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Can America help Libya?
by Jonathan Power
There was a time when it
looked as if America and Libya were set on a dead-end course whose
destructiveness was all but self-defeating. Its nadir was President Ronald
Reagan's decision in 1986 to bomb Libya, attempting to kill Colonel
Muammar Qadhafi, and in the end killing his adopted daughter. Libya's
withering response was to blow up in midair a Pan American airliner over
Lockerbie, Scotland, for which crime a Libyan intelligence agent was found
guilty in a special court four months ago.
Yet the two countries have
managed, very slowly, to repair their antagonistic and fruitless
relationship. Outsiders may consider that they have taken an unnecessarily
tortuous road to get there but, nevertheless, where they are today is a
different place from that of a decade ago. This is an achievement worthy
of note. War, always a possibility, was avoided. Yet antagonism lingers,
on both sides. Only this week, rancour raised its ugly head once more when
it became apparent that Wintershall, a German oil company, was seeking
permission from Libya to drill in oil fields that formerly belonged to
American companies whose operations have been frozen by US sanctions since
1986. It has brought to a head a debate that was anyway due to erupt in
August when the US Congress is scheduled to discuss whether to renew the
Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, which imposes severe penalties on foreign
companies that invest in those countries.
Why is the US holding out on
sanctions? After the successful conclusion of the Lockerbie trial, UN
sanctions were lifted without opposition from Washington. There is reason
enough for the US to call it a day and, whilst Qadhafi's Libya remains a
rather unpleasant place, the regime has changed almost beyond recognition
in the last three years. For the future, engagement would be a better tool
of persuasion than further punitive sanctions and ostracism.
Yet Washington has a problem,
a perennial and serious one. It is not very good at deciding a future
strategy when it has had a success. Having defeated the Soviet Union and
European communism it wasn't able to come up with an effective plan for
mutual nuclear disarmament. Having persuaded North Korea to halt its
nuclear weapons development it has prevaricated about the two Koreas'
desire to engage in reconciliation. Having had, in former President Bill
Clinton's own judgement, more effect with the UN Iraq disarmament
commission than it did with the whole course of the Gulf War in disarming
Iraq of its potential weapons of mass destruction, it wasn't able to call
it a day and re-engage with Saddam Hussein to build a more open and
positive relationship.
With Libya, the same reflexes
are at work. After decades of militancy Libya now appears to be
accommodating itself to international norms. But Washington continues to
behave as if nothing much has changed. The US is fighting yesterday's
battle, when Qadhafi, flush with oil money and the energy of revolution,
believed he had to undermine the West, destroy Israel and subvert black
Africa to the south. Protected by the Soviet Union, hailed in many parts
of the Third World, most importantly on the Arab street, he was able to
write cheques and ship guns to liberation movements, secessionists and
terrorists from the Philippines to Argentina. But the blowing up of an
American airliner was one step too far and it coincided with the days of
change in the Soviet Union. Qadhafi was not Gorbachev's cup of tea and
Russia made no attempt to help when Libya was hung out to dry.
The sanctions have taken their
toll. The World Bank reckons that Libya has lost a good $18 billion in oil
revenue. Qadhafi found to his cost that not even the lure of oil could
tempt major countries to break the embargo. Splits within the ruling
circle became apparent and hardliners found themselves purged. Shortly
after Qadhafi accepted the UN demand for a trial of the Lockerbie suspects
he announced, “the world has changed radically and drastically. The
methods and ideas should change, and being a revolutionary and a
progressive man, I have to follow this movement”. In September last year
he made a speech proclaiming an end to his long-standing anti-imperialist
struggle.
According to Ray Takeyh,
writing in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, there are three
outstanding issues that the US says make rapprochement still impossible.
They are Libya's support for terrorism, its attempts to acquire weapons of
mass destruction and its opposition to the Arab-Israeli peace process.
But, as Takeyh argues, Washington overstates the dividing issues. Libya's
support of terrorists is now dead in the water. There is no chance Libya
could develop a nuclear weapon and its development of chemical weapons is
not highly sophisticated. As for Israel, Libya no longer rushes arms and
aid to Palestinian militants.
US policy needs to change from
stick to carrot. Europe already has changed step, perhaps too quickly
without waiting for Qadhafi to compensate the families of those who died
on board the crashed airliner. Still this is the time to make a deal:
Sanctions should be allowed to lapse in August if compensation is paid and
the US would then encourage the US oil industry to return in strength. The
struggle would not end there. Libya needs to be induced to sign the treaty
outlawing chemical weapons. The outside world needs to make sure that
Libya doesn't spend its new oil revenues on arms purchases. But this is
politics as normal and the US working with Europe is powerful enough to
offer plenty of incentives. Rogues can be rehabilitated. It just needs a
measure of courage and perception to know when the time is right.
Mr. Jonathan Power is a syndicated
columnist and author. He contributed this
article to the Jordan Times.
Source:
by courtesy & © 2001 Jordan
Times & Jonathan Power
by the same author:
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