Krieg gegen einen Integrationsunwilligen?

Die politische Ökonomie des libyschen Bürgerkriegs und der westlichen Intervention im Kontext der Krise des globalen Kapitalismus

Abstract

The article contextualizes the current NATO intervention into the Libyan civil war in the debates about the new imperialism and the crisis of global capitalism. It poses the question as to whether it can be interpreted as an act of militarily locking up an oil state which is immune to IMF/World Bank types of structural adjustment. Based on an analysis of the political economy of Libya from decolonization to the contemporary Gadhafi regime, it argues that the integration of Libya into the world order of global capitalism had already occurred as an act of free will. Therefore other reasons must have led to the hesitant decision to go to war. Denouncing the idea of humanitarian interventions, the article argues that in the context of the global crisis mainly three goals are being pursued: Guaranteeing the free flow of cheap oil; reestablishing control over a geopolitically essential region that as a result of the toppling of friendly dictators has been at the verge of slipping away; and reconstructing the indispensable ideology of „humanitarian interventions“ after their seeming demise in the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan.