For Libyans of humble origins, a military career provided the best means of obtaining an advanced education and achieving higher economic and social status. Furthermore, for Qaddafi and other devotees of Nasser, the military offered the best vehicle for producing revolutionary change within the political establishment. In 1963, at the first general meeting of his movement (which was attended by followers from Sabha, Misratah, and Tripoli), the conspirators decided that Qaddafi and two other young men would enroll in the Libyan Royal Military Academy in Benghazi in Cyrenaica. After entering the academy Qaddafi began recruiting other officer-cadets into his revolutionary organization, which he named the Free Unionist Officers. After receiving his army commission in 1965 Qaddafi studied communications at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in Great Britain. Then came the devastating Six-Day War, which the Libyan armed forces observed from the sidelines. Just as Nasser had vowed to act against his king after Egypt’s humiliating defeat in 1948, after Israel’s stunning victory over Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in June 1967 several young Libyan officers pledged to rescue Arab esteem and deepen Libya’s commitment to Arab causes by abolishing the corrupt, pro-Western monarchy.
Revolutionary Libya
Within months of the coup the RCC consolidated its control over Libyan society and Qaddafi increased his power within the ruling apparatus. Qaddafi assumed the posts of prime minister and minister of defense while maintaining his leadership of the RCC. The regime brought more than two hundred former government officials to trial before “people’s courts” on charges of treason and malfeasance. Several individuals received death sentences or long prison terms. Former King Idris was tried and convicted in absentia and sentenced to death, but the sentence was never carried out. The RCC undermined the power and prestige of the Sanusis and assailed tribal distinctions as impediments to unity and social progress. The legal code was brought into compliance with sharia, and all political parties, except the RCC-sponsored Arab Socialist Union (ASU), were abolished. The ASU, which was modeled after Nasser’s party of the same name, was established to stimulate political participation, promote revolutionary fervor, and stoke enthusiasm for the regime. All trade unions were incorporated into the ASU, intellectuals were publicly repudiated, newspapers were shut down or taken over by the government, and all Italians and Jews were expelled from the country.25
In the mid-1960s the independence afforded by oil income and the growing popular appeal of Arab nationalism prompted the Libyan government to negotiate an end to the basing agreements it held with the United States and Great Britain. Both countries decided before the coup to evacuate their bases and hastened their departures after the RCC assumed power. The Nixon administration decided that Wheelus field was of marginal value and believed that a confrontation over the base could harm relations with the new leaders in Tripoli and could threaten America’s very lucrative oil interests. In the summer of 1970 the United States transferred control of Wheelus Air Base to the Libyan government.
After the closure of the American and British bases, Tripoli sought new sources for the country’s military equipment. To remain dependent on the United States and Great Britain for modern weaponry would have generated protest at home and criticism throughout the Arab world, since both countries were viewed as supportive of Israel and hostile to Arab interests. France, which had become increasingly dependent on imported Libyan oil and had developed an even-handed policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, agreed in 1970 to sell Libya a weapons package valued at four hundred million dollars. Although the contract included 110 Mirage fighter aircraft, France refused to sell Tripoli a fleet of medium tanks. That same year Qaddafi approached the Soviet bloc for arms, all the while maintaining his staunch opposition to communism and asserting his country’s status as a nonaligned state. He subsequently negotiated a deal with Moscow for the purchase of thirty tanks and one hundred armored personnel carriers.26 By the time Libya and the Soviet Union concluded their first major arms deal in 1974 both countries had come to realize that the immediate benefits of their tentative relationship outweighed their ideological differences and long-term disagreements. Tripoli relied on the Soviet Union for huge quantities of modern military equipment and technical assistance. Moscow appreciated Libya’s anti-Western policies, shared its goal of fostering radical elements in the Arab world and Africa, and valued its hard currency. Nonetheless, Qaddafi remained steadfastly opposed to communism, which he equated with slavery, and the Kremlin carefully avoided support for or identification with Qaddafi’s controversial theories and causes.27 A senior State Department official described the burgeoning Libyan-Soviet relationship as a “marriage of convenience.”28
By the mid-1970s Libya’s foreign policy had tilted dramatically toward increased cooperation with the Soviet Union, although the regime still maintained the facade of nonalignment. Furthermore, shortly after the United States evacuated Wheelus field the RCC informed the Nixon administration that Washington would not be able to achieve good relations with Tripoli so long as it supported Israel. In light of these developments, relations between the United States and Libya cooled rapidly. In 1973 the United States recalled its ambassador to Libya and did not dispatch a replacement.29
The Cultural Revolution
In 1972 Qaddafi relinquished his duties as prime minister and dedicated himself to articulating his revolutionary ideology, which he named the Third International Theory. According to the theory both capitalism and communism are false ideologies, because the former emphasizes worker exploitation while the latter stresses class warfare. Qaddafi’s theory, on the other hand, eliminates class distinctions and provides for direct popular participation at all levels of government. The Third International Theory also champions the concept of positive neutrality by which Third World nations can coexist with the United States and the Soviet Union and can conclude agreements with them for their own interests but will not fall under the domination of either superpower.30
By 1973 Qaddafi realized that the ASU was not going to generate the “tumultuous popular revolution” that he had envisioned.31 Consequently, in April he launched a new revolution based on the following five-point program:
1. All existing laws must be repealed and replaced by revolutionary enactments designed to produce the necessary revolutionary change.
2. All feeble minds must be weeded out of society by taking appropriate measures toward perverts and deviationists.
3. An administrative revolution must be staged in order to eliminate all forms of bourgeoisie and bureaucracy.
4. Arms must be distributed to the people who will point them at the chests of anyone who challenges the revolution.
5. A cultural revolution must be initiated to get rid of all imported poisonous ideas and to fuse the people’s genuine moral and material potentialities.32
Over the next five years Qaddafi outlined his revolutionary political, economic, and social ideas in his three-volume work, The Green Book, which he called “the gospel of the new era, the era of the masses.”33 The CIA called the work “a blueprint for reshaping human society.”34 With the publication of The Green Book Qaddafi’s program to indoctrinate the masses became more thorough and organized.35
During the Libyan Cultural Revolution Qaddafi instituted several reforms to overhaul the political order of the country. Hoping to kindle a revolutionary passion among the people and believing that direct democracy was the true form of democracy, he urged his countrymen to take charge of the government and run it themselves through a system of “people’s committees.” Within a few months thousands of committees were established throughout Libya. They were organized both on a geographical basis and within diverse organizations, such as universities, businesses, and government bureaucracies. Eventually the committees assumed responsibility for local and regional administration and operated basic services in fields such as education, agriculture, housing, and public utilities. The concept of direct democracy or “people’s power,” which Qaddafi