Libya On The Brink And How To Pull It Back

The launch of Operation Dignity in May 2014 transformed Libya’s low-level military and political conflict into a full-blown war. The seizure of Tripoli and much of western Libya by the opposing Libya Dawn movement left the country divided in two with two parliaments, two governments, and two putative armies. The violence of the last year has left the country on the brink of economic, social, and political meltdown, and provided an opportunity for the organization known as Islamic State (IS) to proliferate. If Libya goes over the edge, this will have major consequences for Europe and the region: Libya will become a base for launching terrorist operations for the foreseeable future and the scale of illegal migration and other forms of smuggling will reach previously unimaginable proportions. The international community’s efforts to resolve the crisis, particularly those of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), have failed to prevent this collapse. UNSMIL’s initial approach to solving the division of Libya’s elected parliament, the House of Representatives (HoR), did not engage key decision makers and bred mistrust on the part of the Libya Dawn camp. Consecutive drafts of a political agreement failed to reconcile the fundamental interests of each side and met with opposition from one side or another. Armed actors on both sides were not sufficiently engaged and are not invested in the solution currently on the table. The decision to close the draft agreement to further amendments and initial the agreement in Skhirat, Morocco, on 11 July, 2015, without the support of major components from the Libya Dawn camp was a risky strategy which has very limited chances for success. If this strategy fails and the agreement cannot produce an inclusive Government of National Accord, then the international community will have no choice but to pursue a more long-term and multidimensional strategy. This strategy would not eschew the possibility of a high-level political agreement, but would attempt to facilitate it.

The contributors to this book - including policymakers, diplomats, scientists, regionalists and academic specialists - have joined in an effort to survey nuclear arms control successes, ongoing initiatives, and future prospects for reducing and countering nuclear proliferation.

Ten years after Libya descended into conflict, the contours of a new society are emerging. How has violence remade the country—what has happened to inter-community and inter-personal relations, to social hierarchies and elite composition? Which new groups, networks and identities have formed through conflict, and how has this transformed power structures, modes of capital accumulation and governance at the local and national levels? How has the violence contributed to create new communities, both inside the country and in exile? This volume brings together leading researchers, both foreign and Libyan, to examine the deep changes undergone by Libya’s society amid civil war. These transformations are bound to shape the country for decades to come, and will influence its relations with the outside world. By addressing neglected yet crucial aspects of social change amid violence, the contributors substantially broaden the picture of Libyan society beyond the current confines of scholarship, as well as enriching wider debates in Conflict Studies.

The Routledge Handbook of Persian Gulf Politics provides a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of Persian Gulf politics, history, economics, and society. The volume begins its examination of Ottoman rule in the Arabian Peninsula, exploring other dimensions of the region’s history up until and after independence in the 1960s and 1970s. Featuring scholars from a range of disciplines, the book demonstrates how the Persian Gulf’s current, complex politics is a product of interwoven dynamics rooted in historical developments and memories, profound social, cultural, and economic changes underway since the 1980s and the 1990s, and inter-state and international relations among both regional actors and between them and the rest of the world. The book comprises a total of 36 individual chapters divided into the following six sections: Historical Context Society and Culture Economic Development Domestic Politics Regional Security Dynamics The Persian Gulf and the World Examining the Persian Gulf’s increasing importance in regional politics, diplomacy, economics, and security issues, the volume is a valuable resource for scholars, students, and policy makers interested in political science, history, Gulf studies, and the Middle East.

As North African, Middle Eastern, and Sahelian societies adapt to the post-Arab Spring era and the rise of violence across the area, various groups find in Islam an answer to the challenges of the era. This book explores how Islamist social movements, Sufi brotherhoods, and Jihadi armed groups, in their great diversity, elaborate their social networks, and recruit sympathizers and militants in complicated times. The book innovates by transcending regional boundaries, bringing together specialists of the three aforementioned regions. First, it highlights how geographically dispersed religious groups define themselves as members of a larger, universal Umma, while evolving in deeply embedded local contexts. Second, its contributors prioritize in-depth fieldwork research, offering fine-grained, original insights into the manifold mobilization of Islamist-inspired social movements in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Mali, Senegal, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, and Western Europe. The book sheds light on the tense debates and competition taking place amongst the different trends composing the Islamist galaxy and between other groups that also claim an Islamic legitimacy, including Sufi brotherhoods and ethnic and/or tribal groups as well. This book was originally published as a special issue of Mediterranean Politics.

Understanding how leaders make foreign policy and national security decisions is of paramount importance for the policy community and academia. This book explores how leaders such as Trump, Obama, Netanyahu and others make decisions using the Applied Decision Analysis (ADA) method.

'Taylor Downing vividly brings to life a terrible year' Max Hastings Sunday Times Eighty years ago, Britain stood at the brink of defeat. In 1942, a string of military disasters engulfed Britain in rapid succession : the collapse in Malaya; the biggest surrender in British history at Singapore; the passing of three large German warships through the Straits of Dover in broad daylight; the longest ever retreat through Burma to the gates of India; serious losses to Rommel's forces in North Africa; the siege of Malta and the surrender at Tobruk. All of this occurred against the backdrop of catastrophic sinkings in the Atlantic and the Arctic convoys. People began to claim that Churchill was not up to the job and his leadership was failing badly. Public morale reached a new low. 1942 Britain At the Brink explores the story of frustration and despair in that year prompting the Prime Minister to demand of his army chief 'Have you not got a single general who can win battles?' Using new archival material, historian Taylor Downing shows just how unpopular Churchill became in 1942 with two votes attacking his leadership in the Commons and the emergence of a serious political rival. Most people think that Britain's worst moment of the war was in 1940 when the nation stood up against the threat of German invasion. In 1942 Britain at the Brink, Taylor Downing describes in nail-biting detail what was really Britain's darkest hour .