In Libya, decoding an uncertain future

Gaddafi has fallen and rebels have taken control of Tripoli, but Libya’s future remains mired in uncertainty [EPA]

There is so much spin surrounding the Transitional National Council (TNC) victory in Libya that it is difficult to interpret the outcome, and perhaps premature to do so at this point, considering that the fighting continues and the African Union has withheld diplomatic recognition on principled grounds. Almost everything about the future of Libya has been left unresolved beyond the victory of the rebel forces, who were hugely assisted by NATO air strikes as well as by a variety of forms of covert assistance given to the anti-regime Libyans on the battlefield.

Of course, in the foreground is the overthrow of a hated and abusive dictator who seemed more like the outgrowth of a surrealist imagination than a normal political leader who managed to rule his country for more than 42 years, and raised the material standards of the Libyan people beyond that of other societies in the region.

It does seem that the great majority of the Libyan people shared a thirst for political freedom with others in the region. The initial uprising seems definitely inspired by the Arab Spring. But unlike the other populist challenges to authoritarian Arab states, in Libya the anti-regime forces abandoned nonviolent tactics at an early stage and became an armed uprising. This raised some doubts and widespread fears about the onset of a civil war in the country, but it also brought forth a variety of explanations about the murderous behaviour of the regime that left its opponents no alternative.

Now with Gaddafi gone as leader, a new central concern emerges. What will the morning after bring to Libya? At the moment, it is a matter of wildly divergent speculation because there are so many unknown factors. There are a few observations that clarify the main alternatives. More favourably than in Egypt or Tunisia, this populist uprising possesses a revolutionary potential. It seems poised to dismantle the old order altogether and start the work of building new structures of governance from the ground up.

Libya’s clean slate

The fact that the TNC resisted many calls for reaching an accommodation or compromise with the Gaddafi regime gives the new leadership what appears to be a clean slate with which to enact a reform agenda that will be shaped to benefit the people of the country, rather than foreign patrons.

This opportunity contrasts with the messy morning after in Egypt and Tunisia, where the remnants of the old order remain in place. In Cairo numerous demonstrators were sent to jail, and reportedly tortured, after new demonstrations were held in Tahrir Square. These demonstrations were led by people who were fearful that their political aspirations were being destroyed by the same old bureaucracy that had provided Mubarak with his oppressive structures of authority that made the country safe for neoliberal exploitation, and unsafe for constitutional democracy.

Let’s hope that the TNC can sustain Libyan unity and commit itself to the building of a democratic constitutional order and an equitable economy step by step. It will not be easy, because Libya has no constitutional experience with citizen participation, an independent judiciary, or the rule of law. Beyond this, political parties, non-state-controlled media, and civil society were absent from Libya during the Gaddafi era.

And then there is the big possible problem of NATO’s undefined post-Gaddafi role. The air war inflicted widespread damage throughout the country, and NATO entrepreneurial interests are already staking their claims. TNC spokespersons have indicated that those who lent their cause support will be rewarded in appreciation.

Fortunately, NATO does not purport to be an occupying force, but the United States and the principal European countries that took part in the war are pulling strings to release billions of dollars of assets of the Libyan state that were frozen in compliance with Security Council Resolution 1973 and various national directives, and may well be playing a major advising role behind the scenes.

Will enabling the new Libyan leadership to embark upon financial recovery and reconstruction come as part of a package containing undisclosed political conditions and economic expectations? There are signs that oil companies and their government sponsors are scrambling to get an inside track in the current fluid situation. It does not require paranoia about imperialist geopolitics to take note of the fact that the two major military interventions in the Arab world within the last decade were both situated in significant oil-producing countries whose leaderships rejected integration into a world order in which global energy policy was under the firm control of the market interests of international capital.

Ulterior motives?

And oh, yes, the other likely target of major Western military action is Iran, and it too “happens” to be a major oil producer. Let us recall that the UN failed to respond in oil-free Rwanda in 1994 when a small expansion of a peacekeeping presence already in the country might have saved hundreds of thousands from an unfolding genocidal onslaught.

In the realm of world politics, it may be worth noting that coincidences rarely happen.

There are also significant unresolved issues associated with the precedent set by the UN in authorising a limited protective intervention that, when acted upon, ignored the guidelines set forth by the drafters of the Security Council resolution. The actual scope and ill-disguised purpose of the intervention shortly after it became an operational reality in Libya was to tip the balance in a civil war and achieve regime change.

Such goals were never acknowledged by the pro-intervening governments in the course of the extensive and sharp Security Council debate, and had they been, it is almost certain that two permanent members, China and Russia, given their reluctance to approve the use of any force in the Libyan situation, would have blocked UN action with a veto.

The UN is faced with a dilemma. Either it refuses to succumb to geopolitical pressures, as was the case when it withheld approval from the United States plan to attack Iraq in 2003, and steps aside when a so-called “coalition of the willing” is hastily formed to carry out an attack; or it grants some kind of limited authority that is cynically overridden by the far more expansive goals of the intervening governments, as has been the case in Libya. Either way, respect for the authority of the UN is eroded, and the historical agency of geopolitics is confirmed.

In the Libyan case, the evaluation of the UN role is likely to depend on what happens in the country during the weeks and months ahead. If a humane and orderly transition takes place in the country, and national resources are used to benefit the people of Libya and not foreign economic interests, the intervention will be effectively marketed as a victory for humane governance and a demonstration that the international community can engage in humanitarian intervention in an effective and principled manner.

If the country descends into chaos as the Libyan victors fight among themselves for the political and economic spoils, or take revenge on those associated with the Gaddafi regime, the intervention will be retrospectively discredited. This will also happen if the country becomes one more neoliberal fiefdom in which the majority of the population struggles to subsist while tiny elites sitting in Tripoli and Benghazi collaborate with foreign financial and corporate interests while skimming billions off the top for themselves.

This assessment of the intervention as a precedent is based on considering only its consequences. As such, it does not take into account the importance of maintaining as a matter of principle the integrity of UN authorisations of military force, both in relation to the UN Charter and with respect to confining the military undertaking to the strict limits of what was authorised. I will consider in a subsequent article this issue of sustaining constitutionalism and the rule of law when the Security Council authorises military action.

Richard Falk is Albert G Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Research Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has authored and edited numerous publications spanning a period of five decades. His most recent book is Achieving Human Rights (2009). 

He is currently serving his fourth year of a six year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.