
alliance in perpetuity with Saudi Arabia whereby guarantees of military
security, arms sales, and trade would be exchanged for Saudi oil and support
during periods of instability in the region.
Second, the United States overthrew the regime of the
elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran because he had nationalized
his country’s oil resource. In his place, a pliant autocrat, the Shah Mohammad
Pahlavi was installed and seven United States oil companies gained control of
forty percent of Iran’s oil. When the Iranian people overthrew the Shah in
1979, the United States tilted toward Iran’s hostile neighbor, Iraq. During the
1980s, the United States provided arms, including weapons of mass destruction,
to Iraq, as an eight-year war ensued, leading to a million Iranian/Iraqi
deaths.
Third, Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, mistakenly
believing the United States would support its action. Changing sides, President
George Herbert Walker Bush, built a coalition to launch Gulf War I. The Iraqi
military was forced from Kuwait, and subsequently a long economic embargo was
imposed on Iraq followed by repeatedly bombing targets in that country.
Fourth, the United States supported the creation of
the state of Israel in 1948 and by the late 1960s made the latter its number
one military and economic aid recipient on a per capita basis. President
Eisenhower in a 1957 speech labeled the Eisenhower Doctrine declared that the
Middle East was vital to US national security. American policymakers opposed
secular nationalism in Egypt and Syria, particularly Egyptian President
Nasser’s attempt to form a United Arab Republic with Syria in 1958. The Carter
Doctrine enunciated in 1980 just one year after the Iranian Revolution,
proclaimed the Persian Gulf region another area of prime concern to US
security. The United States continued to stand on the side of Israel in
military conflicts with Palestinians, encouraging the Israeli invasion of
Lebanon in 1982. During the Reagan
years, the United States tilted toward Iraq and in 1986 bombed targets in Libya
with the clear intention of killing that country’s leader.
In sum, since President Roosevelt’s symbolic meeting
with Middle Eastern leaders, the United States has engaged in a consistent
foreign policy designed to replace the historic empires—Ottoman, British, and
French—with its own; using diplomacy, economic ties, subversion, and force.
Confronting
an Empire in Decline
The construction of an empire in the Middle East has
been confounded by multiple challenges over the years. The overthrow of the
Shah of Iran in 1979 was one. Another was the periodic emergence of leaders in
countries who based their popularity on appeals to nationalism; that is the
rejection of control from old or new empires. Nasser in Egypt was an example as
were Qaddafi in Libya and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. When leaders emerged who
claimed to be supportive of building secular states, American policymakers
sought to network with theocratic opponents, such as Osama bin Laden in the
case of Afghanistan in the 1980s. To justify support from the American people,
policies were explained by referring to the communist threat, the perils of
national security, the threats against Israel, facilitating economic
development, and building democracies in the region. The most dramatic
grassroots opposition to dictatorship at home and empire abroad was the 2011
Arab Spring; encompassing popular protest from Tunisia, to Bahrain, to Egypt. Arab Spring would be used one year later not
to support the grassroots in the region but as a rationale for the US war on
Libya.
In response to the mass murders committed at the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the George Walker
Bush Administration launched a “war on terrorism.” This trope which would guide
popular defense of US foreign policy ever since would justify aggression as a
necessary response to claimed threats of foreign and domestic enemies. The Bush
Administration invaded Afghanistan, and, based on lies, initiated the war on
Iraq. With these two wars, stability in the region began to deconstruct.
Although most United States troops were withdrawn after President Obama assumed
office, interventions continued all around the region using private armies, military aid, and increasing
drone warfare. US military operations were carried out in Pakistan, Iraq,
Yemen, Somalia, Syria and a military command structure called AFRICOM was
established to send US troops into African countries. In each of these locations terrorists groups emerged and grew in response.
Then came the war on Libya, a war against the Qaddafi
regime that was enthusiastically endorsed by Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton. The United States secured a United Nations Security Council resolution
authorizing using air power to protect dissenters opposed to the regime. The
United States and its NATO allies used the authority of the United Nations
resolution to launch a massive bombing campaign that destabilized Libya. The brutal
bombing campaign facilitated the destruction of the regime. Qaddafi was
captured and killed. In the aftermath of the US/NATO war on Libya competing
political forces emerged destroying the social fabric of the country. As Frederic
Wehrey suggests “the cohesive political entity known as Libya doesn’t exist.”
And
Now the 2016 Election
While Hillary Clinton offers her active support for
the Libyan War as proof of her experience and wisdom in guiding foreign policy,
the years since 2011 have shown just the opposite. A Libyan government no
longer exists. Hundreds of thousands of Libyans and migrants from elsewhere
have been forced to flee. Terrorist organizations, not there before 2011, have
operations in that country, launching assaults across North Africa and the
Persian Gulf, and the relative stability and wealth of the country have been
destroyed.
In addition, it has become clear that US policy
toward Libya was not about “democracy,” what some call “humanitarian
interventionism,” but forestalling Qaddafi’s efforts to build a new, vibrant,
independent African Union that would oppose US troops on the continent (AFRICOM), limit US corporate investments in
natural resource extraction in the Sahel, and encourage growing Chinese
commerce in Africa.
The Sanders campaign for the Democratic presidential
nomination has been correctly based on opposition to the excessive
consolidation of wealth and power in the United States. The issues comprising
this agenda are vital to the health, well-being, and future of the American
people. The future also is dependent upon the abandonment of the United States
empire. The rise of the military/industrial complex and the tragic loss of life
and treasure are inextricably tied to a foreign policy motivated by the vision
of US global hegemony.
There is a direct lineage between President
Roosevelt’s early departure from the peace conference at Yalta to visit Middle
East dictators and candidate Hillary Clinton’s prideful defense of the overthrow
of the regime in Libya. The results of this historic drive for empire have been
and continue to be growing anger in the region, terrorism, mass migrations,
enormous human suffering, and a bloated commitment to military/spending and
pro-war sentiment in the United States.
