Florida Conservative

Restore flow too broadly and leverage may dissipate before the central dispute is addressed. Maintain maximum pressure indefinitely and coalition cohesion, domestic economic tolerance, and global energy stability may erode.

This white paper traces who benefits from Libya’s fractured oil sector and the parallel human-trafficking economy, and connects these outcomes to the 2011 NATO-led intervention under the Obama administration. Using Machiavellian, liberal‑internationalist, and geoeconomic lenses, we argue that Muammar Gaddafi’s removal was an intervention many Western actors had incentives to pursue, and that post‑war policy choices entrenched a model of managed instability that preserves oil