Libya: 2011 – The Great War 1914-1918
“Only the dead have seen the end to war.” George Santayana
I am sure much of the political irony about Libya is lost on the average American college student. I think that’s the case because the average American knows little about World War I, “The Great War” which raged in Europe, Africa, parts of Asia, and on all the oceans from 1914 to 1918. It ended nearly 100 years ago and yet we still live with the repercussions of that debacle.
My comments are in no way intended to be a defense of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the self-proclaimed Libyan “King of Kings,” the horrific despot who runs Libya, as all despots do, with an iron fist. He’s not much of a tyrant since he really only controls a bit of sand and beach plus thousands of square miles of dry wadies and desert wastes dotted with an occasional oasis. If Libya didn’t sit on vast reserves of oil, few would pay attention to it or to its ranting lunatic of a ruler. (Compare Libya to the Sudan, and you will know what I mean.)
Pan Am Flight 103 and Lockerbie aside, (and Gaddafi was only tangentially involved with these after the fact, it seems), Libya hasn’t hurt Europe, and Europe only cares for Libya when her refugees clamor to seek safety in Sicily or when oil prices soar.
And yet, Libya is front page on our few remaining newspapers and on our incessant 24-hour networks. Today isn’t the first time armies are pushing along the Mediterranean coast road and then falling back as airpower shifts the balance of power. It happened in the early 40’s during World War II.
The crux of the irony right now, however, isn’t World War II, it’s World War I. French and British jets are pounding Gaddafi and his armed forces. The US is aiding in this, especially with cruise missiles, but the Europeans are the ones driving this campaign. Since the British, French, and Americans are part of NATO, NATO is also involved, which means, (if you are following me), that Turkey is involved. Turkey has been a member of NATO since 1952.
And so, here is the historical irony. European and Euro-Asian nations (Britain, France, and Turkey) are exerting a military presence over North Africa yet again. Thumb through any world history book, and you’ll see that these nations have done this all before. Turkey was once the Ottoman Empire and in the Great War, the Ottoman Turks allied themselves with the Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary.
And at this time, the Allies, specifically the British and French (along with their attendant empires) tried to first invade Turkey through the Dardanelles, the ill-fated Gallipoli invasion that made Australian and New Zealand soldiers famous. (The movie, Gallipoli, helped make Mel Gibson famous to Americans; it’s still worth viewing.) When this invasion failed, the Allies tried a different tactic. At this time, the Ottoman Empire stretched through what are today independent nations. (Perhaps not free nations in any political sense, but independent nonetheless.) Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, to name only a few nations once dominated by the Turks. Not as far around the Mediterranean coast as Egypt and beyond all the way to Libya, but in the far reaches of the Mediterranean and down to the Persian Gulf, Ottoman Turkey ruled for centuries without rival.
Wars have a way of producing an opportunistic guise for adventuring countries. Britain and France, then the number one and number two European empires and thus the number one and two empires of the world, were no exception. In heartfelt political proclamations about the rights of peoples to command their own destinies, the British mainly (with the French clamoring for a share of the spoils) destabilized the Turks. (Another fantastic film, Lawrence of Arabia, tells this story; it is also worth watching.)
Come 1919 when the whole area was at peace and the new maps drawn, it was no surprise who controlled the areas and who didn’t. But this heartfelt concern for the locals was a deception. The European empires wanted to replace the old Turkish Empire with their own, and they did just that.
At Southwest Minnesota State University, I teach a great deal about World War I in various classes: 20th Century British LIT, a First-Year Experience class whose topic is solely the Great War, various Global Studies seminars (in which we actually take students to the battlefields of Belgium and France). As a scholar of the history and literature of the British Empire during this specific period, I often remind students that wherever there is tension in the world today, probably Europeans drew the maps. And they probably drew them in 1919 with the Treaty of Versailles in which the victorious Empires thought that their myopic vision for the world (which was based on the sacrosanct idea that they were right at all times) was not just the best vision for the world, but the only vision for the world.
It took a second world war to disabuse them of this notion.
What a difference a war makes. The end of World War I with its ill-conceived Treaty of Versailles was actually the beginning of World War II. World War II ended with the United Nations and its two major tenets: make war impossible and end colonialism.
With jets hitting targets in Libya, perhaps part of the UN Charter doesn’t seem so successful. And with these former colonial powers leading this charge, perhaps the second part of the Charter is being overlooked as well. History will be the judge. And the irony isn’t lost on the observant.
Back in college, I remember reading about the cycle of history: anarchy becomes tyranny because people want stability more than anything else so they surrender to a strongman. From this tyranny, an oligarchy rises as the tyrant needs to share power to keep it. This becomes an aristocratic system as entrenched families pass their power down through the generations. From this, people clamor for political power, hence republican and democratic ways of governing rise up. But these all fail in time and collapse back into anarchy which sets the whole political landscape in motion once again.
The future world I create for The Marsco Saga explores modern democracies after they fail. The main characters are struggling amid their personal success: they are part of the power structure which has risen from post-democracy anarchy to give the world stability. But, they chaff against the draconian methods Marsco employs to stay in power. The few chapters I’ve posted give you a sense of this central tension running throughout the novels.
“Only the dead have seen the end to war.” George Santayana
I am sure much of the political irony about Libya is lost on the average American college student. I think that’s the case because the average American knows little about World War I, “The Great War” which raged in Europe, Africa, parts of Asia, and on all the oceans from 1914 to 1918. It ended nearly 100 years ago and yet we still live with the repercussions of that debacle.
My comments are in no way intended to be a defense of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the self-proclaimed Libyan “King of Kings,” the horrific despot who runs Libya, as all despots do, with an iron fist. He’s not much of a tyrant since he really only controls a bit of sand and beach plus thousands of square miles of dry wadies and desert wastes dotted with an occasional oasis. If Libya didn’t sit on vast reserves of oil, few would pay attention to it or to its ranting lunatic of a ruler. (Compare Libya to the Sudan, and you will know what I mean.)
Pan Am Flight 103 and Lockerbie aside, (and Gaddafi was only tangentially involved with these after the fact, it seems), Libya hasn’t hurt Europe, and Europe only cares for Libya when her refugees clamor to seek safety in Sicily or when oil prices soar.
And yet, Libya is front page on our few remaining newspapers and on our incessant 24-hour networks. Today isn’t the first time armies are pushing along the Mediterranean coast road and then falling back as airpower shifts the balance of power. It happened in the early 40’s during World War II.
The crux of the irony right now, however, isn’t World War II, it’s World War I. French and British jets are pounding Gaddafi and his armed forces. The US is aiding in this, especially with cruise missiles, but the Europeans are the ones driving this campaign. Since the British, French, and Americans are part of NATO, NATO is also involved, which means, (if you are following me), that Turkey is involved. Turkey has been a member of NATO since 1952.
And so, here is the historical irony. European and Euro-Asian nations (Britain, France, and Turkey) are exerting a military presence over North Africa yet again. Thumb through any world history book, and you’ll see that these nations have done this all before. Turkey was once the Ottoman Empire and in the Great War, the Ottoman Turks allied themselves with the Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary.
And at this time, the Allies, specifically the British and French (along with their attendant empires) tried to first invade Turkey through the Dardanelles, the ill-fated Gallipoli invasion that made Australian and New Zealand soldiers famous. (The movie, Gallipoli, helped make Mel Gibson famous to Americans; it’s still worth viewing.) When this invasion failed, the Allies tried a different tactic. At this time, the Ottoman Empire stretched through what are today independent nations. (Perhaps not free nations in any political sense, but independent nonetheless.) Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, to name only a few nations once dominated by the Turks. Not as far around the Mediterranean coast as Egypt and beyond all the way to Libya, but in the far reaches of the Mediterranean and down to the Persian Gulf, Ottoman Turkey ruled for centuries without rival.
Wars have a way of producing an opportunistic guise for adventuring countries. Britain and France, then the number one and number two European empires and thus the number one and two empires of the world, were no exception. In heartfelt political proclamations about the rights of peoples to command their own destinies, the British mainly (with the French clamoring for a share of the spoils) destabilized the Turks. (Another fantastic film, Lawrence of Arabia, tells this story; it is also worth watching.)
Come 1919 when the whole area was at peace and the new maps drawn, it was no surprise who controlled the areas and who didn’t. But this heartfelt concern for the locals was a deception. The European empires wanted to replace the old Turkish Empire with their own, and they did just that.
At Southwest Minnesota State University, I teach a great deal about World War I in various classes: 20th Century British LIT, a First-Year Experience class whose topic is solely the Great War, various Global Studies seminars (in which we actually take students to the battlefields of Belgium and France). As a scholar of the history and literature of the British Empire during this specific period, I often remind students that wherever there is tension in the world today, probably Europeans drew the maps. And they probably drew them in 1919 with the Treaty of Versailles in which the victorious Empires thought that their myopic vision for the world (which was based on the sacrosanct idea that they were right at all times) was not just the best vision for the world, but the only vision for the world.
It took a second world war to disabuse them of this notion.
What a difference a war makes. The end of World War I with its ill-conceived Treaty of Versailles was actually the beginning of World War II. World War II ended with the United Nations and its two major tenets: make war impossible and end colonialism.
With jets hitting targets in Libya, perhaps part of the UN Charter doesn’t seem so successful. And with these former colonial powers leading this charge, perhaps the second part of the Charter is being overlooked as well. History will be the judge. And the irony isn’t lost on the observant.
Back in college, I remember reading about the cycle of history: anarchy becomes tyranny because people want stability more than anything else so they surrender to a strongman. From this tyranny, an oligarchy rises as the tyrant needs to share power to keep it. This becomes an aristocratic system as entrenched families pass their power down through the generations. From this, people clamor for political power, hence republican and democratic ways of governing rise up. But these all fail in time and collapse back into anarchy which sets the whole political landscape in motion once again.
The future world I create for The Marsco Saga explores modern democracies after they fail. The main characters are struggling amid their personal success: they are part of the power structure which has risen from post-democracy anarchy to give the world stability. But, they chaff against the draconian methods Marsco employs to stay in power. The few chapters I’ve posted give you a sense of this central tension running throughout the novels.
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