Libya and the West : What Everyone Needs to Know®

Libya and the West: What Everyone Needs to Know® focuses on Libya''s diplomatic relationships with Western powers, providing explanations of Italian, British, U.S., and French policies toward Libya from the 1910s to the 2020s. It assesses how these four Western powers, alternately rivals and partners, implemented policies that advanced their own interests in the Middle East and North Africa and profoundly shaped the history of Libya. It brings insight and wisdom to such diverse historical actors as Benito Mussolini, Muammar Qaddafi, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama, and evaluates Western policies during such watershed events as World War II, the Cold War, the rise of Islamic extremism, and the Arab Spring. Libya and the West also examines the culture and social dynamics of modern Libya that shaped the state and its foreign policy, as well as the impact of international events on the well-being of the people of Libya.

Libya and the West: What Everyone Needs to Know® is a welcome update to the literature on Western diplomatic relations with Libya. It specifically analyzes the complicated relationships that Italy, Britain, the United States, and France developed with Libya beginning in the 1910s. On the basis of a wide range of primary and secondary sources, it offers insights into the political and socio-economic conditions within Libya that concerned Western leaders and shaped their policies. Among the crucial episodes that this book embraces are fascist Italy''s military conquest and colonization of Libya; the expulsion of Axis armies from Libya and other north African states during World War II; the enthronement of King Idris in 1951; the discovery of oil in Libya in 1959. It explains the seizure of power by Muammar Qaddafi in 1969; the low-intensity military conflict between the United States and Libya in the 1980s; the Western response to Libyan acts of terrorism, including the murder of a British police officer in London in 1984 and the downing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988; the enduring turmoil sparked by the Arab Spring in 2011; the decision by NATO powers to intervene militarily in the Libyan civil war to ensure the downfall of the Qaddafi regime; and the murder of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens at Benghazi in 2012.