Rehabilitating a Rogue:
Libya’s WMD Reversal and
Lessons for US Policy
DAFNA HOCHMAN
© 2006 Dafna Hochman
From Parameters, Spring 2006, pp. 63-78.
On 19 December 2003, Muammar al-Qadhafi announced Libya’s decision to dismantle all components of its nonconventional weapons programs. Concurrently, Qadhafi declared an abrupt halt to Libya’s development of missiles with a range exceeding 300 kilometers and his intent to open all nonconventional weapons stockpiles and research programs to international inspectors.1 Libya’s acknowledgment that it was building chemical and biological, as well as nuclear, weapons marked a dramatic shift; for decades, Tripoli had unequivocally denied the possession of any such weapons when faced with Western allegations to that effect. In fact, as recently as January 2003, Qadhafi told an American reporter that it was “crazy to think that Libya” had weapons of mass destruction (WMD).2 In a 2003 article directed at the US foreign policy community, Qadhafi’s son and likely successor, Saif al-Islam al-Qadhafi, underscored Libya’s continued compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) as well as the Biological Weapons Convention.3
Yet, with great confessional drama, Qadhafi now admitted to the international community that he had overseen the development of an active WMD program, with materials imported as recently as 2001. Thus, Qadhafi’s WMD reversal poses a puzzling question: Why would a rogue leader decide to eliminate a WMD program that he recently had been pursuing?
The international community, including President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, immediately lauded Qadhafi’s decision to seek rapprochement with the West.4 The Bush Administration and analysts outside the US government cited two principal reasons behind Qadhafi’s decision. First, they argued that the United States had sent a strong message by invading Iraq in 2003, proving its willingness to use military force to deal with rogue states acquiring WMD. Libya must have been watching, they contended. Second, many argued that economic sanctions had successfully suppressed the Libyan economy. With a growing population, and potential revenue from undeveloped oil resources, Qadhafi might have decided to prioritize Libya’s economic survival over WMD procurement.5
These two explanations, while plausible, have sidelined the role of deliberate, long-term US policies toward Libya that likely facilitated Qadhafi’s WMD reversal. Three additional factors affected Libya’s WMD reversal. First, in addition to the pressures exerted by the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, Qadhafi had reason to foresee greater security benefits to be gained by closer ties with the United States and the West. In particular, Libya’s concern about al Qaeda influenced its desire to ally with the United States. Second, while seeking an end to the stifling US and UN sanctions for economic motives, Qadhafi also sought to end Libya’s pariah status. Qadhafi’s concern about his own reputation and Libya’s international image and credibility motivated his decision. Third, the Pam Am 103 victims’ families and their advocates on Capitol Hill wielded agenda-setting influence, strengthening the negotiating position of the United States vis-à-vis Libya. Each of these factors reflects one of three US foreign policy approaches applied toward Libya over the past 15 years. Each factor also yields implications for current and future US national security strategies, offering prescriptive lessons to policymakers confronting rogue regimes acquiring WMD programs.
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Yet two major factual points challenge the contention that Libya’s decision to disarm resulted from security considerations triggered by the 2003 Iraq war. First, Libya was not the only rogue regime attempting to acquire WMD in 2003. The “Iraq-war-as-punitive model” suggests that the Iranian and North Korean regimes would feel as threatened as Libya did. Yet Iran and North Korea, according to most analysts’ estimates, reacted to the US confrontation with Iraq by accelerating their development of nuclear weapons. Syria, Sudan, and other states of concern also do not seem to be following Libya’s lead, neither contemplating WMD disarmament nor seeking rapprochement with the United States. Of course, the Iraq war could still have played a role in Libya’s decision to disarm even if other rogue states did not imitate its WMD reversal.
Second, and perhaps more telling, the chronology of US-Libya bilateral negotiations calls into question the importance of the 2003 Iraq war in shaping Libyan behavior. As will be discussed in subsequent sections, Libya first expressed interest in disarming in the mid-1990s. In 1997, for instance, the Clinton Administration successfully negotiated with Libya to destroy its chemical weapons plant in Tarhunah.11 In 1999, according to multiple accounts by Clinton Administration officials, Libyan representatives offered to surrender WMD programs during secret negotiations with their US counterparts, including a formal offer by Qadhafi of rapprochement.12 Nearly four years before the United States toppled Saddam’s regime, therefore, the Libyans expressed willingness to discuss disarmament with the United States. Finally, Bush Administration officials have stated that before March 2003, Libyan officials had approached British and US officials and offered to begin negotiating a disarmament plan. Though US intentions to invade Iraq were clear by March 2003, the outcome—Saddam’s defeat—was not. Thus, this chronology undermines the argument of those who would solely attribute Qadhafi’s decision to the Iraq war’s deterrent effect.
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Additional security imperatives beyond the Iraq war likely influenced Libya’s decision to disarm. Libya might have believed that closer relations to the United States could mitigate other threats, perhaps threats more dangerous to Libya than the loss of its WMD programs. In particular, even before 11 September 2001, Qadhafi had begun offering to cooperate with US officials in fighting al Qaeda cells in North Africa.13 Libya has been at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates since at least the 1996 assassination attempt against Qadhafi by the militant Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). Shortly thereafter, Tripoli insisted that al Qaeda had inspired and financed the LIFG plot.14 Qadhafi perhaps believed that renewed diplomatic ties with the United States would allow Libya to bandwagon onto the US-led Global War on Terrorism, seeking defense from al Qaeda. Alliance-formation with the United States was an enticing security objective that likely motivated Libya’s decision. WMD disarmament became a means to facilitate this alliance.15 Indeed, exactly a year after Qadhafi’s reversal, in December 2004, the United States designated the LIFG as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.16
Moreover, the economic benefits of disarmament offered possible security gains to Libya. Qadhafi likely calculated the potential revenue to be gained from lifting both UN and US sanctions—from the influx of foreign direct investments and capital and from new international loans. This new revenue, when invested in Libya’s vast oil industry, could be used to shore up Libya’s conventional arsenal even as Tripoli comprehensively complied with its nonconventional disarmament. Economic development and growth can contribute to security, as increased state revenues enable new arms purchases. Therefore, even if Qadhafi was primarily motivated by security concerns, eliminating economic sanctions could have been a means of augmenting Libya’s military power. We will soon see whether this prediction comes to fruition, if Libya chooses to spend its new revenue on its military.
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