FOIA'd Email Shows French Motives for Overthrowing Libya [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

FOIA'd Email Shows French Motives for Overthrowing Libya [pdf]

foia.state.gov

40 pointscryoshon20 comments

I find it quite disturbing that not a single allegation is properly sourced. "According to knowledgeable individuals" means absolutely nothing. Not a single journalist would dare make such accusation on such a thin basis, especially since what follows are not facts but opinions. We don't even know if those individuals are close to the french government or to some faction in libya.

I sincerely hope foreign usa foreign policy is based on more solidely grounded analysis.

To be honest, as a French person I didn't see anything new in this cable. None of this was secret, it was pretty much the official stance, except stripped of the humanitarian aspects such as the ongoing civil war and repression or the Arab Spring.

It feels like Hillary's advisor was merely watching French TV and transcribing what journalists and politicians said publicly. The mention of Bernard Henri-Levy proves it. When you sum up a geopolitical situation in a few sentence, you don't waste any explaining BHL is a "semi-joke", unless your own knowledge is cursory.

With regards to the French population, you have to put it in context (April 2011, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Arab_Spring ). The Arab Spring was still going "smoothly" elsewhere, and we were all watching Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Syria and Algeria where things were handled "more or less peacefully" back then, at least to the French eye. Qadaffi's repression, on the other hand, was violent from the get-go.

It was a perfect storm (1) for Sarkozy, as on top of the things mentioned in the cable, he had to prove that he was serious with his Mediterranean Union, and more importantly he had to disprove the allegations that Qadaffi financed his election.

Wether it was the right thing to do or not, I personally have no idea, but it was pretty much a no-brainer at the time for France to distance itself from Qadaffi during his civil war, and fuel the opposition.

(1): unrelated, but maybe I should have said "homerun" in this case? My English fails me.

(1) Nope, you're correct.

"Perfect storm" refers to a confluence of events combining at the same time to create an extreme outcome.

Home run generally refers to a singular event of great benefit, an analogy that derives from baseball.

Your English is much better than you think, especially with grasping idioms. I've seen worse in HYP writing seminars.

As a french person, i beg to differ. The only publicaly stated reasons for the intervention was humanitarian, to prevent kadafi from decimating his own population. You could read other opinions on various newspapers, but nothing really based on facts, only more or less valid assumptions depending on your political background.

That's true for the most part, I mean, the government obviously didn't mention some of the things that are in the cable unless they deliberately wanted to shoot themselves in the foot, but the news would systematically feature pieces about Qadaffi's awkward presence on Bastille Day along with the oil, gold and silver.

My point is that the cable was nothing more than a short compilation of common knowledge and hearsay, like you said, "more or less valid assumptions" that you could easily get by switching radio channels a few times during your tuesday morning commute.

Alternative to properly sourcing is credibility of the author.

When quality newspaper or journalist releases important article with anonymous sources, they rely on their credibility.

It's the same for diplomatic communication. Important sources don't want to end in government papers. They are named only in classified memos. Requiring sources and suspecting employees faking it is not the way to go. If the suspicion arises, people are called back.

That's a good point. But in this particular situation, we know,and the memo says it as well, that lybian were highly divided into rival factions. Some were probably sided with the french gov and others against. In both cases, you can't rely on any of those factions to provide an honest reporting of the true reasons for the french actions.

The only reasoning can be made either from french sources inside the government, that is the people who took the decisions, or by careful fact analysis and deductions. Quoting "knowledgeable sources" without mentionning the reason those sources are knowledgeable is deeply insufficient to base any decision upon, IMHO.

foreign usa foreign policy is based on more solidely grounded analysis

Given the extent to which people believed that (a) Iraq had something to do with al-Quaeda and (b) Ahmed Chalabi was a credible source and leader-in-exile, I think you may be disappointed there.

(The "dodgy dossier" and "WMD ready to launch in 45 minutes" were big in UK politics, I don't know if they were relevant in the UK)

I think its more likely that foreign policy is decided on and analysis and intelligence gathering are carried out to justify policy - this is the weakness of all intelligence operations in all societies.

There also obvious issues with being too specific about intelligence sources - even in confidential documents.

"a single allegation is properly sourced." This isn't a report for external review. This is an internal communication among people who are in the loop.

This is a primary source for future sourcing!

We shouldn't get upset. Karma is a &itch. Look how much fun France and Europe is having with all those hungry masses flowing in.

Nor should we surprised

France allowed her colonies independence (without a bloody fight she was certainly going to loose), on the condition that they used the franc (technically the convertible franc).

This would enable France and French companies cheap access to African resources, that is continue what colonialism had been doing <- stealing African resources to subsidize France.

Also, it would prop up the franc as France continued to print money to finance her welfare state (not a judgement on the merits of a welfare state, just a fact that the French weren't taxing enough to afford it).

We shouldn't be too hard with the French though. The Americans largely do the same (see how quickly the leader of an oil producing country is deposed is he declares to ditch the dollar). The Brits gave their empire to the Americans to piggy back off this.

"The Americans largely do the same (see how quickly the leader of an oil producing country is deposed is he declares to ditch the dollar). The Brits gave their empire to the Americans to piggy back off this."

This petrodollar conspiracy is baffling.

Countries don't hold dollars primarily to buy oil.

The oil and gas industry is only about 4.6% to 6.5% of the global economy.

Countries hold reserve currencies to manage the exchange rate of their currency. Petrodollar conspiracists would be well served by learning about foreign exchange reserves.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign-exchange_reserves

And in any case, only 65% of foreign currency reserves are in the USD.

Furthermore, research shows that being the world's primary reserve currency affords the United States negligible advantage: 0.3 to 0.5 percent of US GDP in a normal year.

See: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/economic_studies/an_exorbit...

Compare that to the costs of "deposing the leader of an oil producing country": $6 trillion for the Iraq war or about 36% of GDP

See: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-war-anniversary-idUSB...

"is only about 4.6% to 6.5% of the global economy."

You think that's a trivial amount? 4 to 7 % of all human activity is oil or gas? That includes agriculture, weapons consumer goods, all construction, all construction materials, all other mining, all electronics, all automotive, all other energy, all entertainment, all education, all communications, all pharmaceuticals, all illegal drugs, all human trafficking, etc.

just 4 or 7%? !

As to the Petro dollar conspiracy,i didn't talk about that (not in regards to the dollar anyway), just mentioned the longevity of those who walk away from the buck.

But you brought up some numbers...

To your point that trillions were spent on Iraq, you're confusing the time line. In 2003 we were told, the war was going to cost a few hundred billion. And that the Iraqis, so grateful to their liberators, would pay for it with their oil.

Didn't pan out, it never does, but our actions can only be based on our current beliefs, not our future ones. We thought the war would be short and free (remember Bush's "mission accomplished" photo op in 2003).

0.5% of the American GDP is 90 billion, with an NPV of 36 trillion (calculated using the, admittedly the current 0.25%). Chump change indeed. That's a tremendous amount of wealth.

As to the foreign exchange, 65% are U.S. dollars, while the U.S. is less than one fifth of the world economy. Bit of an unbalance, no ?

> Look how much fun France and Europe is having with all those hungry masses flowing in.

Most of the fun is probably in Italy and Greece, though France has its share since the fireworks are of course in Paris.

> France allowed her colonies independence

Except that Libya wasn't, and has never been, a French colony. It was Italy's until 1945.

If you had actually read the linked document, you would realize that it suggests that the motives of the French in overthrowing Gaddafi was to prevent him introducing a new currency in Francophone African countries, which would have loosened France's grip on them.

No one is suggesting Libya was a French colony.

Even worse was France's protection of the dictator Omar Bongo in Gabon. He was protected from from being overthrown and democracy restricted as long as he kept his markets open primarily to France.

This only shows what someone (an analyst ?) in the State Department thought were the French Motives for Overthrowing Qaddafi (one overthrows a ruler, government, not a whole country).

Whether he was correct or not isn't very easy to establish, given the absolute lack of supporting information on most of these points.

Re-asserting the position of the French military is far fetched, for a president that cut its budget and size very significantly. Similarly, claims about influence do not seem particularly credible given the utter lack of follow up and French presence in the country after Qaddafi's death.

The only credible point really is c., a desire to improve his popularity at home.

France is a democracy, but this still happened. Would the French people allow their president to go to war over reasons stated in this cable, if such a permission was needed? This is what secrecy brings.

French military didn't had to assert any position in the world. Every country's military is in a good position to give each other hell.

Did Nicolas do France any good with this decision? A little may be, by taking some of libya's oil resources. Did he do world any favour? No

> Did Nicolas do France any good with this decision? A little may be, by taking some of libya's oil resources

Net loss. Libyan arms are destabilizing the whole Maghreb. Look at Mali.

Funny thing is that this document - incidentally? - says nothing about US involvement in the war in Libya.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_involvement_in_the_...

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