Libya learns lesson from Iraq's stubborness

Ya, Libya's been trying to get on our good side for years now. There's even a rumor that Gaddafi offered, through several contacts, to have his people take out Osama back in 99 or so.

 

slightly different analysis than the title of the thread

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16583-2003Dec19.html

Analysis: Sanctions, Isolation Wore Down Gaddafi
Two Decades of Sanctions, Isolation Wore Down Gaddafi
By Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 20, 2003; Page A01


Libya's stunning decision yesterday to surrender its weapons of mass destruction followed two decades of international isolation and some of the world's most punishing economic sanctions. In the end, Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi was under so much pressure that he was forced to seek an end to the economic and political isolation threatening his regime -- and his own survival, according to U.S. and British officials and outside experts.

The turning point in Gaddafi's undoing may have been the U.S. intelligence investigation that tracked a tiny piece of the bomb that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, back to two Libyan intelligence agents, U.S. and British officials say. The evidence mobilized the world and produced an international effort that may now peacefully disarm Libya.

"What forced Gaddafi to act was a combination of things -- U.N. sanctions after the Lockerbie bombing, his international isolation after the Soviet Union's collapse . . . and internal economic problems that led to domestic unrest by Islamists and forces within the military," said Ray Takeyh, a Libya expert at the National Defense University.

It is no accident, however, that Libya's overture on negotiations -- nine months ago -- coincided with the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, U.S. officials and Middle East analysts said.

"The invasion of Iraq sent a strong message to governments around the world that if the United States feels threatened by weapons of mass destruction, we are prepared to act against regimes not prepared to change their behavior," said a senior State Department official who requested anonymity.

In a strange reversal of status, Libya is being touted by the United States and Britain as the new example for how to succeed in ridding a nation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and long-range missiles. It provides the model, they said, for how to move forward with Iran, North Korea, Syria and potentially others.

"Leaders who abandon the pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them will find an open path to better relations with the United States and other free nations," President Bush said in his surprise announcement. "When leaders make the wise and responsible choice, when they renounce terror and weapons of mass destruction, as Colonel Gaddafi has now done, they serve the interest of their own people and they add to the security of all nations."

Reflecting the dramatic shift, Gaddafi, in a statement carried by the official Jana news agency, said Libya's "wise decision" showed his country "plays an international role in building a world free of weapons of mass destruction and all sorts of terrorism." Another senior official in Libya went as far as to demand countries in the Middle East and Africa eliminate equipment, products and programs involved in producing weapons of mass destruction.

Although the United States has exerted the most pressure and imposed the most punitive actions against Libya, Britain took the lead in the initial negotiations. The two nations divided the roles of good cop and bad cop, U.S. and British officials said. All the negotiations were in London and involved a Libyan diplomat in Europe and Libyan intelligence agents.

Despite Libya's long history of prevarication and procrastination, Tripoli has provided so much access to facilities and so much specific data on its programs that Bush and Blair agreed they had confidence that Gaddafi was sincere.

"The Libyans were quite open. They provided access to facilities. They provided substantial documentation about their programs. And we were able to take samples and photographs and other evidence," a senior administration official said in a White House briefing after Bush's announcement.

A British official added: "Libya's admission of its activities is of clear political significance and encourages confidence."

For all the Bush administration's focus on deadly arms, however, the United States may have missed an opportunity to act earlier because of its preoccupation with Afghanistan and then Iraq, said U.S. officials familiar with earlier overtures.

"Within months after September 11th, we had the Libyans, the Syrians and the Iranians all coming to us saying what can we do [to better relations]? We didn't really engage any of them because we decided to do Iraq. We really squandered two years of capital that will make it harder to apply this model to the hard cases like Iran and Syria," said Flynt Leverett, a former Bush administration National Security Council staff member now at the Brookings Institution.

The Clinton administration tried a similar strategy -- offering Libya's needy regime a diplomatic carrot if it agreed to accept responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103, end its support of terrorism and surrender weapons of mass destruction. Gaddafi did turn over the two intelligence agents, after lengthy negotiations, for a trial under Scottish law at The Hague, where they were convicted in 2001.

In the late 1990s, Gaddafi also stopped support of at least some terrorist groups and, in 1999, deported the notorious Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, who had a residence in Libya since 1987, U.S. officials said. Abu Nidal died in Baghdad a few months before the Iraq war began.

Gaddafi, once one of the region's most fervent hard-liners, has simultaneously begun to distance himself from the ideologies that defined his unusual government, outlined in his famous "The Green Book."

"It's not a dramatic turnaround. It's part of a trend that has been underway for 10 years -- of reforms and trying to reintegrate with Europe, mainly for business reasons," said Joseph Cirincione, an arms specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"Gaddafi has turned away from radical Arab nationalism of the 1970s and 1980s toward programs geared toward economic development that require Western investment and markets, which means coming into line with international norms," he added.

Ironically, Libya may not have had large quantities of weapons of mass destruction by the time the deal was struck with the United States and Britain.

"Libya's program did not have a sophisticated enough infrastructure for a very viable program and they haven't had it for years," Takeyh said.

 

Gaddafi has been head of the military for what, 30 years or so? You think he could have gotten a promotion to General by now.

 

You know what, I've always wondered the same thing too! Well, I think Gaddafi did the smart thing in supposedly abandoning his formerly wayward ways. But do I trust him. As Ronaldus Maximus said, "Trust, but verify."

 

Exactly. I seriously doubt we would have had such a dramatic change from Libya if we hadn't taken out Saddam.

Heck, maybe another reason for this is that Libya no longer needs to defend itself from Saddam. The guy did target his neighbors after all.

 

didn't we kill his wife and kids in a raid?

Rocket River

 

We did kill one of his wives and his son and after that, he kind of went underground, man. He toned it down. The "line of death" was not as big a deal anymore. In fact, my first duty station as a little numbnuts PFC was the carrier Coral Sea as part of the Marine contingent that guarded the nukes during Operation El Dorado Canyon, way back in 1986. I was fresh out of h/s and I got to see carrier ops during wartime up close. Cool. And as for our carriers containing nukes, it's a poorly kept secret, but during the Cold War, the special weapons were always on board and ready to go. That's why they needed the toughest hombres on planet Earth to guard 'em. Uncle Sam's Misguided Children!

 

That's pretty dang funny.

 

Predictable declaration of victory by neocons and post hoc justification of Iraq.

Too bad it has no basis in reality (and neither did Libya have anything to fear from Saddam, come on, they are over a thousand miles away in the middle of North Africa.)

Dramatic change? Libya has been in the process of attempting to normalize relations with the US for over two years now:

 

Ten more years (or less) of sanctions and we would have had the same victory in Iraq --- without all the bloodshed and loss of life.

 

You mean- "Without all the blooshed and loss of American life." How many Iraqis would have died under sanctions and Saddam rule? Further, you can't guarantee that Saddam wouldn't have done something stupid like invading a nearby country. Also, we would still have to have had our troops in Saudi Arabia, to deter Saddam. And finally, there would be no guarantee that Libya would have done this without the capture of Saddam.

 

Come on, you are too smart for that, the capture of Saddam himself? So Qaddafi was saying: "Well, as long as Saddam can hide in a hole, I will devlop nuclear weapons"? Sure....

The evidence of Libya being friendly towards the US and trying to normalize relations predates Saddam's capture, predates the war oon Iraq, predates the axis of evil, predates Sept 11 even....

If anything, the war on Iraq may have delayed this concession.

 

Sam, from your own article:

It is no accident, however, that Libya's overture on negotiations -- nine months ago -- coincided with the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, U.S. officials and Middle East analysts said.

"The invasion of Iraq sent a strong message to governments around the world that if the United States feels threatened by weapons of mass destruction, we are prepared to act against regimes not prepared to change their behavior," said a senior State Department official who requested anonymity.


Regarding your assertion that the invasion delayed the concession, do you have any proof to back that up?

 

From anohter perspective...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...20dec20,1,624581.story?coll=la-home-headlines



NEWS ANALYSIS
Kadafi Began His Overtures More Than a Decade Ago
The leader appeared to change his stance after world reaction to the Pan Am bombing.


By Paul Richter, Times Staff Writer


WASHINGTON — Though the White House is pleased to take credit for Libya's dramatic disavowal of banned weapons, the regime of Col. Moammar Kadafi has been seeking for more than a decade to trade its uncomfortable renegade status for international acceptance.

Kadafi, who in the 1970s aspired to lead the Arab world in a terrorist-led battle against the United States, has recently sought to rebuild ties to the West and to persuade the international community to end sanctions that have hurt his nation's economy and diminished his stature.

But if the former firebrand, now 60, has shown signs of mellowing, it has not been clear to what extent he has scaled back the weapons program he saw as a trump card. Friday's disclosures suggest that Kadafi until recently had hoped to keep his nuclear, biological and chemical programs ticking along, even as he campaigned to win diplomatic and economic support from the West.

Kadafi had sought to build such weapons almost since he came to power 34 years ago. He began amassing an arsenal, and he provoked the United States by taking a leadership role in the 1973 oil crisis, calling for the destruction of Israel and offering haven to a variety of terrorist groups.

The United States began to view the unpredictable, flamboyant leader as one of the most dangerous in the region, and President Reagan called him "the mad dog of the Middle East."

But Kadafi's regime appeared to change its attitude when countries closed ranks against him in the aftermath of the 1988 downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 259 people on board and 11 on the ground. When two Libyan intelligence agents were charged as the principal conspirators, the United Nations imposed sanctions, and Libya was virtually isolated from the world.

Especially since 1997, Kadafi's government has taken a new approach. It has sought to build economic and diplomatic ties with Europe. And after the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, Libya was one of the first Arab countries to support the United States, lining up in favor of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and helping Washington with intelligence.

In September, it agreed to accept responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and to pay as much as $2.7 billion to the families of victims, winning a lifting of the U.N. sanctions.

At the same time, a debate over the extent of Kadafi's weapons of mass destruction continued.

Some leading independent weapons experts had concluded that Kadafi had a substantial chemical weapons program, a rudimentary missile effort, and a biological weapons program, which was largely limited to research and development.

Libya's intentions on nuclear weapons have been unclear, though it has a civilian-use light-water reactor, subject to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

However, in the negotiations leading up to Friday's announcement, U.S. and British experts toured facilities in Libya where they saw equipment that was being used to develop a nuclear weapons program.

One of the projects underway was aimed at enriching uranium. They said various programs were underway at more than 10 sites.

Libya's largest output of illicit weapons had been from a chemical plant at Rabta, which turned out 100 tons of blister and nerve agents before it was closed in 1990, under pressure from the United States, said Joseph Cirincione, chief of nonproliferation research at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

There was even more concern over a suspected underground chemical weapons plant at Tarhunah. In late 1996, a U.S. defense official caused an international stir by suggesting that the United States might use a nuclear weapon to destroy the plant.

But tensions began to ease after Libya reportedly halted construction on the project, Cirincione wrote in his book "Deadly Arsenals." The book said Libya's biological weapons effort could produce limited quantities of some germ agents but probably would not be able to advance further without foreign assistance and expertise.

Libya has tried to appear to be in line with international norms on the weapons issue. It is a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Biological Weapons Convention, though not the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Even so, some Bush administration officials have contended that Kadafi's program was active, and highly threatening.

In May 2002, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, in a speech titled "Beyond the Axis of Evil," denounced Libya as a "rogue" state and asserted that the country was trying to acquire nuclear weapons.

And the CIA contended that Libya was seeking to move ahead with its chemical and biological weapons efforts.

Cirincione said the public should be cautious in coming to conclusions about how far along Libya was in developing a nuclear weapons program. He said there had been rumors in recent months, but no proof, that Kadafi was again trying to gather technology useful for the program.

Even so, Cirincione said Libya's pledges to renounce the weapons and accept new international oversight were "very significant. This is not a turnaround, since they've been moving in this direction for years. But it's a consolidation," he said.

He said he hoped the success with Libya would encourage the Bush administration to be more explicit with North Korea about the rewards Pyongyang could win from abandoning its nuclear program.

So far, he said, the White House has been unwilling to say what rewards it would give, in contrast to the approach taken with Libya.

Michael Levi, a specialist on weapons at the Brookings Institution, said he hoped that U.S. and European governments could seize on this success to try to make progress with proliferation issues with countries such as Syria and Iran. "Symbolic moments are very important in the Middle East," he said.

 

1. The article that I posted was dated September 5, 2001, so obviously it has nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq, and this passage does not appear in in it.

2. The passage that you did quote has Bush administration officials making the same speculative, back patting claim that you did, lauding the Bush administration.

3. I have as much proof that it delayed it as you have that it caused it; speculation. Libya waited till the end of the war...blah blah..blah. It's not that hard to make up speculative arguments to justify your position when necessary.

4. The fact remains that Libya has made overtures towards the US for years, prior to September 11, 2001. It's a trend that began before the Iraq war and continues today.

 

1. It was actually Woofer's article.

2. It also said Middle East analysts, and quoted a State Department offical. The State Department wasn't exactly supportive of war with Iraq.

3. My evidence is right there in Woofer's articel.

4. And the fact remains that the dramatic shift did not occur until after the war in Iraq, after years of nothing happening.

Am I 100% sure that the war was the main reason? No. But it certainly seems to have played a signifcant part.

 

How would it have delayed this concession?


Yes, Libya has mellowed over the years, but I have yet to find a legit article (pre 2003) that has Libya announcing intentions to give up its WMD Programs. If somebody has a link to that, please post it.