“A Fighter Pilot’s Heaven”: Finding Cold War Utility in the North African Desert (January 2017)
During the Cold War, the United States constructed an unprecedented network of military bases around the world. This expansion forced US policymakers to rethink not only their strategic interests around the world, but also the environments they would encompass. Perhaps nowhere was this more obvious than in Libya, where in the late 1940s the US Air Force began building a massive installation on the shores of Tripoli. This is not, however, the now familiar story of how military bases impact ecosystems. Instead I am interested in the ways that US officials in Libya used ideas about this novel environment—the desert—to justify the appropriation of sovereign territory for military facilities. By comparing US and European views on the Libya environment, I argue that the Americans developed a utilitarian view of the desert that enabled ever-more militarization. By the 1960s, large swaths of the Sahara had been converted into testing and practice ranges. Similar to military facilities in the American West, the Air Force hid its Cold War installations away in the desert. So effective was this strategy, in fact, that the existence of these facilities remains difficult to uncover today.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Bill Yenne;
(2018)
The Complete History of U.S. Cruise Missiles: From Kettering's 1920s' Bug & 1950's Snark to Today's Tomahawk
(/isis/citation/CBB492959593/)
Article
James Michael Young;
(2020)
The U.S. Air Force's Long Range Detection Program and Project MOGUL
(/isis/citation/CBB122294622/)
Article
Jayson A. Altieri;
(2021)
Minutemen and Roentgens: A History of Civil Air Patrol’s Aerial Radiological Monitoring Program
(/isis/citation/CBB789535614/)
Book
Michael Napier;
(2021)
Korean Air War: Sabres, MiGs and Meteors, 1950–53
(/isis/citation/CBB876595867/)
Book
David Bath;
(2020)
Assured Destruction: Building the Ballistic Missile Culture of the U.S. Air Force
(/isis/citation/CBB914841103/)
Book
Spires, David N.;
(2012)
On Alert: An Operational History of the United States Air Force Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Program, 1945--2011
(/isis/citation/CBB001550026/)
Article
Schwartz, Norton A.;
(2009)
The Air Force's Enduring Legacy of Nuclear Deterrence
(/isis/citation/CBB001030852/)
Article
Roberta Biasillo;
Claiton Marcio da Silva;
(2021)
The Very Grounds Underlying Twentieth-Century Authoritarian Regimes: Building Soil Fertility in Italian Libya and the Brazilian Cerrado
(/isis/citation/CBB579668594/)
Thesis
Edgington, Ryan H.;
(2008)
Lines in the Sand: An Environmental History of Cold War New Mexico
(/isis/citation/CBB001561166/)
Thesis
Schultz, Timothy Paul;
(2007)
Redefining Flight: How the Predecessors of the Modern United States Air ForceTransformed the Relationship between Airmen and Aircraft
(/isis/citation/CBB001561277/)
Book
Peter Westwick;
(2020)
Stealth: The Secret Contest to Invent Invisible Aircraft
(/isis/citation/CBB004469867/)
Article
Daniel Haulman;
(Summer 2017)
The Resurrection of Tactical Air Command and Military Airlift Command
(/isis/citation/CBB451856075/)
Article
Daniel L. Haulman;
(Fall 2017)
Operation Vittles: The Berlin Airlift
(/isis/citation/CBB454745619/)
Book
Davis, Diana K;
Burke, Edmund, III;
(2011)
Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa
(/isis/citation/CBB001422305/)
Book
Rothman, Hal;
Miller, Char;
(2013)
Death Valley National Park: A History
(/isis/citation/CBB001422339/)
Book
Ken Young;
(2016)
The American Bomb in Britain: U.S. Air Forces’ Strategic Presence, 1946-64
(/isis/citation/CBB766224140/)
Book
Marsha L. Weisiger;
(2009)
Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country
(/isis/citation/CBB805061553/)
Article
Gretchen Heefner;
(2016)
‘A Tract That Is Wholly Sand:’ Engineering Military Environments in Libya
(/isis/citation/CBB970551513/)
Book
Mike Gruntman;
(2015)
Intercept 1961: The Birth of Soviet Missile Defense
(/isis/citation/CBB519759693/)
Book
Albert Isaac Berger;
(2016)
Life and Times of the Atomic Bomb Nuclear Weapons and the Transformation of Warfare
(/isis/citation/CBB511796827/)
Be the first to comment!