article on possible Libya scenarios

A good basic rundown FROM THE BBC.

The most encouraging passage is this one:

“Tribal rivalries are intense in eastern Libya. Despite that, the level of organisation and co-ordination has been quite impressive.”

One of the strong (if inconsistent) lessons of recent years is that the modern nation-state is often a very powerful concept even in cases where it was created by totally artificial, even opportunistically colonialistic means.

Just as it turned out to be a lie that Mubarak was the only force capable of preventing sectarian apocalypse in Egypt, it may turn out to be equally a lie that only clever Qaddafi’s balancing act was able to weave together a modern nation out of dozens of mutually adversarial tribes. It’s too early to say, but the passage just cited makes it seem possible.

One of the many things I love about all these Arab uprisings is that all the theories we’ve had to hear for the past 10 or more years are going to have to be replaced by a whole bunch of fresh theories, because so many of them are being outright falsified by events on the ground.