The US has a secret plan for Libya. It will backfire

The Boulos initiative fails at its core by treating Libya as a corporate asset rather than a sovereign nation For nearly a year, Massad Boulos, US President Donald Trump’s senior advisor on Arab, Middle Eastern, and African Affairs, has aggressively pursued a diplomatic circuit connecting Tripoli, Benghazi, Paris, Rome, and Abu Dhabi.

His primary objective is to push a transactional political settlement designed to resolve Libya’s administrative paralysis and the internal west-east divide by formalizing an alliance between the country’s rival power centers.

Taking shape behind closed doors since last September, first in Rome then across other capitals, the core mechanism of this US-brokered blueprint is a restructuring of the executive presidency: placing Saddam Haftar (Commander of Ground Forces in eastern Libya and deputy to his father) at the helm of a reformed Presidential Council, while keeping Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh as Prime Minister.

Rather than fostering a democratic transition, the framework accepts state fragmentation as a permanent reality, securing the Dbeibeh administration in the west and the Haftar family network in the east as a dynastic duopoly.

Read more The ‘Tiffany’s father’ gambit: Inside the secret US deal to carve up Libya To pave the way for such initiatives, Washington has leveraged preliminary milestones.

In April, Boulos helped broker a record 190 billion dinar unified budget agreement – the first in Libya since 2014.

At the same time, joint military maneuvers were executed in Sirte under AFRICOM’s Flintlock exercises, bringing together east and west forces alongside participation from Italy and over a dozen African nations.

Treating this unwritten transactional design as a national settlement fundamentally misreads the crisis.

Rather than establishing a legally grounded framework for general elections or dismantling entrenched militia networks, the arrangement codifies an elite duopoly.

By relying on temporary financial distributions and supervised unified military drills to broker a top-down truce, Washington is mistaking a fragile pact between ruling families for actual state-building – guaranteeing that Libya’s hydrocarbon wealth continues to line the pockets of an entrenched cartel at the expense of its people.

Crucially, the Boulos initiative operates as an unwritten diplomatic push devoid of statutory grounding.

By ignoring the foundational UN Security Council resolutions that grant legal mandate to external mediation, Washington’s ad-hoc gamble lacks the institutional backing required to bind local actors.

Furthermore, the plan offers no long-term enforcement mechanisms.