Quote (JohnnyMcCoy @ 22 Mar 2023 00:33)
The main issue in Libya is the neverending civil war. If one side won that damn war (doesn't matter which one), they could easily rebuild the country using its wealth from oil and natural gas.
Also, Gaddafi would be 81 right now and either already dead or nearing the end of his life. Chances are that without the Western intervention, the country would fracture along the same ethnic and geographic lines after his death, similar to what happened in former Yugoslavia after Tito died from natural causes. Gaddafi's Libya might have been shiny on the surface, but it's societal model was not stable or sustainable.
My main criticism with the war in Libya isn't so much that Gaddafi was forcibly removed from power, it's that the West repeated the mistake from the Iraq war and removed the autocrat who had kept his country together without any plan on how to follow it up, how to keep the country from falling apart and descending into pure chaos. By 2011, we really should have learned from our earlier mistakes and come with a plan.