Libya is Obama's Mess To Own

Libya's Lost Generation 

As his administration enters its twilight years, President Obama certainly has several key policy pieces he can proudly tout as his legacy; healthcare reform that eluded the Clinton administration, a resurgent economy as well as wins on several social issues.  Even his record on foreign policy, relatively muddled as it may be, holds several moves which in time could prove to be shrewdly negotiated wins.  The same cannot be said however, for how this administration has handled its involvement in the Libyan Civil War.  Given the renewed questions about potential American involvement in Syria due to Russia ratcheting up its support of the Assad regime, the time is now ripe to revisit the country’s last foray into a messy civil conflict in the region and see what lessons can be learned.    

in 2011, what began as a string of popular protests against the oppressive rule of Libya’s longtime strongman Moammar Gaddafi, inspired by similar movements in nearby countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain that later came to be collectively dubbed as the “Arab Spring”, turned bloody.  As the chorus calling for extensive reforms grew louder, Gaddafi initially cracked down in brutal fashion.  Perhaps remembering what happened the last time the West plead ignorance to flagrant atrocities being committed right under its nose, the United States led an effort to secure NATO a UN Security Council mandate to intervene by means of a no-fly zone in hopes of averting a potential humanitarian catastrophe.  President Obama would later say “We knew that if we waited one more day, Benghazi -a city nearly the size of Charlotte- could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”  And so not long after receiving authorization in a tenuous vote where both the Chinese and Russians were convinced to abstain, NATO warplanes made the first bombing sorties over Libya.  Already facing pressure from a fractious alliance of several until-recently-largely-suppressed tribal and militant groups, now being armed by sympathetic countries both in the Gulf and the West (via Qatar), Gaddafi's forces didn’t stand a chance.  In a matter of months the tables turned dramatically.  By October, Tripoli had been overrun and Gaddafi summarily executed by a bullet to the head.  

Western analysis of the situation in the immediate aftermath of Gaddafi being deposed declared the intervention a success, having prevented large scale atrocities and seen the ultimate toppling of, by some accounts, a very brutal dictator.  The US’s representative to NATO even went so far as to pen an article where he declared the alliance’s involvement a victory and went on to call it a “model intervention”.  Now four years later this cheery assessment rings hollow, when the country’s internationally recognized government is now unable to exert control over its own ports and oil fields, Islamists and tribal groups run roughshod over large swathes of its territory and Libyan weapons ransacked from its armories have turned up in other hotbeds for Islamist terrorism across the region.

But before turning an eye towards the extent to which radicals have infiltrated the political and social fabric of Libya itself, it is important to consider the ripple effect of toppling Gaddafi, and what role it played in nurturing the Islamist insurgencies many other countries in the region are now grappling with.  Perhaps the most jarring example of illicit weapon flows from Libya fueling conflicts abroad however, can be found in Mali.  The first wave was caused by ethnic Tuaregs within the country’s security services taking their weapons and fleeing to Mali following the fall of the regime.  Hoping to assist the Tuareg minority in that country launch an insurrection of their own, it instead was hijacked by the Islamist groups such as Ansar Dine with whom they had formed an uneasy truce in hopes of driving Malian forces from the north of the country.  Indirectly or not, the Libyan rebels played a key role in the war, allowing weapons to be funnelled out of the country through Tunisia and Niger and into Northern Mali.  While ISIS made waves last summer when it declared the establishment of a “Caliphate” in parts of Iraq and Syria, Mali quietly gained the notorious distinction of being host to the largest swathe of sovereign territory controlled by a terrorist organization.    

And to make matters worse, it does not simply stop there; Libyan weapons have also been smuggled through Egypt and Lebanon and into the hands of militants everywhere from the Gaza Strip to Syria.  Of particular concern to arms control experts is the widespread proliferation of man-portable air defence systems, often referred to as MANPADs.  Light enough to be carried by individual infantry, they are capable of shooting down anything from a helicopter to a commercial airliner.  Approximately 15,000 went missing in the aftermath of the war, and a buyback effort by the United States has only managed to secure roughly 5000.  Perhaps even more frighteningly, a report on the subject added that several hundred of the missiles were still completely unaccounted for, potentially having wound up in the hands of groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria or Hamas in Gaza.  And any doubts regarding this assertion were shattered during 2012’s Operation Returning Echo, when an IDF helicopter was nearly shot down by a missile that subsequent investigations determined originated from Libya.  More recently, militants in Egypt successfully shot down a military helicopter using the missile.  Other Libyan arms have surfaced in arms markets frequently used by terror groups in places such as Yemen and Somalia.  That NATO intervened without seriously considering the intentions of the groups it would implicitly be backing, or made any effort to secure Gaddafi’s arsenals, instead trusting that the militias would agree to unilaterally disarm was foolish and naive on the part of the Obama administration and its allies.  Of course all the blame for what transpired cannot be placed upon the United States, for Gaddafi’s weapons represented just one stream of armaments that flowed out of the country following the war.  NATO’s mission was imperilled from the get-go by the actions of its supposed allies, who purchased billions in weapons for various militant groups that later went on to fuel other conflicts across the region.  It became incredibly difficult for participating states to credibly state that the reason for intervention was purely humanitarian in nature when moves by allies widely seen as being done in concert with NATO efforts were blatantly aimed at propping up one side in the civil war.  The Russian ambassador to the UN made note of this when he said “NATO forces frankly violated the UN Security Council resolution on Libya, when instead of imposing the so-called ‘no-fly zone’ over it they started bombing it too.”  Whether NATO expanded its mandate at the behest of Gulf state allies or if they intended to take sides in the conflict all along is up for debate, but regardless, doing so enabled the nearly uninterrupted flow of weapons to Islamist terror groups, who once rid of Gaddafi (a strong ally with regards to U.S counterterrorism efforts in the region) were now free to pursue their goal of fomenting instability in the region armed with billions in newly acquired weapons.

Due to the efforts on the part of the UAE and Qatar, who in defiance of an arms embargo supplied arms to several militias, most of whom later refused to disarm once the conflict was over, a fertile breeding ground for terrorist groups was created.  Many of these very same fighters and militias would go on to play significant roles in other terror hotspots in nearby countries, affiliating themselves with groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIL.  Qatar in particular, who continued to funnel arms to Libyan militias as late as September 2014 (two years after the attack on the American compound in Benghazi by a group nominally supported by Qatar), seemingly took no lessons away from Libya, for they continue to arm radical groups in Syria, constructing a potential post-Assad power paradigm that is increasingly likely be eerily similar to that which we now have in Libya.

The government which supplanted Gaddafi’s regime in the years since its fall can only be considered an unmitigated disaster.  This is the case for several reasons, chief amongst them being the totally outsized role played by the tribal militias who deposed Gaddafi.  As previously mentioned, upon the war’s conclusion just about every militia, rather than disarming, instead turned towards consolidating and expanding their territorial holdings.  As a result, the interim National Transitional Council that was appointed to oversee a speedy return to free elections had its hands tied.  Its largest source of funds, oil, was virtually cut off as the majority of the country’s ports, fields and refineries were in the hands of militias who refused the NTC’s demand that they disarm and stand for election if they wished to play a role in government.  Entrusting the momentous task of implementing regime change to a group of insurgents that the West did not seem to fully understand backfired spectacularly, especially when you consider how atrocities against civilians have still continued post-Gaddafi, with hospitals being the site of kidnappings and rocket attacks.    

 The narrative widely peddled in the media as to why intervention was necessary in the first place claimed that Benghazi was the site of an impending massacre by Gaddafi’s  forces.  And yet reexamining the regime’s actions in the months before intervention reveals a portrait of relative restraint.  While the actions taken by Gaddafi’s forces would not have been acceptable from Western forces, intervening only seemed to worsen the situation.  Initial reports on casualties seemed to vindicate NATO action; in September 2011 rebels claimed that 30,000 had been killed.  However the NTC’s subsequent investigations following the war poked several holes in this figure, revising the number down to 11,500 including regime and rebel fighters, as well as missing persons.  In the years since the conflict however, supposedly a period of peaceful transition towards democracy, 2012 and 2013 both saw low level conflict that is estimated to have killed roughly 500 a year.  2014 essentially saw the return of open civil war, and with it the deaths of over 2,750, three years removed from a supposedly successful intervention.

“Throw away your weapons, exactly like your brothers in Ajdabiya and other places did. They laid down their arms and they are safe. We never pursued them at all.”

As the legacy of Western intervention in the country becomes more clear, so is just what really happened.  An alternative narrative has emerged, that Libyan nationals in Switzerland, sympathetic to the rebel forces who were on their last legs in Benghazi, leaked false information pertaining to a potential massacre of the besieged troops and civilians in the city.  Regardless of how true this claim was, their plea for help worked; NATO swiftly intervened and completely reversed the tide of the war, handing the rebels who were previously on the brink of defeat a stunning victory.  Lending credibility to this story are the numbers from Syria.  Before the Libyan intervention commenced in March of 2011, protests had been largely nonviolent and the regime response, criminal as it was, had not yet morphed into the all out war on its citizens that it would soon become.  But by that summer, it is not unlikely that the Syrian opposition took up armed insurrection in hopes of provoking a regime response that would trigger NATO involvement similar to what transpired in Libya.  What did occur was a drawn out war with no end in sight four years after the fact.  And now as the Russians seem intent on taking a more active role in the war there, it's concerning that the only lesson President Obama took away from Libya was that the United States and its allies didn’t intervene enough.  In an interview with the New York Times last year he said “I think we underestimated the need to come in full force.  If you’re going to do this there has to be a much more aggressive effort to rebuild societies.”  If NATO had more carefully studied the conflict it entered, there might not have been any need to rebuild in the first place.  

The Real Outrage About Omar Khadr

"I like my son to be brave...I would like my son to be trained to protect himself, to protect his home, to protect his neighbor, to see a young girl innocent, being raped or attacked, to really fight to defend it. I would really love to do that, and I would love my son to grow with this mentality...[a]nd you would you like me to raise my child in Canada and by the time he's 12 or 13 he'll be on drugs or having some homosexual relation or this and that? Is it better? For me, no. I would rather have my son as a strong man who knows right and wrong and stands for it, even if it's against his parents."

Those were the words of Maha el-Samnah, the matriarch of the now-infamous Khadr family and an Al Qaeda sympathizer whose husband was killed in a 2003 U.S drone strike on Taliban militants in Pakistan's volatile border region with Afghanistan.  It was her and her husband's decision to uproot their young family and move to Pakistan in 1987 which inflicted the first in a series of injustices against Omar Khadr and his siblings.  During the years that followed, Khadr flitted between Canada and Pakistan, later being manipulated by his father's associates into planting IEDs and ultimately engaging in combat with American soldiers under the guise of serving as a translator to foreign "visitors".  Omar Khadr during this chapter of his life committed acts that were undoubtedly wrong, and yet it is important to note that the crimes he was accused and convicted of were committed by a brainwashed fifteen year old with little understanding of the conflict in which he was engaged, an assessment shared by the United Nations, who officially designated him a child soldier in 2010.  The frankly galling failure of those in Guantanamo, Washington and Ottawa to account for this fact in their subsequent prosecution of Khadr was the primary reason behind the ultimately needless fifteen year legal saga which ensued.

Omar Khadr was tried in a court which could not provide a fair and transparent trial.  Since the military tribunals commenced in 2001, 3 of the military personnel appointed to serve as prosecutors resigned, citing a biased and unfair legal process.  Further, Colonel Fred Borch, who served as Chief Prosecutor, was forced to resign when leaked memos purported to reveal that he had bragged about jeopardizing the integrity of the proceedings, and that the officers on the commission had been chosen because they could be trusted to convict those brought before them.  Furthermore because much of the evidence provided by the government in these cases are legally flimsy intelligence reports, if the same notions of evidence and "the burden of proof" which exist in the civilian court system were applied to the Guantanamo proceedings, the government would simply not be able to convict.  To that end, the standards for evidence admission were tweaked so that the reliability and validity of such reports would not be questioned.  In doing so, U.S officials ensured that the tribunal system would not pass muster if an American citizen were to be tried there, seeing as how they blatantly infringe upon several 6th Amendment rights.  And then there's the matter of "enhanced interrogation", and how the confessions and intelligence extracted from them were oftentimes false and/or of little value.  Khadr's attorney claims that his client was waterboarded during his time at Guantanamo, a claim which the U.S government vehemently denies.  If true, the confession to murder which was the bedrock of the plea deal that labelled Khadr a terrorist and war criminal would not be admissible as evidence in court.  Even if we were to not recognize children utilized by terror organizations as child combatants, Khadr's trial was nonetheless a travesty in the eyes of not just international law, but American law as well.  

But perhaps the most outrageous aspect of this case was what wasn't done.  As a Canadian citizen, Omar Khadr was entitled to certain protections and a degree of support from his government, chief among them ensuring that he was receiving fair and equitable treatment under the laws of the United States.  Not only was this not fulfilled, RCMP officers sent to interview him turned their notes over to prison officials, abetting an illegal detainment.  Further, consular officials are supposed to encourage the speedy processing of cases against Canadians held abroad, but this was also not done, nor was a formal repatriation request made by the government at any point during Khadr's detainment without charge.  While Omar Khadr's ordeal began under Paul Martin's Liberal government, it worsened under Stephen Harper.  Countless NGOs, legal experts and even the Supreme Court of Canada harshly criticized the Tory government's actions with regards to Khadr, and yet they only doubled down.  Earlier this week in a last ditch attempt to prevent him from being released, the government argued that releasing Khadr on bail would do "irreparable harm" to U.S-Canada relations.  This failed, as the presiding justice said that the government had failed to produce evidence that the U.S shared this belief.

And so as this decade-and-a-half long ordeal finally winds down, what actually was Khadr?  A war criminal, as the government suggests?  A victim of terrible circumstance, as his many boosters claim?  As he embarks on his new life with hopes of becoming a medic, we shall no doubt find out.  Currently a $20 million civil suit against the government is underway, and Khadr is appealing his criminal conviction in the United States.  So while the ultimate fate of Khadr remains up in the air, an important question to consider is this; When the Canadian government willingly abets the torture and illegal imprisonment of one of its own citizens, a 15 year old boy nonetheless, who is the real war criminal here?     

Russia's Love Affair With Europe's Far Right

A Cossak confronts a demonstrator (Associated Press)

Russia under President Vladimir Putin has forged an unusually aggressive foreign policy, a fact widely circulated in Western news media.  What has received little coverage outside of think tank and NGO circles however, is the full extent to which Putin and his inner circle have consolidated power within the country.  While military expenditures have increased significantly since Putin first took office in 1999, it has been accompanied by brutally effective asymmetrical tactics, which although successful at resolving internal conflicts like in Chechnya, have eroded civil liberties and subverted the democratic process to such a degree that in some aspects Russia now resembles North Korea as a crony-capitalist kleptocracy masquerading as a democracy.  Why has nothing or nobody, neither domestic nor otherwise, been able to put a significant dent in Putin’s seemingly imperial and authoritarian ambitions?

The 1990s were a tumultuous time for the then-nascent Russian Federation.  Still smarting from the breakup of the Soviet Union, which many blamed on the weakness of final Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, and plagued by civil strife, many in the country were understandably not optimistic about the future.  Radical privatization (dubbed “shock therapy”) of the Soviet era economy by Western-backed President Boris Yeltsin, whose supporters were pushing for rapid implementation of free market reforms, had resulted in the now infamous “cash for shares” fire sale of state-controlled assets at a fraction of their value to a small group of Soviet era political elite.  Global recession in 1998 exacerbated Russia’s economic woes, and brought the ruble to the precipice of collapse.  Yeltsin’s government underwent a period of significant political turmoil, with Yeltsin appointing several Prime Ministers in quick succession.

This was the scene in Russia when the world was first introduced to Vladimir Putin, then a largely unknown politician with roots in the foreign intelligence community.  Yeltsin spoke very highly of the technocrat-turned-Prime Minister, once even proclaiming Putin his heir presumptive.  Almost as if he was making good on a promise, Yeltsin abruptly resigned not much later, making Putin Acting President.  And so began a stranglehold on power which is now entering its 15th year.  During his time in office Putin has proven himself a master at populist politics, deftly weaving a network of support amongst seemingly disparate segments of Russian society.  By embracing revered institutions such as the military and Orthodox Church and tapping Russia’s proud military tradition, he has been able to propagate a myth that the country is under attack from a Western conspiracy; that the economic hardships of the 1990s was the result of seeking rapprochement with the West.  Putin has cast himself as a defender of the proverbial “Motherland” from foreign meddling, a theme increasingly prevalent in almost every facet of Russian policymaking today.  A “gay propaganda” law pushed through the Duma last year included clauses which seemed to insinuate that the Russian government viewed same-sex rights activists as foreign agitators.  Liberal minded opposition media outlets are regularly accused by what are likely Kremlin-backed “internet trolls” of parroting the American line. Conflating the fiercely nationalistic rhetoric of his supporters with “patriotism” has allowed Putin to virtually silence his opposition and justify actions within the purview of his agenda which otherwise would not be deemed acceptable.  Much like how the Cold War was a clash of ideologies, Putin has framed cold relations with the west, domestically at least, as a clash of values.  His brand of “leadership” has been lauded on Fox News, and provided as a contrast to President Obama’s purported weakness.  His methods have proven successful in stifling dissent and sending his popularity domestically soaring, but have left Russia isolated as the Kremlin’s foreign policy goals have alienated the West.  And yet for years Putin has quietly championed a policy that is only now beginning to bear fruit.

A peek inside the conference. (Associated Press)

What may turn out to be an auspicious day for Russian foreign policy began in decidedly unsexy fashion on a dreary Sunday last month.  The inaugural Russian Conservative Forum kicked off as leaders of North American and European right wing parties gathered at a Holiday Inn in downtown St. Petersburg to ostensibly advance the brand of global conservatism.  And yet there was quite possibly nary a discussion of conservatism to be had.  Delegate after delegate tripped over themselves to declare their disgust with the supposed “European” and “American” way of life, and all of its homosexual, multicultural, globalized trappings; it was no coincidence that each party was essentially parroting Vladimir Putin’s agenda.  While his name was not attached to the meeting, it was hard to ignore the influence his United Russia party exerted over the proceedings.  The assembled parties were an array of distasteful ideologues which included Greece’s borderline neo-Nazi Golden Dawn and Italy’s Forza Nuova, amongst the more vanilla attendees.  Guests at what amounted to a fascist pep rally also included Holocaust deniers, Nazi sympathizers, and a Russian skinhead notorious for beheading a puppy in the name of publicity.

It is not surprising that this gathering was reminiscent of “Communist International”, an association of communist parties founded as an instrument of Soviet control over international communism back in 1919, a period of hostile relations with the West.  Internationally isolated, Lenin and his bolsheviks turned to the forum as a means of finding support and allies abroad.  While the first congress was attended almost exclusively by Soviets and had few foreign delegates, the organization soon came to be recognized as the face of international communism.  Reports indicate that today Russia is engaging in a similar campaign of currying favour amongst ideologically friendly parties not just in neighbouring countries but in western Europe as well.  Confirming what various reports and papers say, the French right wing party Front National admitted to taking a roughly 9.5 million euro loan from a state controlled Russian bank.  The FN went on to make unprecedented gains in last year’s European Parliamentary elections, forming a substantial pro-Russia bloc within European Parliament, a decent return on investment.  Under Putin, the Kremlin has sought closer relations with an array of far right political parties, from Hungary’s Jobbik to Austria’s Freedom Party, to Belgium’s Vlaams Belang.  Many backed Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia, and last year declared the referendum on Russian annexation of Crimea legitimate which begs the question; why would such fiercely nationalistic parties seemingly contradict themselves by unquestionably following the lead of another country?

 The answer has less to do with fascism, Russia, or even conservatism and more to do with political marginalization and hatred of a U.S and EU pecking order they feel their own countries are beholden to.  Hence the defiant policymaking and disdainful regard for both displayed by Vladimir Putin has won him many admirers amongst Europe’s far right, and made Kremlin funds much more effective at achieving its goals.  Having smartly nurtured such parties for years, rampant anti-EU sentiment amongst many Europeans over the past year or so mean that Moscow is just now beginning to cash in on its far right strategy.  As these parties increasingly score significant victories at the polls, actions like further Russian sanctions or even renewal of current ones might eventually become quite difficult.  Russia didn’t create Europe’s far right but Moscow cultivating vocal allies willing to sing Russia’s praises in European Parliament and legislatures across the continent is a classic case of my enemy’s enemy is my friend.                

Ukranian Redux

Aftermath of the offensive at Donetsk's airport

Earlier this summer I wrote about how Russia's role in the Ukrainian crisis had escalated to the point where the two countries were in a de facto state of war.  Since then various geopolitical events have threatened to overshadow the ongoing insurgency in eastern regions of the country, but a recent renewal of an offensive against rebels in Donetsk thrust the spotlight back on both the region and Russian interference in it.  In fact, some of the images and videos coming out of Mariupol, which was first attacked this past summer but has seen renewed fighting in recent days, are a disturbing insight into daily life under what is almost certainly Russian bombardment.

  

This dashcam video purports to show the driver narrowly escaping an artillery strike.  The truck in front was not as fortunate.  Other videos by residents clearly convey what seems to be a city under siege. (Update: As of the 25th of January, the video has been removed due to copyright)
   

There is increasingly strong evidence that the western sanctions regime and plunge in oil prices have done little to impede Russian ambitions in eastern Ukraine.  As the New York Times wrote:

"With the appearance in recent weeks of what NATO calls sophisticated Russian weapons systems, newly emboldened separatist leaders have abandoned all talk of a cease-fire."

  As my previous post on the subject stated, it is very likely that the Kremlin is backing insurgents in hopes of asserting some degree of influence over the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, host to the roads which serve as Russia's only land-based lifeline to Crimea.  A successful push along the southern coast would at best allow Russia to annex a swathe of territory which extends to breakaway regions of Moldova, or more plausibly, de facto Russian hegemony over the aforementioned territories within the framework of a federalized Ukraine.

Further implicating the Russian government were images released by the Ukrainian government which purported to show documents taken from captured Russian mercenaries.

"The National Security and Defence Council recently reported that Ukrainian artillery destroyed a column of Russian mercenaries near Donetsk airport and detained more than 10 of them" 
- Sheila Casey, State Department attache for Ukraine  

Despite strong words from the United States government, there doesn't seem to be a clear path forward.  With the United States and its allies slowly escalating their role in the fight against ISIS, there just doesn't seem to be much of an appetite for substantial action against the Russian government.  That said however, European Union economic sanctions on Russia come up for renewal soon, and if there was talk about easing them before, such talk is now gone.  Latvia and other eastern European states, citing a negotiated ceasfire signed in Minsk which was broken by rebels early last week, are in some cases now pressing for even harsher sanctions.  All the while, open warfare rages in the cities of Eastern Ukraine.  Some more photos of the recent devestation which left at least 30 dead:

 

Why OPEC is Prolonging Cheap Oil (And Why It May Backfire This Time)

In the face of falling oil prices, OPEC found itself under the market's microscope.  News that the cartel was holding production steady at 30 million barrels per day and revising production for 2015 lower to 28.9 million barrels did little to placate volatility-averse traders, who in turn sent US treasury bonds further south, the Dow Jones (DJIA) plunging nearly 300 points and generally had a negative impact on everything from the Canadian Dollar  (CAD) to the Norwegian Krone (KR).  By almost any metric, the markets were affixed on commodities, and specifically fossil fuels.

Seemingly serving as a reminder of just how beholden we are to the black gold, oil played a role in numerous geopolitical developments this past year.  From the thawing of relations between Cuba and the United States to the NATO and EU sanction regime meant to punish the Russian economy, 2014 saw fossil fuels once again take on the role of political flashpoint, furthering some agendas while hindering others.  But the reasoning behind why the Arab-dominated OPEC is dragging its less fortunate members through the mud has all to do with recapturing a near monopoly on oil production it enjoyed on oil exports before high prices drove investment towards U.S shale.

 OPEC was initially formed in 1960 by countries with substantial oil reserves in order to collectively better control the market for exports.  What they discovered during the Yom Kippur War in 1973 was that putting a vital resource under the control of a non-aligned cartel provided OPEC's Arab and Latin American member states with an "oil weapon" that provided them leverage with otherwise superior western powers.  In a move meant to punish the United States and its western European allies for supporting Israel in that conflict, OPEC agreed to an oil embargo.  The subsequent spike in oil prices and ensuing chaos led to a significant change in U.S energy policy, as the hardships experienced by both industry and consumers led to renewed efforts to conserve oil, increase fuel efficiency and develop alternatives to oil.  If OPEC's oil weapon was able to cause the United States and its allies significant economic hardship, why have they been loathe to use it since?

Former Saudi Oil Minister Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani perhaps stated his country's oil policy most eloquently 40 years ago when he said "''The Stone Age didn't end for lack of stone."  His prediction was eerily precinct, because the following decade saw various factors conspire to create a situation which at a glance may seem similar to the period of "cheap oil" in which we find ourselves right now.  A plunge in the demand for oil (to the tune of five million barrels per day) coupled with a rise in production in non-OPEC states created enough of a surplus that prices continued to fall, capping a 46% decline in 1986.  OPEC countries, historically known for exceeding quotas and inflating estimated reserves, responded to the successful campaigns aimed at reducing global dependency on oil by cutting production several times, by nearly half.  This did little to staunch the bleeding as non-OPEC states stepped in to pick up the slack, and as a result OPEC's market share fell from a peak of roughly 50% in the 1970s to around 30% by 1985.  While Saudi Arabia initially led the charge by throttling production, it found its less economically secure partners largely unwilling to engage in a price war at the expense of much needed revenue.  Fed up with essentially subsidizing excess production in other OPEC countries, Saudi Arabia pioneered the same strategy which it is applying here today, albeit with different targets in mind.

  Back then, Saudi Arabia's primary goal was to make it too expensive for OPEC's more undisciplined members to continue overproducing by dumping the price of oil long enough to run other producers out of business until it once again held major sway on the price of oil.  This time the ultimate goal is the same, but the Saudis are taking aim at the American shale producers whose torrid levels of production have been a large reason (along with the still-precarious economic position of Japan, China and the Eurozone) why prices have taken a nosedive over the past year (even with ongoing instability in Libya and Iraq.  And yet while Saudi Arabia was successful in reigning in its OPEC partners, it was helped at least in part by the fact that the Bush (Sr.) administration made a decision to to double down on Gulf-supplied oil, ramping up military aid to allies on the peninsula and scrapping policies which had been quite effective in reducing demand for oil.  If the United States actually declining to seriously invest in efforts to increase energy efficiency seems ludicrous, take a comparative look at Japan's efforts in the same area.  At the height of the oil embargo, Japan's energy security was even more compromised than that of the United States.  Consisting of a series of generally resource poor islands,  it both did and continues to import 92% of its oil.  At the time of the embargo, roughly 71% of the country's imports were derived from the middle east.  As such, when crisis struck Arab states labelled Japan an "unfriendly country" for its refusal to get involved in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and slapped it with a 5% production cut.  Very vulnerable to disruptions in oil supply, it was forced to reorient its energy policy with an eye towards minimizing susceptibility of the economy to oil shocks.  As a result, Japanese energy efficiency today is such that it uses less than half the energy that the United States does to produce a dollar of GNP.

American strategic interest in the Middle East is waning

Those days of a Stockholm Syndrome-esque relationship between the Saudis and Americans with regards to energy policy are over.  From the toppling of Iran's Shah in 1979 up until the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the United States was heavily invested in the region and as such was willing to incur instability-induced spikes in the price of oil.  Following a prolonged economic recession which served as the culmination of a decades long decline in the prosperity of the American middle class as well as the election of a President who ran on a platform predicated upon extricating America from the Middle East, both the government and public no longer have the stomach nor faith in the ability of America to sort out a region so fiercely sectarian, conflict ridden and seemingly resentful of American assistance.  If President Bush's eight years in office were about Middle Eastern foreign policy, the electorate has demanded that President Obama's be about the economy.  To that end, his most highly touted legislative achievements have almost entirely served a domestic agenda, through major overhauls of healthcare policy (ACA), financial regulation (Dodd-Frank) and the Justice Department's tackling of social issues such as marriage equality and police violence.  If anything, this administration's most prominent foreign policy move was arguably its much discussed "Asia shift", which essentially served as a way for the President to fulfil his election promise to end the two wars started by his predecessor while at the same time not giving ammunition to critics who accused the Obama administration of retreating from a leadership role the United States had held since WWII.  Even when the United States has found itself inevitably dragged into one Middle Eastern conflict or another, it has been loathe to get directly involved, instead extolling the necessity of coalition building and Middle Eastern countries taking on a larger role in conflicts that involve them.

Saudi Arabia very well may stamp out frackers, and once again gain some degree of control over oil prices.  Fracking is expensive, with a break even price of around $50 per day.  Already western producers are laying off workers and slashing exploration budgets, as petrodollar economies adjust for a rough landing.  But Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal agreed that the days of high oil prices are essentially over.  Electric cars are on the verge of going mainstream, and just about every country has launched ambitious plans to cut carbon emissions and increase the share of renewables in energy consumption.  Oil will continue to be an important commodity for years to come, but the point has come where countries such as Venezula, Russia, Libya and Iraq who failed to diversify their economies while prices were high can no longer hope to nearly entirely fund their governments from royalty proceeds.  The world has finally become serious about pushing alternatives to fossil fuels in a bid to cut carbon emissions, and  falling oil prices might finally topple the last big obstacle to achieving that goal.  One can only hope so, at least.