by Daniel Pipes
Qaddafi took power at the age of 27 in the waning days of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the immensely influential pan-Arab leader of Egypt, and saw himself as Nasser's acolyte but with a greater ambitions: whereas Nasser dreamed of a single Arab nation stretching from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf as an end in itself, Qaddafi saw Arab unity as the first step to Muslim unity. Although Qaddafi failed to achieve any sort of unity, and his "Third International Theory" detailed in the 1975 Green Book proved a total bust, he did have an early and marked impact on two major developments.
First, he had a key role in the increase in energy prices that began in 1972 and continues to this day. By challenging the international oil companies' control over petroleum production and pricing, he began the transfer of power from Western boardrooms to Middle Eastern palaces. Specifically, the chances Qaddafi successfully took helped bring about the four-fold increase in oil prices of 1973-74.
Read more »
