WI UK, France and Obama Administration did not intervene in Libya?

Political impact on U.S. of staying out of Libya in 2011-2012

  • Obama loses reelection

    Votes: 2 3.7%
  • Obama wins reelection

    Votes: 36 66.7%
  • Clinton wins 2016 election

    Votes: 5 9.3%
  • Clinton loses 2016 election with another "scandal" fully taking Benghazi's place

    Votes: 8 14.8%
  • Clinton loses 2016 election without any missteps comparable to the private e-mail server

    Votes: 3 5.6%

  • Total voters
    54

raharris1973

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What happens in Libya, and how does it develop over the next 7 years?

Are there are any knock-on consequences for whether a violent insurgency in Syria gets momentum?

With no US intervention of Libya, the Benghazi affair does not happen. Is this likely to decisively tilt the 2016 election in favor of Hillary Clinton?

I admit that last one is getting a bit of ahead of things. Presuming a lack of a US, West European and British intervention against Qadhafi, Qadhafi could suppress the unrest readily and there would be folks tut-tutting that result (especially because they have no window to observe OTL's Libya to compare). Could such "lack of leadership" cost Obama his reelection, which was by a smaller margin than his initial election?
 
IIRC Gaddafi was on the verge of crushing the rebels before the intervention. As such, Gaddafi probably still rules Libya. This might make Syria a lesser affair - a lot of rebels started fighting thinking the US would intervene in their favor like in Libya.
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
I feel this is getting a little to close to current politics. I do wonder how this would have affected the ongoing corruption investigation on Sarkozy though.
 
This is a very interesting question. I do think Obama wins reelection anyway. If anything, I'd argue Libya hurt more than it helped. Or might have, had it received actual scrutiny at the time. Anyway, I do think the Libya debacle ruined Clinton's standing as someone with real foreign policy competence, at least for me. But on the other hand, she had the support of the bulk of the foreign policy establishment regardless, so in a way, it's a wash. Then again, it could come down to what happens without NATO intervention in the Libya conflict, and the consequences this could have for Syria, Egypt, and, Frankly, Iran. I think it's really still too soon to know how this effects 2016. I do think though that the Benghazi inquiry, which resulted really from the Libyan endeavor, is what really brought the email controversy to light. We also have to consider also whether staying out of the Libyan mess helps Clinton in the primaries. No Libya changes so many things.
 
Interesting phrasing that its the nations of France and UK, but only the Obama administration rather than the nation of the USA that intervened in Libya.
 

raharris1973

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Interesting phrasing that its the nations of France and UK, but only the Obama administration rather than the nation of the USA that intervened in Libya.

Not trying to make a political point out of it, just accidental phrasing.
 
The Libyan insurgency probably continues on for a while and Qaddafi and the rebels trade control of the coastal highway back and forth, and eventually, the Rebels gain enough momentum to repeat what they did, albeit perhaps 9-12 months later than OTL.

It is a such a lazy trope that exists that assumes that the Libyan Civil War was only won by western intervention and tsk-tsking about blowback, etc. Western self criticism is one of the most blatant forms of ethnocentrism that exists these days, but thats a topic for another day.

In reality, during first Civil War, the Rebels had recieved quite a lot of defections before the first bit of NATO assistance, and massively grew in volunteer support. Qaddafi's support was limited mostly to the Tripoli area and a few loyalist pockets, with some tribes that were on his side because rival tribes joined the rebels. The Libyan Air Force was the big reason why his counterattack initially picked up steam, but they were almost completely out of fuel by mid March. In fact, while NATO would have annihilated the Libyan Air Force in air to air combat, they were mostly grounded because of fuel issues by the time of the intervention.

That is not to say that they wouldn't have gotten creative, as Assad has, with his use of helicopters for rudimentary carpet bombing and terror bombing. But the big aerial assaults that went with Qaddafi's March 6th counterattack were not going to have continued without a major fuel resupply. Perhaps Russia or someone else would have supplied it, I don't know.

In terms of Libyan population polling support for the NATO intervention, the results are shockingly pro-bombing, with over 75-85% support for the action as polled in 2012. Considering that it amounted to foreign air forces dropping bombs on Libyans, that indicates that support for Qaddafi was probably even more paper thin on the ground than previously thought.

The idea that Qaddafi was well positioned to put a decisive end to the rebellion in mid March 2011, or that he commanded broad or even a plurality of support, is incorrect. The one bit of success he had, some brief victories on the Brega road to Benghazi, were not decisive enough to make a taking of Benghazi likely. It is true that the destruction of most of Qaddafi's infrastructure of defense was destroyed as Benghazi was attacked, and that some armored vehicles were taken out by French intervention, but the attack was ultimately beaten off by rebels on the ground. And even if Benghazi was taken, there is no reason to think that a counterattack wouldn't have taken it back, or that other fronts wouldn't have turned out the way they did (like in the West, or the other areas of the coastal highway).

The one area where Western intervention was decisive was in making the Rebel's path into Tripoli and Sirte easier than it would have been otherwise by taking out hard targets. But that merely sped up what was inevitable.
 
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raharris1973

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The Libyan insurgency probably continues on for a while and Qaddafi and the rebels trade control of the coastal highway back and forth, and eventually, the Rebels gain enough momentum to repeat what they did, albeit perhaps 9-12 months later than OTL.

This is an interesting interpretation and the first time I have heard it argued, but you argue it well.

I suppose I assumed away the option of the rebels winning on their own because apologists for and lamenters of the intervention have the common assumption western intervention was decisive.

It is a such a lazy trope that exists that assumes that the Libyan Civil War was only won by western intervention and tsk-tsking about blowback, etc. Western self criticism is one of the most blatant forms of ethnocentrism that exists these days, but thats a topic for another day.

Yes, actually I look forward to discussing that another time and place, how you came to that view.

In the meantime, spoiler: this thread actually is pretty ethnocentric, actually it's worse, it's american politics centric, as you could probably tell from the thread.

In reality, during first Civil War, the Rebels had recieved quite a lot of defections before the first bit of NATO assistance, and massively grew in volunteer support. Qaddafi's support was limited mostly to the Tripoli area and a few loyalist pockets, with some tribes that were on his side because rival tribes joined the rebels. The Libyan Air Force was the big reason why his counterattack initially picked up steam, but they were almost completely out of fuel by mid March. In fact, while NATO would have annihilated the Libyan Air Force in air to air combat, they were mostly grounded because of fuel issues by the time of the intervention.

Interesting

That is not to say that they wouldn't have gotten creative, as Assad has, with his use of helicopters for rudimentary carpet bombing and terror bombing. But the big aerial assaults that went with Qaddafi's March 6th counterattack were not going to have continued without a major fuel resupply. Perhaps Russia or someone else would have supplied it, I don't know.

Interesting

In terms of Libyan population polling support for the NATO intervention, the results are shockingly pro-bombing, with over 75-85% support for the action as polled in 2012. Considering that it amounted to foreign air forces dropping bombs on Libyans, that indicates that support for Qaddafi was probably even more paper thin on the ground than previously thought.

Yes, I knew that expressed pro-NATO sentiment was high, and that the American diplomat who was killed at Benghazi was a popular guy in the country. But I hadn't noodled through what that says about thinness of support for Qadhafi.


The idea that Qaddafi was well positioned to put a decisive end to the rebellion in mid March 2011, or that he commanded broad or even a plurality of support, is incorrect. The one bit of success he had, some brief victories on the Brega road to Benghazi, were not decisive enough to make a taking of Benghazi likely. It is true that the destruction of most of Qaddafi's infrastructure of defense was destroyed as Benghazi was attacked, and that some armored vehicles were taken out by French intervention, but the attack was ultimately beaten off by rebels on the ground. And even if Benghazi was taken, there is no reason to think that a counterattack wouldn't have taken it back, or that other fronts wouldn't have turned out the way they did (like in the West, or the other areas of the coastal highway).

Also interesting.

The one area where Western intervention was decisive was in making the Rebel's path into Tripoli and Sirte easier than it would have been otherwise by taking out hard targets. But that merely sped up what was inevitable.

hmm.

I suppose even the rebels winning on their own butterflies away Benghazi - as we knew it.

But, the collapse of the police state could create a permissive environment for something similar to happen.
 
I suppose even the rebels winning on their own butterflies away Benghazi - as we knew it.

But, the collapse of the police state could create a permissive environment for something similar to happen.

The Benghazi attacks in 2012 that you speak of were if I am remembering correctly, tied to a call for revenge because of some high ranking AQ people taken out with drones earlier in the year in Pakistan. However, the fact that there were Islamists in the rebellion from the beginning, and small numbers of AQ members as well, lends credence to the idea that perhaps the presence of the forces that carried out the attack were already in the country well before the regime was overturned.

The collapse of the police state, and the regime, was actually pretty quick after the Benghazi attack was repelled. Attempts at organizing civil defense by Qaddafi were utterly failing, defections continued apace, and warlords sprang up really quickly. It was a psychological collapse that was years in the making, stemming from a failing un-diversified commodity based economy, structural unemployment driven by guest worker programs, and social changes that happened under the surface (the population of youth with poor job prospects and the growing embrace of Islamist ideas).

In many ways, it was shockingly similar to how Mobutu collapsed in Zaire in the 90s. You had a paranoid ruler who was openly kleptocratic and something of a leper in international circles (although Qaddafi improved his position in the mid 2000s), whose basis of support was very much concentrated in the capital and with a few tribes/ethnic groups, and whose security apparatus was akin to the rotten door that Hitler thought Stalin's was, in that once the door was kicked in, the whole thing fell apart. The march along the coastal highway by the rebels towards Tripoli met little real resistance, and as this became more clear, regional and provincial loyalists deserted en masse or defected.
 
The Libyan Air Force was the big reason why his counterattack initially picked up steam, but they were almost completely out of fuel by mid March. In fact, while NATO would have annihilated the Libyan Air Force in air to air combat, they were mostly grounded because of fuel issues by the time of the intervention.

I remember this mentioned back at the time, & was thinking WTF??? Lybia had been a oil exporter. Was the refining capability so poor a few hundred aircraft could not be flown?
 
I remember this mentioned back at the time, & was thinking WTF??? Lybia had been a oil exporter. Was the refining capability so poor a few hundred aircraft could not be flown?

Something that most people are unaware of, though: jet fuel was extremely expensive in 2011. To what extent it hurt their ability to have jet fuel on hand, not sure.

A lot of people forget that Libya is a country with a population about 1/5 of North Korea's and a GDP that never exceeded $100B. The infrastructure in many ways is still quite awful, and so refining was never really something that got a ton of investment. They had fuel, mind you, as evidenced by their ability to launch armored counterattacks through the end of the spring, but a good amount of it wasn't quality enough to use in jet aircraft. A big issue with Libyan oil production and refining came from how Qaddafi handled foreign oil companies looking to develop as well, which hampered production and refinery operation needlessly.

My personal view: the biggest issue was the massive defections that happened. There were many stories about Libyan pilots flying to Malta and defecting, and others bailing out and refusing to follow orders and bomb rebel held areas. These were frontline actors, but with the massive defection off military personnel at large, I'd imagine it badly hit the logistics and upkeep departments of the Libyan Air Force. Like any tinpot dictatorship, they probably also had issues with spare parts.

This all goes back to how Qaddafi maintained power. Basically, he had a few heavily armed mechanized brigades in his army that were useful because of their political loyalty. Other parts of the military got a lot less attention. The Air Force was one of them. It was a lot like other Arab Nationalist Dictatorships like Assad's Syria or Saddam's Iraq, in which some sectors of the state get support and others exist until a crisis comes and their loyalty proves nonexistent.

Having oil =/= having an effective system of production, refinement, and distribution. Venezuela these days, or really, Mexico in early 2017, demonstrates this quite clearly.
 
I disagree that the rebels would have prevailed independently of the (arguably) illegal NATO campaign. Yes, Libya had issues with fuel refining, but if NATO is uninvolved in the conflict, then there's nothing really preventing the Russians from supply Qadhafi with jet fuel. If his planes remain in the air, then the rebels are subject to Libya's version of Hama rules, and the defections never occur because the internally divided rebels, much shorter on supplies in these circumstances, are never able to gain the upper hand.
 
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