After the killing of former Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi, some in the corporate controlled media are extolling the overall operation as the right way for the United States to project force overseas in the future.

We beg to differ. We find the whole episode, starting with the beginning of NATO intervention in March, to be very troubling. Rather than a model to be emulated, the operation sets very bad precedents.

• The United Nations was crudely superseded by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), whose leaders took a mandate to prevent a possible massacre of civilians and transformed it into a gung ho mission of “regime change”. NATO is now posing as an international organization. It is nothing of the kind; it is a military alliance in which there is no representation of African, Latin American or, with the exception of Turkey, Asian nations. The key role in the NATO intervention in Libya is being played by the former colonial powers (France and the UK, and, to a lesser extent, Libya’s former colonial master, Italy as well as the United States) who have a vested interest in trade policy with the African continent, and control of that continent’s natural resources. Window dressing was provided by some of the Arab states, which themselves are hardly paragons of democracy and good government.
• Efforts by many nations and groupings, including the African Union, the BRICS countries and the ALBA grouping, to obtain a cease fire and get negotiations for a peaceful solution underway were cynically brushed aside. This led to a far bloodier conflict than might otherwise have been the case.
• Although Gadaffi was correctly denounced for his repressive policies, little or nothing was said or done by the NATO powers about the well-documented persecution and reprisals against Black Libyans and immigrants from other African countries residing in Libya. Unless some action is taken, these and other reprisals are likely to continue.
• There is a real danger that the NATO powers, and especially the former colonial powers, will use the elimination of Gadaffi to increase their control of the economies and trade of the African states, in the process imposing even harsher neo-liberal policies of “free” trade, privatization and austerity on some of the poorest countries in the world.

The Communist Party of the USA calls for a halt to this kind of interventionist policy. We call for the strengthening of real international organizations in which all nations and regions of the world have a vote. Rather than NATO military intervention, conflicts within and between nations in Africa and everywhere else should be settled peacefully by negotiations. There is, in fact, no reason for the existence of NATO, let alone its transformation into a worldwide imperialist intervention force that has ranged as far afield as the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya. 

The danger now is that the NATO powers, and international monopoly capital, take advantage of the Libya situation to maximize their profits from Libyan oil, natural gas and water resources, as well as strengthening their control over the economies of the impoverished African countries which depended on Libyan aid to survive. The Communist Party of the USA pledges to oppose all policies which plunge Libya and its African neighbors into deeper poverty and dependency.

Libya for the Libyans! Africa for the Africans!

PHOTO: by Ammar Abd Rabbo CC BY-NY 2.0 

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