In this incisive account, scholar Horace Campbell investigates the political and economic crises of the early twenty-first century through the prism of NATO’s intervention in Libya. He traces the origins of the conflict, situates it in the broader context of the Arab Spring uprisings, and explains the expanded role of a post-Cold War NATO. This military organization, he argues, is the instrument through which the capitalist class of North America and Europe seeks to impose its political will on the rest of the world, however warped by the increasingly outmoded neoliberal form of capitalism. The intervention in Libya—characterized by bombing campaigns, military information operations, third party countries, and private contractors—exemplifies this new model. Campbell points out that while political elites in the West were quick to celebrate the intervention in Libya as a success, the NATO campaign caused many civilian deaths and destroyed the nation’s infrastructure. Furthermore, the instability it unleashed in the forms of militias and terrorist groups have only begun to be reckoned with, as the United States learned when its embassy was attacked and personnel, including the ambassador, were killed. Campbell’s lucid study is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand this complex and weighty course of events.

This volume is in many ways the culmination of the author's long involvement with Libya, tracing its history from pre-historic times through the revolutionary Qadhafi regime that consolidated its rule after 1969. Meticulously researched, the different chapters provide analytic summaries of each historic period.

We no longer inhabit a world governed by international coordination, a unified NATO bloc, or an American hegemon. Traditionally, the decline of one empire leads to a restoration in the balance of power, via a struggle among rival systems of order. Yet this dynamic is surprisingly absent today; instead, the superpowers have all, at times, sought to promote what Jason Pack terms the 'Enduring Disorder'. He contends that Libya's ongoing conflict-more so than the civil wars in Yemen, Syria, Venezuela or Ukraine-constitutes the ideal microcosm in which to identify the salient features of this new era of geopolitics. The country's post-Qadhafi trajectory has been molded by the stark absence of coherent international diplomacy; while Libya's incremental implosion has precipitated cross-border contagion, further corroding global institutions and international partnership. Pack draws on over two decades of research in and on Libya and Syria to highlight the Kafkaesque aspects of today's global affairs. He shows how even the threats posed by the Arab Spring, and the Benghazi assassination of US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, couldn't occasion a unified Western response. Rather, they have further undercut global collaboration, demonstrating the self-reinforcing nature of the progressively collapsing world order.

Libya is teetering on the edge of collapse, having become a new haven for terrorist organizations and an epicenter of the refugee crisis. Few could have imagined that the uprising against the longstanding regime of Mu'ammar Al-Gaddafi would expose a polity deeply fractured by internal divisions. Fewer still could have predicted the intractability of the conflicts that emerged in the wake of this revolution. Jacob Mundy's Libya is the first book to explain the political, security, and humanitarian crises that have engulfed Libya – Africa's largest oil-exporting country – since the Arab Spring of 2011. Examining the roots of the anti-Gaddafi revolution and the failures that resulted in the country's descent into chaos, Mundy identifies new centers of power that coalesced in the wake of the regime's collapse. The more these rival coalitions vied for political authority and control over Libya's vast oil wealth, the more they reached out to external actors who were playing their own "great game" in Libya and across the region. In the face of such a multifaceted crisis, the future looks grim as the international community seems unable to bring peace to this divided and conflict-ridden nation.

Why has Libya fallen apart since 2011? The world has largely given up trying to understand how the revolution that toppled Muammar Gaddafi has left the country a failed state and a major security headache for Europe. Gaddafi's police state has been replaced by yet another dictatorship, amidst a complex conflict of myriad armed groups, Islamists, tribes, towns and secularists. What happened? One of few foreign journalists to have lived in post-revolution Tripoli, Ulf Laessing has unique insight into the violent nature of post-Gaddafi politics. Confronting threats from media-hostile militias and jihadi kidnappings, in a world where diplomats retreat to their compounds and guns are drawn at government press conferences, Laessing has kept his ear to the ground and won the trust of many key players. Understanding Libya Since Gaddafi is an original blend of personal anecdote and nuanced Libyan history. It offers a much-needed diagnosis of why war has erupted over a desert nation of just 6 million, and of how the country blessed with Africa's greatest energy reserves has been reduced to state collapse.

Brings to life a group of Greco-Roman cities long lost under the desert sands of North Africa. The discoveries of these sites offer a unique view of both Africa and the Greco-Roman world.

A vivid and astonishing reckoning with the Gaddafi regime, from one of our most acclaimed and gifted international journalists The fall of Muammar Gaddafi, who was for forty-two years the great autocrat-madman on the world stage, is among the past decade’s most dramatic turning points. In Lindsey Hilsum, a renowned British correspondent for over a quarter century, the end of the Gaddafi regime has found its definitive chronicler. Following six individuals living through this time of unprecedented danger and opportunity, Hilsum tells the full story of the Libyan revolution—from the uprising of the early months through the toppling of Gaddafi’s regime and his savage death in the desert. For the paperback edition, Hilsum brings her analysis up to the present day—with new material on the killing of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, the July elections, and the Benghazi anti-militia demonstrations—and explores what the future of Libya will bring.

This book offers a novel, incisive and wide-ranging account of Libya's '17 February Revolution' by tracing how critical towns, communities and political groups helped to shape its course. Each community, whether geographical (e.g. Misrata, Zintan), tribal/communal (e.g. Beni Walid) or political (e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood) took its own path into the uprisings and subsequent conflict of 2011, according to their own histories and relationship to Muammar Qadhafi's regime. The story of each group is told by the authors, based on reportage and expert analysis, from the outbreak of protests in Benghazi in February 2011 through to the transitional period following the end of fighting in October 2011. They describe the emergence of Libya's new politics through the unique stories of those who made it happen, or those who fought against it. The Libyan Revolution and its Aftermath brings together leading journalists, academics, and specialists, each with extensive field experience amidst the constituencies they depict, drawing on interviews with fighters, politicians and civil society leaders who have contributed their own account of events to this volume.

A riveting, beautifully crafted account of Libya after Qadhafi. The death of Colonel Muammar Qadhafi freed Libya from forty-two years of despotic rule, raising hopes for a new era. But in the aftermath, the country descended into bitter rivalries and civil war, paving the way for the Islamic State and a catastrophic migrant crisis. In a fast-paced narrative that blends frontline reporting, analysis, and history, Frederic Wehrey tells the story of what went wrong. An Arabic-speaking Middle East scholar, Wehrey interviewed the key actors in Libya and paints vivid portraits of lives upended by a country in turmoil: the once-hopeful activists murdered or exiled, revolutionaries transformed into militia bosses or jihadist recruits, an aging general who promises salvation from the chaos in exchange for a return to the old authoritarianism. He traveled where few Westerners have gone, from the shattered city of Benghazi, birthplace of the revolution, to the lawless Sahara, to the coastal stronghold of the Islamic State in Qadhafi’s hometown of Sirt. He chronicles the American and international missteps after the dictator’s death that hastened the country’s unraveling. Written with bravura, based on daring reportage, and informed by deep knowledge, TheBurning Shores is the definitive account of Libya’s fall.

Toppling Qaddafi is a carefully researched, highly readable look at the role of the United States and NATO in Libya's war of liberation and its lessons for future military interventions. Based on extensive interviews within the US government, this book recounts the story of how the United States and its European allies went to war against Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, why they won the war, and what the implications for NATO, Europe, and Libya will be. This was a war that few saw coming, and many worried would go badly awry, but in the end the Qaddafi regime fell and a new era in Libya's history dawned. Whether this is the kind of intervention that can be repeated, however, remains an open question - as does Libya's future and that of its neighbors.