European Student Think Tank

With the US mov­ing mil­it­ary resources to the Asia-Pacific region, what organ­iz­a­tion will main­tain the sta­bil­ity and secur­ity in North and North Cent­ral Africa? The US has been down­grad­ing its par­ti­cip­a­tion in African affairs for some time now; one may refer to the events in Libya and the ongo­ing situ­ation in Mali. Europe faces many mod­ern threats, and it may very well have to pull itself together to prop­erly address the chal­lenges to its secur­ity ori­gin­at­ing from across the Medi­ter­ranean Sea as the US focuses on more of its own problems.

Read the second part (about Syria) here. Before examin­ing on an indi­vidual level the Libyan and Syr­ian con­flicts, the European Union’s ‘mis­sion’ should be taken into account when dis­cuss­ing mat­ters of con­flict as well as their aim of pro­mot­ing demo­cracy. The EU’s “mis­sion” is to extern­al­ize the suc­cess of European integ­ra­tion in cre­at­ing peace and [...]

As out­go­ing Sec­ret­ary of State Hil­lary Clin­ton test­i­fies before the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee on the 23rd of Janu­ary, the coun­try is reminded of a sober­ing truth: the chaos in North Africa spells bad for­tunes for the United States. Four months have passed since Amer­ican ambas­sador Chris­topher Stevens and three oth­ers were killed in a jihadist attack in Libya. Just as Clin­ton gives a testi­mony tak­ing respons­ib­il­ity for the secur­ity fail­ures in Benghazi, France con­tin­ues to be engaged in a ground con­flict by the side of the Malian gov­ern­ment. Regional tur­bu­lence threatens to expand north­wards as the after­math from the Algerian host­age crisis unfolds. With the US renew­ing its vows to find those respons­ible for the Libya attacks, and French mil­it­ary engage­ments deep­en­ing in Mali, these crises show no signs of let­ting up.

Pro­test­ers and free­dom fight­ers in the Arab world can count on the sym­pathy, and some­times the sup­port of West­ern demo­cratic nations. But this sym­pathy clouds our judge­ment, because we auto­mat­ic­ally con­ceive the rioters as her­oes. The vil­lains are those res­ist­ing change, some­times will­ing to give their lives for the dic­tat­ors. Yet, we hardly under­stand why. The demo­cratic prin­cipals that we hold dear and that we wish new regimes will adopt should make us want to know the whole story.

The vic­tory of the rebel forces in Libya is often con­ceived as not only their vic­tory, but as a vic­tory of European dip­lomacy as well. Though this might be true for the rela­tions between Europe and the United States, it is doubt­ful whether it is the case for the rela­tions with the Arab world as well. The eco­nomic and polit­ical real­ity must lead to the con­clu­sion that the effects might not be as last­ing as one would hope.

France’s bombs on Gbagbo and Italy’s bombs on Khadafi show that Europe’s coun­tries dare to act in their former colon­ies. Accus­a­tions of neo­co­lo­ni­al­ism by evil­do­ers should be accep­ted as com­pli­ments, as it means stand­ing up for human rights, even in coun­tries where act­ing mil­it­ar­ily is sensitive.

The west­ern world has begun its third mil­it­ary inter­ven­tion in a Muslim coun­try since the attacks on Septem­ber 11th. After pre­vi­ous con­flicts, what les­sons have been learned? What is the most desir­able out­come in the Libyan con­flict? And what can be said about the role of the inter­na­tional coalition?

European lead­ers frame the cur­rent situ­ation in Libya in a cer­tain way by refer­ring to past con­flicts and sub­sequent (non-) inter­ven­tion. Con­sequently, they divert the dis­cus­sion on inter­ven­tion in Libya away from the situ­ation on the ground.

With Khadafi’s would-be mas­sacre loom­ing in Benghazi, Europe has proven that it is still will­ing to take on a mes­si­anic role to fight for free­dom. The enthu­si­asm that David Cameron and Nic­olas Sarkozy have shown to pro­tect human life with all means neces­sary deserves the deep­est respect and stands in stark con­trast to Germany’s inex­cus­able cow­ardice. Libya deserves European mil­it­ary sup­port in escap­ing from the yoke of a mad­man that has oppressed its people for generations.

The revolu­tions in North Africa have triggered wor­ries in many European cap­it­als about huge immig­rant flows. So far the EU has how­ever sup­por­ted the demo­cratic move­ments but the Libyan revolu­tion might have exposed once again the need for a com­pre­hens­ive European energy mar­ket to bal­ance energy sup­ply dis­rup­tions caused by civil unrest. The Libyan revolu­tion has caused minor energy shocks in the EU, a civil upris­ing in Algeria might have more severe consequences.