====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
On 22/08/2011 12:47, John Cox wrote:
“It requites no great prescience to see that this will all end up badly. Qaddafi’s failure to collapse on schedule is prompting increasing pressure to start a ground war, since the NATO operation is, in terms of prestige, like the banks Obama has bailed out, Too Big to Fail. Libya will probably be balkanized.” I don’t understand the propensity of Western analysts to keep pronouncing nations in the global south “artificial” and on the verge of splitting up. It is a kind of Orientalism.
This doesn't make any sense. Imperialism is constantly deploying 'balkanising' strategies, and it opportunistically uses or confects whatever divisions will suffice. If Iraq had been partitioned, as Biden wanted (and recall there was no political basis for sectarianism before the occupation), would this have made it a more 'artificial' country than Libya? It's ridiculous. The de facto partition of Libya was, for much of the war, already under way. The basis of it was largely political, not 'tribal'. Had the military struggle taken a slightly different path, had Qadhafi held out for a little longer, a strong prospect was of some sort of negotiated stalemate. That would have entailed two governments claiming sole legitimacy to rule over all of Libya, thus the perpetuation of de facto partition: hence, Balkanization.
________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
