Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya reviewed on Between the Lines

BETWEEN THE LINES – LUDWIG WATZAL

The Globalization of NATO and its Catastrophic Failure in Libya

The books “The Globalization of NATO” and “Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya” deal with the expansion of a military alliance that was supposed to be solely defensive in character and confined to Europe. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc countries, Nato turned global and embarked on an expansionist and aggressive worldwide strategy in order to redraw the political map of the world. Taking the last 20 years into account, one can call the Nato alliance the greatest threat to world peace.

Established in April 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, better known as Nato, was meant to protect its members from an attack by the Soviet Union. The cold war was in full swing. With Germany’s accession to Nato on May 9, 1955, the Warsaw Pact was founded in return on May 14, 1955. The defensive character of Nato ended with the breakdown of the Soviet Union and the so-called Eastern bloc…

In his book “Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya”, Horace Campbell argues that Nato is “the instrument through which the capitalist class of North America and Europe seeks to impose its political will on the rest of the world, however warped by the increasingly outmoded neoliberal form of capitalism”. Within the peace and justice movement, the author argued that although Muammar al-Gaddafi should be opposed, “it was equally necessary to oppose the NATO intervention” (p. 10). For the author, Nicolas Sarkozy was the champion of the “uprisings” but at the end it has not paid off politically for him. Although colonialism has formally ended some decades ago, France is still considered the gendarme of Europe in Africa. It is against the reality of the NATO intervention in Libya, like Nicolas Sarkozy’s statement shows: “We will fight to save the euro.” (p. 29) In September 2012, the media reported that “Gaddafi was killed by a French secret serviceman on orders of Nicolas Sarkozy”. (p. 11) Was this the thanks for the 50 million U.S. Dollars to Sarkozy’s election campaign in 2007?

Horace Campbell holds a joint Professorship in the Department of African American Studies and Department of Political Science at Syracuse University. He is also a Special Invited Professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. He has been involved in the peace and justice movements for decades. He is the author of many books; inter alia, Barack Obama and 21st Century Politics: A Revolutionary Moment in the USA.

In his book he argues that the NATO intervention has served to speed up awareness in Africa that the African Union must be strengthened to be able to meet the political, diplomatic, and military requirements to resist external military missions such as that of NATO in Libya. Gaddafi had to go because he was more a champion of African than Arab unity. Therefore, the Arab League took revenge and called for Gaddafi’s overthrow. In the case of Syria, the Arab League shows the same vile attitude and collaborates with the Western colonial powers against the interest of their own peoples. The coup against Gaddafi was aimed at the”destruction of the ideas of African unity” (p. 32) and African freedom. Gaddafi had supported the speedy creation of the African Central Bank and the building of an African Monetary Union…

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