Follow The Leader
Former 'mad dog' Muammar Qadhafi is taking Libya in a surprising new direction
The administration is taking a cautious approach to peeling off the remaining sanctions and upgrading diplomatic ties. The goal is to leverage Libya's thirst for American technology and investment into further concessions. Washington wants Tripoli to improve its woeful human rights behavior, sever any remaining contacts with terrorist groups, and "quit mucking around in Africa," says a senior official.
The "Libyan model" has been a godsend for the administration. Bush misses few opportunities to portray Libya as a dividend from toppling Saddam Hussein, though in fact Libyan envoys had been signaling a possible change of course for several years. Still, diplomats in Tripoli believe that Qadhafi and his minions were indeed fearful of being next in Bush's gun sights. Just five days before Libya announced its disarmament, Saddam was captured by U.S. troops. By then, the secret talks in London were already nearing a conclusion, but Saddam's capture may have helped close the deal. Says Rosemary Hollis, head of Middle East studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, "There's a psychological impact of seeing Saddam in a hole." Qadhafi, it seems, would rather play the role of a leader feted at European Union headquarters in Brussels, as he was recently, than a fugitive pulled from a hole in Surt, his desert abode.
With Bush known best for waging war in Afghanistan and Iraq, Libya offers a counterexample of peaceful disarmament and voluntary moderation--even if it means the survival of the Qadhafi regime. U.S. officials assume that Iran, Syria, and North Korea are watching closely. "It's very important that we get this right," says one senior U.S. adviser. "It's a demonstration that anyone who surrenders weapons of mass destruction will be rewarded and rewarded well."
Dawn of a 'new era'
Libya's shift represents, above all, a triumph of pragmatism: Qadhafi's transformation from an eccentric and lethal revolutionary to a more familiar type of Arab autocrat concerned with easing economic discontent and passing on his rule to kin. His journey to this remarkable point has been paved with disappointments: He offered himself as a pan-Arab leader, only to be ridiculed by his compatriots; he portrayed himself as leader of a united Africa, but the Africans took his oil money and not his ideas. As he persisted in hard-line support of militants, the militants themselves made peace--or at least tried to. The Palestine Liberation Organization negotiated with Israel, the Irish Republican Army with Britain, and the African National Congress with its apartheid-era oppressors in South Africa. Qadhafi cohorts like Yasser Arafat, Gerry Adams, and Nelson Mandela were welcomed to the White House. For its stubborn defiance, Libya's isolation grew and its economy sagged.
On March 2, Qadhafi gave what amounts to a coming-out announcement for his "new era." He declared before his General People's Congress that "the world has changed" and Libya must adapt to "the new realities." He admitted that "it is Libya that isolated itself for the sake of others," and he asked whether Libya should persist in being "more Palestinian than the Palestinians" or "more Irish than the Irish." He said Libya's quest for chemical and nuclear weapons had brought "danger," not security. Says Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, "I put it down to a kind of growing-up process. I think he decided that many of the causes he supported were just hot air."
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