“NATO fighting another Cold War in Libya” – journalist
Published: 18 April, 2011, 21:34
Edited: 19 April, 2011, 01:19
A Libyan rebel flashes the V-sign as he leaves the eastern town of Ajdabiya, on April, 17, 2011 (AFP Photo / Marwan Naamani)
(24.9Mb)embed videoThe NATO operation in Libya, argues author and journalist Patrick Henningsen, is really about targeting the third party nobody is talking about: China.
“If you look at the Soviet Union vs. the West, the original Cold War, this was not so much a war that was fought face to face on a military field,” he said. “This was a war that was fought in third-party regions and usually through proxies, and this is exactly what we are seeing today, especially in the last month in North Africa.”
Henningsen stressed that the goals of intervention by the UN and NATO forces are very different from those drawn up in UN Resolution 1973.
“The goals are regime change, and also the goals are the control of resources in that region and the eviction – in other words, the dismantling – of Chinese economic interests in Africa,” he said.
“Just in Libya alone, Chinese contracts are valued something like $20 billion. If you look at the instability that has been caused by this situation in Libya and across North Africa, according to Beijing’s Ministry of Commerce, the turnover from these Chinese investments in North Africa dropped almost 15 percent in the first two months of this year,” Henningsen added.
“Destabilization is hampering Chinese influence and economic investment in the region,” he concluded.
Journalist and author Afshin Rattansi thinks “there has been a cold war since the Second World War – with China arguably.”
“And it is certainly hotting up, but the state department, the think tanks on Capitol Hill do not seem to understand what to do, perhaps because of the American lobbying firms on K-Street in Washington, who themselves are trying to gain contracts with the world’s fastest-growing or most exciting economy like China,” says Rattansi.
Independent journalist James Corbett believes it would be naïve to think that China-US rivalry is the only factor playing a role in Libya, but Beijing is certainly concerned about what is going on.
“Chinese investment in Africa has been growing at such an incredible rate over the past several years, and Gaddafi himself has been on record to say that he believes that China will ultimately be the major player in Africa, because Chinese aid to African countries isn’t tied to humanitarian concerns the way aid from the West is or, at least, supposedly is,” said Corbett.
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