My conversation with TSI on Gadaffi
1. Libya Was Never Just “Another Regime” By 2011 Libya was: - Sitting on Africa’s largest proven oil reserves – about 48 billion barrels, roughly 3–4% of global proven reserves. - Exporting ~1.5 million barrels per day of high-quality, low-sulfur crude, heavily integrated into European refineries. When the civil uprising began and production collapsed, the International Energy Agency and others noted that essentially all Libyan exports were removed from the market, helping push Brent crude above $100/bbl in early 2011. So from a pure structural view:Libya = energy artery for Europe + swing producer in a tight oil market. Any serious disruption was going to be treated as a strategic event, not a local quarrel. 2. What Actually Triggered Intervention? Formally, the NATO campaign rested on UN Security Council Resolution 1973, adopted in March 2011. It: - Condemned attacks on civilians - Imposed a no-fly zone - Authorized member states to take “all necessary measures” to protect civilians, short of foreign occupation. France, the UK, the US and others framed this under the then-emergent Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine: stop mass-atrocity scenarios before they become another Rwanda or Srebrenica. That’s the legal-moral wrapper. The realist layer underneath is simpler: 1. A major oil exporter was collapsing. 2. A regime seen as unpredictable and at times hostile to the West was using heavy weapons and airpower against its own cities. 3. Refugee flows into Europe and spillover across the Sahel were almost guaranteed. From a Kissinger-style perspective, you don’t ignore that kind of instability on the southern flank of NATO. 3. Gaddafi’s “System Risk” Gaddafi wasn’t just “another dictator” in Western planning documents. He had: - A long record of sponsoring or supporting groups considered terrorist by the West in the 1970s–80s (IRA, various Palestinian factions, etc.). - A later phase of cooperation after 2003 (WMD rollback, rapprochement with the US/EU), but always with a reputation for volatility.