Libya is an oil rich country and one of the world's top exporters of the black gold. The recent massive military intervention from the US, France and the UK in Libya is not a totally candid intervention with strictly humanitarian goals, in fact many analysts are beginning to argue whether such a global military action would have occured if the country in question were to be an oil-poor country with no resources.
The recent events in the world have shown the impact of high oil prices on western economies, especially on industrialized countries. We have seen lately Central Bankers notably from Europe and the US struggling to find a balance between the increasing inflation due to constantly rising oil prices and the recession due to the financial crisis. Add to the fact that France and the UK depend on the Gulf countries for their oil imports and on Russia for their natural gaz. The recent uprising events in Libya have created the perfect environment for the super powers to put their foot and have a physical presence on the rich soil of Benghazi, where most of Libya's proven reserves are contained. It is also a moral response and a noble move to save civilian lives from Kaddafi's massacres.
This military move will certainly reduce the oil dependance of the industialized nations from battered oil producing countries.
While many African countires have suffered on many occasions several massacres and blood sheds, never such a military intervention has ever been observed. It would be certainly naive to deny the fact about oil and consider that the super powers are only doing this for mankind's sake! The next scenario would probably be the one like foreign military bases on the Libyan soil to "protect" the Libyan treasures as it has been the case with US military bases in Iraq for more than 20 years.
Under Gaddafi Libyan oil was already exploited by big western oil companies. What makes you think a democratic Libya would give away it's oil for less? According to CNN the no-fly zone has already cost about 500 million dollars for the U.S. alone, thats why the americans have pulled out already from ground attacks.
ReplyDeleteThat theory has been repeated several times, but it is also fundamentally flawed. Before this ever started, Gaddafi happily exported most of the Libyan oil to Europe (Italy alone got about 1/3) and a large percentage of the high level workers in the Libyan oil fields were Europeans. If oil really was the primary objective, the West didn't have to do anything and the oil would keep on flowing. With the intervention, the export of Libyan oil is a tiny fraction of what it was before and the future is far from certain.
ReplyDeleteIf oil really was a primary argument for this type of intervention, Iran would have been first on the list (the Iranian oil reserves are about three times larger that the Libyan).
If anything, the Libyan intervention is the result of hard lessons learned from the Srebrenica massacre, which in all likelihood would have been tiny compared to the things Gadaffi was planning. Of course, unless NATO more seriously commits to removing Gaddafi forces from the vicinity of Misrata, we could still end up with a 'Libyan Srebrenica'.
And to people thinking of "Libyan Srebrenica", how come the supposedly evil Gaddafi has not devoured the towns captured from the rebels since? How come their population have not been burnt to ashes and smoke, and why, if the rebels are popular all over Libya, have not other towns joined them to bring down an unpopular leader of theirs? Ivory Coast people soley won their war against a sit-tight President when the rest of the world was looking away, must it take partisan NATO countries supporting a minority group to topple legitimate government of a nation? If the people hate the governemtn and their number is enough, they will succeed as we witnessed in Ivory Coast.
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