Who was Reagan shooting at? THE ADMINISTRATION of US President Ronald Reagan justified its attacks on Tripoli and Bengazi in the name of "legitimate defence" and US security. Terrorism was presented as the sole motive for this military operation. In reality, this was only an alibi.
For several years, Washington has been considering the possibility of overthrowing the Moamer Qadhafi regime for reasons that have
LIBYA the chief of Libyan diplomatic affairs,
Ali Triki, explained that Tripoli was in no way involved "directly or indirectly" in these terrorist attacks, which it "vigorously condemned." He described these attacks as "deplorable bloody outrages" and accused the United States and Israel of trying to exploit them to set the stage for an aggression against Libya.
On December 29, in fact, the Israeli premier, Simon Peres, denounced Libya as the "world center of terrorism." On January 7, 1986, Reagan declared that he had proof that the Libyans were involved in the Rome and Vienna attacks and that the United States had decided to break off diplomatic relations with Libya and withdraw American personnel working in the country.
After that, the immense imperialist propaganda machine began to roll to justify exactly the sort of operation that finally took place a couple of weeks ago. The bombing in Berlin of a discotheque frequented by Americans was the final pretext that the US government was so obviously waiting for. Thatcher declares bombing "legitimate defenre"
In the name of protecting Ameri can citizens throughout the world, the bombing of Libya could now be justified. In granting the right to use US bases in Britain for the raid against Libya, Thatcher, Reagan's accomplice, declared that the action represented "legitimate defence."
The cost of exercising this "right" was hundreds of dead and wounded among the population of Tripoli and Bengazi. It was a "right" that Reagan and Thatcher dreamed up to meet the needs of the moment, a sort of vendetta against a people.
After the bombing, the Libyans announced that there was a state of war in the Mediterranean. They fired two missiles at the Italian island of Lampedusa, where there are major US electronic installations. According to Tripoli, this island "played a decisive role in coordinating the bombers coming from Britain with those that took off from the aircraft carriers to hit Tripoli and Bengazi."
This was a pathetic gesture. The two missiles fell into the sea two kilometers short of their targets because they did not have the necessary range. In this way, it was demonstrated that the arms the Libyans have bought from the Soviets are far from capable of threatening southern Europe. The so-called mili* All quotes originally in English are retranslated from the French.
3 nothing to do with terrorism. CLAUDE GABRIEL CIATIOR CARPIRT
Whatever assessment one makes of Tripoli's international policy, there is no doubt that it is a thorn in the side of imperialism. The Libyan government has taken a strongly anti-American attitude and used its financial resources to aid various groups, movements or organizations.
Today, Washington is attacking a Libyan regime that irritates it. But in this way it is aiming to change the climate on a world scale. It wants to accustom the European and North American peoples to a policy reestablishing the United States in its role as a world cop.
On April 3, 1984, US Secretary of State George P. Shultz urged the Western nations to defend themselves against terrorism, "which represents a new form of war ... a new kind of technique against which it will probably be necessary to devise new techniques." * On that occasion, the secretary of state pointed the finger of accusation at "countries such as Iran, Syria, Libya and North Korea." At the same time, he took the precaution of adding that there was no question of attacking headquarters or assassinating individuals. Events in the Middle East, Chad and West Africa, as well as various incidents around some Libyan embassies abroad, have been used as arguments to pin blame on Qadhafi. The Gulf of Sidra affair was another means of pressing home the argument that the Tripoli government is an outlaw" regime. • The first incident in the Gulf occurred in August 1981 when two Libyan MiGs were shot down by US fighters. On June 29, 1983, two F-14's from the US 6th Fleet intercepted
International Viewpoint 5 May 1986 two Libyan MiG-23s about 35 miles off the coast of the country, in what the United States considers international airspace and the Libyans consider their territory. On August 1, 1983, there was another incident of this type.
Finally, the present crisis also began with a military incident in the Gulf of Sidra on March 24 when Libyan airplanes opened fire on American aircraft on maneuvers with the rest of the 6th Fleet. In reprisal, the US planes bombed a missile base on Libyan territory and attacked two Libyan navy patrol boats.
For a long time Reagan had been looking for this alibi to justify an attack and raise the question directly of overthrowing Qadhafi. The US government has openly avowed that its objective was to destabilize this regime and bring it down.
The Washington Post of November 3, 1985, cited government sources to support the statement that Reagan had authorized the CIA to set up an operation designed to weaken the Qadhafi regime.
The Us government, which is itself an expert in the field, used the argument of terrorism, in particular after the attacks on the ticket coun ters of the Israeli airline EI Al in Rome and Vienna. Anti-Libyan hysteria reached new heights.
For their part, the Libyans swung back and forth visibly between provocation and appeasement. On December 27, the Libyan press agency Jana described the Rome and Vienna attacks as "a heroic operation carried out by the sons of the martyrs of the Sabra and Shatila camps."
But on January 2, in a letter addressed to the UN secretary general,
tary danger from Libya appeared as what it was, a myth.
Well aware of the real relationship of forces, Qadhafi announced on April 16 he was "suspending the state of war in the Mediterranean" and paid tribute to France, Spain and Greece for their "honorable attitude."
The US decision was far from directed at Qadhafi alone. In reality, it was intended as a move in the overall crisis in the Middle East, in which Libya plays only a secondary role. But since the failure of the US. French-Italian operation in Beirut in 1982, it has become more and more difficult for the various imperialist countries implicated in the region to implement common policies.
France, for example, is groping along in its policy toward the Iran-Iraq conflict and trying to improve its relations with the Syrian regime. It did not want to be left holding the bag by keeping its troops in Lebanon.
In the same vein, in Italy, Prime Minister Bettino Craxi said on April 21 that in dealing with terrorism "neither Europe nor Italy has shown timidity." But, he continued, Italy had "advised the United States against taking the road of military reprisals."
In fact, Italy has managed to get into the most advantageous position in the Libyan market, with many contracts for producer goods and building projects.
The US government is quite aware of these contradictions, and quite correctly interprets all this as posing the threat of a total fragmentation of imperialist policy in the Middle East. It believes that the general interests of the Western powers require it to retake the initiative in order to deflate the pretensions of states such as Libya and Syria, and thereby regain unchallenged leadership for the United States, forcing the other imperialist states to line up behind it. On April 15, 1986, Reagan explained that the operation against Libya was no more than "one battle in the long fight against terrorism, which will not be ended until the free and civilized peoples of this planet have united to wipe out this plague."
To accomplish that, he wants to force the Europeans to line up behind the US policy. So, a military operation such as the one carried out against Libya has a twofold advantage. It puts the European governments on the spot, forcing them to clarify their position. It also sets in motion a very complex play of links and military constraints tying together the Western powers.
The press, especially the French press, is trying to contrast Reagan's firmness with the "softness" of most
Colonel Qadhafi of the European governments. The population is thus being led to interpret world policy in terms of the psychology and temperament of the rulers. Nonetheless, in this affair, we see again the eternal debate in the bourgeoisie when it finds itself confronted with major external dangers.
Each one of the protagonists thinks that they are best defending the long-term interests of imperialism. But in reality momentary differences generally reflect different immediate interests.
The Libyan test does not concern only policy in the Mediterranean. It serves for all regions in the world where the imperialist positions are threatened, and first of all for Central America. From this standpoint, the bombing of the Libyan cities prepared the way for other interventions against any regime that the White House does not like. But fortunately, the demonstrations that have taken place in Europe against the US aggression in Libya have not all been small and symbolic. They have shown in Italy, Britain, West Germany and Spain that there is a real movement of resistance to Reagan's big maneuvers.
The press has referred a lot to Qadhafi's "madness," or the irrationality of Libyan policy. In the anti-imperialist movement as well, there may be a tendency to think that Reagan is an unthinking and irresponsible war maker. It would be a grave error to see a confrontation of two kinds of "madness" or "megalomania." Reagan is pursuing a poliey that suits the interests of certain dominant American interests and lobbies. Qadhafi reflects the needs and the rule of the dominant social _ layers in Libya today. Libya enjoyed exceptionally favorable conditions during the years of the oil boom. The social effects of the overthrow of the monarchy in 1969 and the political character of the ruling team that took over then have led to a redistribution of income of a sort seen nowhere else in the Middle East. This has given the present regime a solid social base. • The ideology of the regime expresses this sort of Bonapartism and the perspective of building a society where classes will disappear through a fair redistribution of the wealth. This "mass system" is represented as one based on the workers associated in production and not wage earners, and on the principles of association assuring the satisfaction of needs. The land is presented as belonging to all, and no one is supposed to possess more than they consume. (1)
This beautiful construction which obviously is reminiscent of certain aspirations of socialism, is largely rhetoric. The Revolutionary Committees do not represent self-organization of the working people. On the contrary, they tend to put them under tutelage in the name of "defending
1. According to the Libyan news agency Jana on November 17, 1985, "the revolutionary forces" destroyed the headquarters of the Registry in Tripoli and burned all the files. "This initiative," the agency said, "by the revolutionary forces in Tripoli fits into the framework of reinforcing the freedom of citizens and achieving the vanguard ideals of the Green Book, according to which houses belong to those who live in them and the land belongs to no one. ... Thus, the revolutionary forces have destroyed forever the documents that legitimized exploitation and laid unshakable foundations for the people's taking control of their heritage and their future."
International Viewpoint 5 May 1986
the revolution" against all sorts of "saboteurs."
At the start of the 1980s, Libya had a bonanza of 20,000 million dollars in oil income for a population of around 3 million. When this income dropped abruptly in 1981, the regime radicalized its policy toward the Libyan society, while at the same time reducing its own spending.
At that time, a sort of "ultraleftism" typical of petty-bourgeois nationalist leaderships appeared. It was first of all the "people's discipline and its enthusiasm for work" that were to be the point of departure for solving the problems of the nation.
Qadhafi denounced even small individual commerce and later announced the end of "insignificant" trades such as tailoring, hairdressing and pastry-making. This ultraradicalism was accompanied by a policy of "socialization" from above that led to new social and economic contradictions.
However, the oil income made it possible to alter Libyan society profoundly. It opened the way for building projects on the scale of the Egyptian pharaohs. Nonetheless, the dropping of the oil price below 15 dollars a barrel - despite dumping on the free market - greatly reduced Libya's income, as well as that of all countries dependent on oil exports.
The great hope of a "mass society" is fading. The imperialists' regaining their grip on the oil market, followed by the collapse of the oil price, are putting a sharp rein on the utopian pretences of the Libyan regime.
In the case of the oil market at least, the imperialist policy shows the hypocrisy of those economic theories that claim that countries can take advantage of opportunities offered by the market to increase their independence within the world economic system. In reality, the policy of the big industrial countries blocks any such possibilities.
The big building projects and sales of technology made possible by the recycling of petrodollars did open up juicy markets for the Western bourgeoisies in Libya and the other countries. However, the Libyans and some others are now finding out the limits of this coexistence. It is in fact one thing to negotiate a contract on equal terms with an Italian enterprise or an American company, and it is quite another to think that a perfectly regulated world market in the long run will permit a sort of vanguard experiment in building an ideal society based on the laws of the capitalist market.
The present oil crisis has served as
International Viewpoint 5 May 1986 a reminder of the impossibility of such projects and pushed the Qadhafi regime into upping the ante in its confrontation with imperialism in order to justify its legitimacy and maintain its social base in Libya itself.
The relative economic crisis that Libya is experiencing today directly poses the question of the legitimacy of the regime, inasmuch as the latter based itself entirely on the oil bonanza to raise the incomes of a large percentage of Libyans.
The United States knows perfectly well, therefore, that its objective of destabilizing this regime is favored today by the situation of the oil market. Libyan economy hit by falling oil prices
Libya itself strongly encouraged the rise in barrel prices. In January 1981, the Libyan standard barrel cost was 40.78 dollars, as against 32 dollars for its Saudi equivalent.
The downward pressure on the oil price is now hitting the Libyan economy all the harder because its resources had been swollen artificially during the period of the boom. In January 1982, the Libyan barrel was only worth 36.50 dollars and in March 1983, 30.15 dollars.
As regards receipts from exports, which depend not only on the price for crude but also on the quantities exported, the crisis had already appeared in 1981. At that time, Libya lost 30.8% of its receipts. In 1982, it lost another 9% and in 1983, 16.5%. The state has been forced to curb its spending, to rein in the big building projects, to slow industrial growth, to reduce exports and to expel a number of foreign workers.
Tripoli dropped its ambitious 198085 five-year program and took austerity measures. The development budget was reduced from 2,740 million dinars (9,250 million dollars) to 1,700
Debts to foreign companies and supply firms are accumulating, despite attempts to sell oil in excess of the quota fixed by OPEC and to offer oil in barter agreements.
The political crisis between Libya and its main Western partners has combined with all this to lead to a steep drop in commercial exchanges. In 1981, the United States imported 5,300 million dollars worth of Libyan oil, and its exports to Libya totalled 811,000 million dollars.
Over the first ten months of 1985, the United States only exported 260 million dollars in commodities (in particular, food and medicine)
to Libya, and it only imported 36.5 million dollars worth of refined petroleum products from the country (in 1981, Reagan placed an embargo on imports of crude).
Despite ups and downs (1985 was better than 1984), for five years Libya's foreign trade has been suffering the pernicious consequences of political pressure from the imperialist countries.
Despite this, at the start of 1986, there were still about 1,500 Americans permanently resident in the country and more than 2,500 others freely circulating on business, along with 5,000 British, 12,000 Italians and 1,200 French.
Clashes and tit-for-tat threats notwithstanding, economic relations between the United States and Libya have never been like those with Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia or North Korea.
The US offensive is based on this change in the economic relationship of forces, for Libya, as well as for the rest of the Middle East.
The fall in the oil price after 1981 was the result of several factors. These included the effects of the second world recession and the resulting drop in world demand for energy products; the energy saving accomplished by big industry in the 1970s; and production of oil by non-OPEC countries, such as Britain and Norway.
However, another element came into it, a political one. It was the political crisis of OPEC, that is, the inability to get a common front in defence of the interests of the Arab oil-producing countries on the world market and with respect to the crisis in the Middle East.
The Arab countries means for extending pressure were so reduced that that led also to a decline in their share of the market. They now only represent a fifth of world oil production, as against one-third in 1974.
Reagan knows, therefore, that Libya has little real chance of rallying solidarity among the Arab states. These states themselves obviously have their own opinions about Tripoli and their own fears. But in other times, they would have been able to use this conflict to bring pressure to bear for economic concessions.
Over the 1970s, they were able to exploit imperialism's political weaknesses. Today, they are in a position of inferiority, and their weakness is first of all economic. They have neither the desire nor the means to exploit the clash between Libya and the United States.
On Washington's side, it is not the megalomania of the president that determines military operations of this sort. The economic and social crisis
LIBYA in the Third World is destabilizing these societies and aggravating social tensions.
US policy today reflects a great fear of seeing a multiplication of revolutionary focusses or crises. The attitude Washington took toward Haiti and its last-minute turn on the Philippines show that it wants neither another Nicaragua nor another Lebanon.
For this reason, pinpoint interventions such as the one carried out against Libya are a way of blackmailing the peoples of the Third World who want to free themselves. Operations of this type - brief, spectacular, without risks - can test the conditions for a more prolonged intervention against a people disinclined to accept the rules of the game.
What can a state like Libya do against an armada like the US 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean? The cost of a real counteroffensive is beyond its reach. Only genuine revolutións can hope to be able to defend themselves and win. But for them also, as we have seen in Indochina and as we are seeing today in Nicaragua, the human and economic costs are staggering.
Reagan's ideology and personality suit the needs of the hour for the dominant factions of the US bourgeoisie. But this line cannot be carried through without contradictions and problems.
The military operation against Libya has to be taken very seriously. This was not a gesture of exasperation or a passing incident. It fits into a deliberate policy of crackdown. It is a stage in the imperialist counter-offensive that was launched at the beginning of the 1980s after the defeat in Vietnam, the Nicaraguan revolution and the Iranian revolution.
This attack is a necessary link for a military poliey designed fundamentally to give the imperialist armies the technical and logistic means to oppose any popular uprising in the Third World. The first indications of this policy were the setting up of the US and French rapid intervention forces, the US landing in Grenada and the French intervention in Chad.
The warlike attitude of the US government reflects the present trend in imperialist policy. The danger is magnified by the fact that the North American and European workers' movements have let themselves be fooled and trapped by the chauvinism and racism of the dominant ideology. The wars and conflicts that the imperialists are plotting can only be countered if the working class and the youth of the imperialist countries clearly choose the side of the oppressed peoples. 6 for P
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April 20, 1985: Americans protest against Reagan's policies (DR)