--- title: "War in Libya. What's in It for Us?" date: 2011-03-10T09:44 author: Julien Reszka description: "France is going to war in Libya. Ask who benefits: Sarkozy, Total, the rebels. Then ask who pays: you do." keywords: ["government", "strategy", "decision-making", "economics"] canonical: https://julienreszka.com/blog/war-in-libya-what-s-in-it-for-us/ --- # War in Libya. What's in It for Us? France is going to war in Libya. Ask who benefits: Sarkozy, Total, the rebels. Then ask who pays: you do. The French media has spent two weeks building the case for a no-fly zone over Libya. The images are real. Gaddafi is shelling his own population. The horror is not manufactured. But watch what is not being discussed. Sarkozy recognised the Libyan National Transitional Council today, March 10th, before any other government in the world. France is pushing at the UN for a no-fly zone resolution. French officials are the loudest voices for military action. Sarkozy wants this war more than anyone in the room. The question nobody on television is asking: what happens the morning after? A no-fly zone is not a plan. It is a first step that commits you to everything that follows. Once you start, you cannot stop at inconvenient. The logic of the intervention will expand to match the reality on the ground, which means: - Air support for rebel ground forces - Regime change as the operational objective - A power vacuum the day Gaddafi falls Who governs Tripoli next week? Which of the rebel factions controls which territory? How do you disarm 20,000 fighters who just won a civil war? What happens to the weapons Gaddafi imported from Russia, Belarus, and Serbia? Which country is responsible for reconstruction? None of these questions have answers. None are being asked. So ask the question the title asks. What is in it for us? Not for Sarkozy. Not for Total. For us. Sarkozy gets a war bounce in the polls. A victorious foreign intervention is the oldest political distraction available and his numbers are collapsing. He gets to look like de Gaulle on television. Total gets preferential access to Libyan oil fields. The rebels have promised contracts to the countries that recognise them first. France recognised them first, today. The rebels get legitimacy and air cover. What do French citizens get? - The cost of the operation, paid by taxpayers - The diplomatic liability when the aftermath goes wrong - The migration pressure when Libya stops functioning as a border - The next war, because this one will not end cleanly France recognised them first. Here is what else nobody is discussing. Libya is the cork in the bottle between sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean. Italy paid Gaddafi $5 billion in 2008 to keep migrants from crossing. It worked. Irregular arrivals to Italian shores dropped by 87 percent in two years. Gaddafi was explicit about what he was doing and what would happen without him. Remove the cork, and the bottle empties into Europe. That is not a moral argument for keeping Gaddafi in power. It is a consequence that needs to be planned for. Nobody is planning for it. The media narrative being assembled right now has one job: make the intervention feel inevitable and make anyone who asks about the morning after feel like they are defending Gaddafi. Watch for it. The justification and the plan are two different things. We are being given the first and told not to ask about the second. Meanwhile I am watching videos posted by Libyans themselves. Not all of them are showing the same picture the French news is showing. Some are showing large crowds in Tripoli expressing genuine support for Gaddafi. People in the streets, not at gunpoint, waving green flags. That does not mean Gaddafi is good. It means the country is divided, that a significant part of the population does not want what we are about to give them, and that bombing a civil war into a predetermined conclusion is not the same thing as liberating a people. These videos are not being discussed on BFM. They complicate the story. That is probably why. --- **Actionable insight:** Before deciding whether you support a military intervention, list who concretely benefits and who concretely pays. If the people cheering loudest are not the ones bearing the cost, that asymmetry is the real story. ## Key figure **87%** — Drop in irregular boat arrivals to Italy after the 2008 Italy-Libya migration cooperation deal with Gaddafi *Source: Italian Ministry of Interior data, 2008-2010; Treaty of Friendship between Italy and Libya, August 2008* ## Myth vs reality **Myth:** France wants to intervene in Libya to protect civilians **Reality:** France recognised the rebel council before any other country and is pushing hardest for a no-fly zone. There is no governance plan for the day after. The intervention is being sold as humanitarian and designed as regime change. *Source: French recognition of NTC, March 10, 2011; UN Security Council deliberations, March 2011*