Libya and the West

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.