Realpolitik in Kilts

It’s not about morals or compassion, it’s all about multi-millions in investments. The Scots let the Lockerbie assassin go free because they want Libya’s oil.

Scotland’s natural gas deposits in the North Sea are rapidly being depleted, but gigantic new gas reserves have just been discovered off of Libya’s coast. No one need know more than that in order to understand why the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbasset Ali al-Megrahi, was pardoned by the Scottish government and the resulting trans-Atlantic fallout with Washington.

It has nothing to do with old-fashioned concepts like atonement, vengeance, morals or compassion. It’s all about multi-millions in investments, corporate bottom lines and, lastly, also about whether radiators will go cold and lights will go out in Great Britain within the next few years.

If a competitor is awarded the contract, the resources will be lost

Energy giant British Petroleum (BP) has invested billions of dollars in developing Libyan natural gas reserves. It would be a great investment, provided BP gets the right to exploit the resources. Should the contract be awarded to a competitor (the United States, for example), the resources will be lost to Britain and British jobs will also presumably be lost, along with tax revenues to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in London.

When so much is at stake, a man like Megrahi is reduced to a minor irritation, to an unimportant pebble in the cogs of a great machine that must not be allowed to stop running. His continued imprisonment, according to the Libyans, was the only thing standing in the way of finalizing the contracts that British firms will find so profitable.

For the Scots, charity begins at home

Alex Salmond, Scottish First Minister, and his Minister of Justice, Kenny MacAskill, recently shoved into the bright spotlight on the international stage, are now in full agreement with the otherwise disliked Labour government of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The Scots may still wear the kilt, but they know that charity begins at home and that the existential energy crisis predicted by experts for the coming years won’t be held back by Hadrian’s wall, the traditional dividing line between Scotland and England.

The Americans, by the way, totally understand their British cousins, despite the shrill tones emanating from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a coalition of Republican and Democratic senators in Washington. Their public protests are really only meant for the families of the American Lockerbie victims.

The government in Washington has known for a long time that Megrahi would be pardoned and that they could do nothing about it. They would have done precisely the same had Meghari been imprisoned in the United States, because America hungers for energy as well, and American companies want to get their share of the Libyan resources, too.

One can call that hypocrisy. Or realpolitik. The end result is still the same.