The Libyan dictatorship follows a pattern recognizable elsewhere
in the Arab world. A strong and ruthless leader, surrounded by
well-rewarded henchmen, legitimizes his original coup d’état
as a “revolution” that allegedly conferred power by popular
request. The “revolution” has been decked out in socialist
colors, with an “Arab nationalist” tinge, and has been supported
by left-wing opinion in the West, which has made full diplomatic
room for the resulting tyranny. There has been no vote either
before or after the seizure of power, and opposition meanwhile
has been ruthlessly silenced, with the population kept in order
by an ubiquitous secret police. Support from other
“revolutionary” governments — and especially from the Soviet
empire while it lasted — has provided the technical know-how
required to crush dissent and to produce a semblance of
modernity. The resulting government is without any process for
handing over power, and so becomes a hereditary monarchy in all
but name — as in Syria, Libya, and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. It is
without a genuine rule of law, property rights are uncertain and
subject to arbitrary confiscation, and the whole is kept in being
by ruthless force.
The discovery of fossil fuels would have been less of a disaster
for mankind had they not been found beneath fossil communities.
Alas, however, thanks to oil we in the West have been tempted to
deal with loathsome satrapies like Saudi Arabia and to suck up to
petty tyrants all over the Middle East. Every now and then a note
of principle is struck, as when Mrs. Thatcher broke off
diplomatic relations with Syria and Libya and when President
Reagan ordered the bombing of Qaddafi’s palace in Tripoli. And
just possibly President George W. Bush’s decision to complete the
work that his father had started in the matter of Iraq has set a
precedent that may lead to a more defiant approach to other
Middle Eastern tyrannies.
But I doubt it. As the example of Libya shows, the temptation
offered by oil can override every consideration of principle. A
dictatorship that has specialized in terrorism, has supplied arms
and resources to the IRA and ETA, has played an active part in
the destabilization of Lebanon, has run its embassies abroad as
assassination clinics, and that planned and executed the most
despicable of all recent terrorist acts prior to the atrocities
of 9/11 has proved to be sitting on a vast reservoir of oil. To
get at this oil we must have diplomatic relations with the
criminals who control access to it. And to do this we must
release the only Libyan terrorist who has been effectively
brought to justice, for his part in the bombing that killed 270
people, most of them Americans, over Lockerbie.
This situation is not of a new or unusual kind.
Realpolitik repeatedly requires statesmen to qualify
moral and political principles in order to achieve goals judged
to be vital to the national interest. To do this is not to ignore
morality, but to balance one moral requirement against another:
the requirement of principle against the duty to safeguard the
nation. And vast is the literature of moral and political
philosophy devoted to dilemmas of this kind. Nevertheless, the
scandal caused by the Scottish and British governments’ handling
of the Lockerbie affair is entirely justified, since it reflects
other and more sinister features of the case.
First, there has been a continual stream of lies and evasions, by
politicians seeking to deny that any “deal” had been struck with
the Libyan government. Second, there has been the continuing
pretense over 12 years that Megrahi, the man found guilty in the
bombing, was not acting as an agent of the Libyan government, and
that the bombing was not an act of war that demanded retaliation.
The very fact that the “deal” with the Libyan government involved
Megrahi’s release gave the lie to this deception. And of course
the official hero’s welcome that Megrahi received was entirely to
be expected: he had not, in Libyan eyes, committed a crime, but
acted under orders and been captured by the enemy. Since his
release he has been paraded before a meeting of the Organization
for African Unity, a group of unelected “members of parliament”
representing tin-pot dictatorships around Africa which was
meeting in Libya, and received a standing ovation from
politicians who declare him to be the “victim of double
standards,” having no standards whatsoever of their own. The
affair has therefore exposed the fundamental weakness of the
Western nations today — that they refuse to recognize acts of
war when they are themselves the target.
Third, there has been the contempt shown to the United States,
which was assured that Megrahi would serve out his term. The
outrage caused in America is understandable, and would have
deterred any government other than our current Labour government,
which sees no particular virtue in the special relationship and
has no real sense of what is at stake in the long-standing
unwritten alliance of the English-speaking peoples. Now it is
true that Americans have not, in the past, been as solid on the
terrorism question as they are today, have lent massive support
to the IRA and not bothered very much about what is done with the
huge amounts of money raised in this country by Middle Eastern
“charities.” The British have rightly resented this in the past.
But 9/11 changed all that, and in any case the crime committed
over Lockerbie was aimed explicitly at America, and impacted on
the very heart of the special relationship. Even if
Realpolitik demands some kind of accommodation with the
Libyan tyrant, it should not be achieved by jeopardizing a
relationship on which the entire foreign policy of Britain
depends.
So far as can be understood through all the lies and half-truths
that have emerged from the British government, the goal of the
deal with Qaddafi was to create an opening for British Petroleum
in Libya. If this is true, then it can only further underline the
effect that oil has had on the moral fiber of our society — an
effect far worse than that of alcohol. Instead of doing what our
government has long been promising, and looking for alternative
sources of energy, the old enslavement to fossil fuels continues
to dictate both foreign and domestic policy. Once BP has been
installed in Libya it will become hostage to Qaddafi, liable at
any time to be nationalized like the Western oil companies that
established themselves in Venezuela, and constantly pleading
within the British government to go softly with the Libyan
regime. And the exploitation of the Libyan oil fields will delay
by another decade the move on which, in my view, the continued
safety and prosperity of the West now depends, namely a
comprehensive switch to nuclear power.
There is one aspect of the case that is apt to puzzle Americans,
and that is the role of Scotland
in producing an outcome that has humiliated the British as a
whole. Because the original crime took place over Scotland it was
judged in the Scottish courts. Scots law is as old as the law of
England, but its roots are different. It does not derive, as
English and American law derive, from the common law of the
Anglo-Saxons, but from Roman law. Despite the Act of Union that
joined our two kingdoms three centuries ago, the Scots have
retained their own civil and criminal jurisdiction. There was no
way that the British parliament could influence the decision to
release Megrahi, which was a decision justified by Scots law.
Furthermore, the Scots have their own parliament, which can make
executive decisions without consulting the relevant ministers in
Westminster. This parliament was established by the Labour Party
as a means to neutralize the movement for Scottish independence,
which remains the most dangerous of the many threats currently
faced by New Labour. Without the Scottish vote the Labour Party
could not form a government in Westminster. It relies upon the
legacy of Celtic resentment at every election, and its own
leadership shares that resentment and sees its primary purpose in
office as one of oppressing and chastising the English: hence the
Labour Party opposes the idea of an English parliament as
vehemently as it has supported the establishment of separate
legislatures in Scotland and Wales. The prime minister and the
majority of his cabinet are either Scottish or educated in
Scotland. And in the Megrahi affair they discerned an opportunity
to show that the Scots had achieved all the independence
they
had wanted, and at the same to display the solidarity with
Scotland that is needed if the Scots are to vote Labour in the
next general election.
It all went badly wrong, of course. For the Scottish people, even
if they repeatedly make the mistake of voting Labour, are far
more averse to Middle Eastern terrorism than they are to
government by the English (which means, in effect, government by
the Tory party). The Labour Party is now losing popularity in its
most important power base, at the very moment when the movement
for independence is being revived — a movement that would
finally liberate the English from the Scottish yoke and enable
them to rebuild what remains of their country. That this
liberation should have been initiated by Colonel Qaddafi is only
one of the many remarkable achievements of that particular
madman. But let us not praise him for it, and instead remember
the deep complicity that has existed between the political left
and Middle Eastern terrorism. That complicity is the real reason
why Tony Blair found no obstacle to shaking hands with Qaddafi,
and why, in the conflicts that occur in the Middle East, the left
is so often disposed to side with our enemies, regardless of how
they behave.
