The Rogue Who Came in From the Cold

Ray Takeyh

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2001

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Summary:  The recent trial of two Libyans for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, raises a vexing problem for U.S. policymakers: What should Washington do when American containment policy starts to pay off and a "rogue" state starts to reform? After years of international isolation, Colonel Mu'ammar Qaddafi is ending his belligerence and starting to meet many of the demands placed on him by Washington and its allies. Now President Bush must figure out how to keep the pressure on while recognizing Libya's progress and helping reintegrate it into the world community.

Ray Takeyh is a Soref Research Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

LIBYA MENDS ITS WAYS

As the Bush administration struggles to define its foreign policy, with sanctions slipping on Iraq and the prospect of missile defense raising complications around the world, a new question has emerged: How should Washington handle a "rogue" state that is gradually abandoning its objectionable practices? What should the United States do when its long-standing policy toward a maverick country such as Libya starts to pay off -- and that country finally begins to clean up its act? The question has recently become a pressing one as, in a surprising twist of events, the often and justifiably maligned Libyan regime of Colonel Mu'ammar Qaddafi has started to meet international demands and redress its past crimes. How the United States responds will serve as a test of Washington's ability to reintegrate a reforming "rogue" into the community of nations.

On January 31, three Scottish judges deliberating at a specially convened court in the Netherlands convicted a Libyan intelligence agent for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103. The attack, which occurred over Lockerbie, Scotland, killed 270 passengers (including 189 Americans) and passersby, dramatizing the threat that terrorism and its state sponsors pose to the United States. The recent verdict has achieved a modicum of justice. But it has only reconfirmed, rather than resolved, the quandary that Libya's behavior raises for U.S. foreign policy. On the one hand, the verdict seems to have validated long-held perceptions of Libya as a pariah state. But on the other hand, the very fact that Qaddafi surrendered the suspects suggests that international pressure has prompted subtle yet significant changes in his foreign policy. After decades of militancy, Libya seems to be accommodating itself to international norms.

Few have acknowledged the true dimensions of the challenge these changes pose for Washington. President George W. Bush must deal with the remaining Lockerbie-related issues -- including how to force Tripoli to accept responsibility for the crime -- while also figuring out how to move beyond them. Successive American administrations have proven adept at devising strategies for isolating offending regimes such as Libya's. But Washington has thus far neglected to plan what to do when it succeeds.

RADICAL SHEIK

Mu'ammar Qaddafi came of age during the 1960s, as Libya and much of the developing world battled to escape imperial domination. This bitter struggle against colonialism shaped Qaddafi's political philosophy, infusing him with a deep suspicion of the West. It also convinced him of the inherent iniquity of the international order, and led him to the conclusion that Tripoli should be unfettered by international conventions or rules. Rather, as a vanguard revolutionary state, Libya should help liberate the rest of the Third World and reshape its political institutions.

With Libya's vast oil wealth at his disposal and a radical ideology as his guide, Qaddafi systematically attacked Western -- especially American -- interests, as well as conservative African and Arab leaders whom he routinely derided as "lackeys of imperialism." Libya lent its support to liberation movements, secessionists, ...

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