In 1929, after nearly 20 years of
facing resistance in Libya, Benito Mussolini, the Fascist ruler of Italy,
appointed General Graziani as colonial governor to put down the military resistance
of Libyan nationalists led by Omar Mukhtar. Graziani was ruthless, and
fortunately he was arrested when Mussolini was toppled. His foremost atrocity
was putting over a million Libyan civilians in a camp in a desert, with the
intent to starve them in retaliation for the guerilla fighters objecting to the
Italian occupation. The film, The
Lion of the Desert (1980), faithfully depicts the historical events
that took place in Libya from 1920 to 1931. The sheer arbitrariness other than
from brute force in the occupation and the impotence of the League of Nations
are salient themes in the film.
Both in peace negotiations, which
Gaziani posed merely to given him more time with which to build up his army in
Libya, and after Mukhtar’s capture, the direct refusal of Mukhtar to accept the
legitimacy of the presence of the Italians on Libyan soil combined with the
inability of the Italian brass to furnish a legitimate justification for the occupation
leaves the viewers with the sense that overwhelming modern military power was
the reason in search of justification. At one point, Graziani admits to Mukhtar
that the fact that Italy is there is what justifies the presence. The Libyan’s
guns and horses are no match for the Italian metal tanks and machine guns. The
result is a foregone conclusion. Yet Mukhtar holds to his principles rather
than accepts bribes to turn on his cause.
The want of any international
constraint on the fascists was also clear. At one point, the Italian delegation
to the peace talks remind Mukhtar that the Libya is not a nation and thus the
fighters don’t even have a voice in the League of Nations. No one would care,
anyway. Yet even if a world does care, such as in the case of Israel’s
atrocities in Gaza in 2023-2024, not even the World Court’s verdict and the
United Nations itself had any teeth. At one point, Israel’s ambassador to the
UN shredded the UN charter document in front of the General Assembly. That it
had created Israel apparently made no difference to the Israeli government. As
a concurrent case in point, Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine triggered resistance
from the E.U. and U.S., but pushing back the aggressor was difficult. Russia’s bully-threat
of using nuclear bombs just showed how dangerous it is for the world being
unable to provide a check against aggressors.
General Graziani’s mass camp for
Libyan civilians is eerily similar to Israel’s camps for Gazans nearly a century
later. In both cases, the world was not able to defend even such numbers of
innocent civilians. In the film, an Italian military man admits that the Geneva
Convention is not being followed. The same could be said of Israel in Gaza. The
9000 Palestinian hostages being held in Israel and the reports of the torture
of at least some of them did not dissuade the U.S. from passing $24 billion in
aid to Israel. Clearly, having the U.S. as the “global policeman” was not an
effective basis for a peaceful global order. Similarly, the League of Nations
is depicted as impotent in the film.
From the vantage point of more
than 40 years since the release of the film, viewers could be excused for
feeling utter frustration at the lack of political development since 1929. The advent
of nuclear bombs just makes the lack of international political development all
the more striking. At some point, humanity will likely pay dearly for its refusal
to cede any governmental sovereignty to an international force with teeth. To be
sure, back in the eighteenth century, Kant claimed that world peace would only
be possible, rather than probable, if a world federation exists. But his notion
of such a federation we would call confederal, rather than a case of modern
federalism, as he makes no mention of ceding some sovereignty to the federal
level. The UN, rather than the E.U. and U.S., is akin to Kant’s federation. I
contend that the shift from confederal to (modern) federal would be decisive in
shifting the chances of world peace from possible to probable.
In short, a film can indeed be useful in terms of depicting the need for further development in political theory. With all the advances in technology and medicine during the twentieth century, the lack of any international political development is all the more perplexing, especially given the brazen military atrocities against even civilians in Ukraine and Gaza. A look back to 1929 just shows how static the international system has been.
