Qaddafi's Libya could become a case study of international state capture

It is becoming increasingly evident that for many years a number of powerful U.S.-based multinational oil companies have been very proactive in trying to influence U.S. foreign policy toward Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. Highly paid U.S. consultants and lobbyists, including Ivy League academics and former U.S. ambassadors, have been recruited to burnish the image of Qaddafi, to lobby for pro-Libya policies, to emphasize commercial interests in the country and to laud Libya’s “stability” to the U.S. government and media.

Concern for the totalitarian nature of the regime or its human rights abuses did not feature prominently in any of their work to put it mildly. Furthermore, the well known “revolving door” of lobbying firms, regulators and the regulated industries seems to have played a role in this more international U.S.-Libya case as well. For instance, according to a media report, the founding chairman of the lobbying group, the U.S.-Libya Business Association (USLBA), went on to hold an influential position coordinating energy issues with Middle East countries at the U.S. State Department.

All this and much more, including information on the role of other lobbying and consulting firms played and the list of oil companies behind their efforts, are described in detail in recent reports in The Huffington Post and Mother Jones. The first article contains the now off-site web-based brochure on Libya written by USLBA lobbyists, along with excerpts from a diplomatic cable from U.S. embassy officials in Tripoli released by WikiLeaks. The second article focuses on another lobbying association, USA*Engage, with big oil clients like Halliburton. Only days ago, USA*Engage appeared to be lobbying against imposing U.S. sanctions against Libya.

As the Qaddafi situation continues to be painfully played out, surely more information on this type of international vested interests will be exposed and some dire lessons may be drawn. The Huffington Post and Mother Jones reports should warrant outside scrutiny given the sensitive nature of their allegations against multinationals, lobbyists and government officials and their ties with Qaddafi’s Libya.

On a broader level, it may not be premature to suggest that

, in which effective lobbying and commercial interests (alongside the fight against terror) unduly influenced U.S. foreign policy in a direction that paid little attention to the nefarious nature of a brutally autocratic leader, who engaged in gross human rights violations and denied socio-economic development to the Libyan people.

Qaddafi's Libya may also become a case study of the fallacy that diplomacy and development go hand in hand. Realistically speaking, they are often opposed to each other. Geopolitical and/or commercially-influenced diplomacy often gain the upper hand over development objectives. It is important to openly debate these issues at this juncture, not only given Qaddafi’s debacle, but also in the context of the increasingly permissive ‘money-in-politics’ corporate environment in the U.S. in the aftermath of the recent landmark Supreme Court decision on Citizen United vs. the Federal Electoral Commission.

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