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It is clear that two legitimacies are confronting each other today in Libya: armed struggle and liberation versus the de facto legitimacy of a self-appointed leadership derived from western support. The two are locked in a cold (and potentially hot) conflict over Libya’s future, the nature of its political order, and its foreign policy. It is a contest between a strategy directed by an internal agenda on the one hand; and one defined from the outside, by NATO and western powers, on the other.
These conflicts are part of the wider scene in the region, which is characterised by polarisation between the internal dynamics of the revolution and the foreign powers’ logic of containment and control, of calculated, limited, and monitored change. These foreign powers’ strategy is to swap the old players with new ones while keeping the rules of the game intact, using proxy wars manned via allied local elites, thus working to recycle the old regime into the new order in Libya, as they have been doing in Tunisia and Egypt.
Libya is set to be a scene of multiple battles: conflicts between NATO’s men and the fighters and their supporters on the ground, and conflicts between the foreign forces that have invested in the war on Gaddafi: the French, who are determined to have the upper hand politically and economically; the Italians, who regard Libya as their back garden; the British, who are determined to safeguard their contracts; and the Turks, keen to revive their influence in the old Ottoman hemisphere. Then there are the losing players in the new equation: the Chinese and the Russians.
