“They Defeated Us All”: International Interests, Local Politics, and Contested Sovereignty in Libya

Exploring three periods of contested sovereignty in Libya — 1911–1922, 1943– 1951, and the present — this article examines the consequences of repeated foreign intervention in shaping competing definitions of the most desirable form of government and the best-suited political leadership within the country today. Libya’s current dilemmas illustrate the consequences of a century of international ambivalence, confusion, and often duplicity about the international norms that govern statehood and sovereignty in the Arab world.