Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi has stunned the world by choosing to relinquish his weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear program that exceeded most Western estimates. But perhaps nobody should have been surprised. If there is one characteristic common to all dictators, it is their respect for power – or rather, for the will to use power.
What's telling here is the timing: Although the decision was announced last week, it was actually made in March, as the US was gearing up to depose Saddam Hussein. To those who claim that Operation Iraqi Freedom failed to uncover WMDs, the case of Libya now serves as a devastating rebuke.
What led to Gaddafi's about-face? There are three factors:
First, unlike with Iraq, the West put up a genuinely united front against Libya. The bombing of a Pan Am flight in 1988 which took the lives of 270 people, and of a French UTA flight the following year, which killed 170 passengers and crew, were soon afterwards established by Western governments as Libya's doing. Consequently, Libya – a country of fewer than 4 million citizens – was at loggerheads with three members of the UN Security Council (the third, beside the US and France, was Britain, since the Pan Am flight had fallen on its soil).
Thus, with active French backing, the US and Britain could exert on Libya the kind of pressure its derelict behavior demanded: a full, UN-sanctioned ban on international flights to and from Libya; the suspension of the Libyan national carrier's operations; a ban on the supply of all aircraft or spare parts; a demand that all nations recall from Libya any military advisers, experts, and technicians; and a squeezing of Libya's diplomatic presence worldwide.
Ultimately, Libya was brought to its knees, formally conceding its crimes and pledging a $2.7 billion compensation package to its victims' families.
Second, of course, was the demonstrative effect of America's war on terrorism. Libya was not a named member of Bush's Axis of Evil, but it was surely clear to Gaddafi that further investment in WMDs would someday mean regime change, not regime insurance.
The US president's immunity to diplomatic gamesmanship of the kind attempted by Iraq via its allies on the Security Council, and now being practiced to uncertain effect by Iran and North Korea, surely reinforced the message.
Third, the West offered rewards for good behavior, namely, the lifting of UN and US sanctions on Libya. But what matters here is that it did so only after Libya had offered clear proof that it had changed course. This is very far from what we are now witnessing in Iran, where the regime's pledges to meet its obligations toward the IAEA have been slippery and equivocal.
There is, of course, something to be regretted in the fact that, even as Gaddafi may relinquish his arsenal, he will not relinquish his stranglehold on the Libyan people. Still, the Libyan saga carries lessons for the Arab world.
Tripoli's frequent involvement in myriad conflicts, including an invasion of neighboring Chad and assassination attempts on various leaders in neighboring Egypt and Sudan, its repeated attempts to unite with assorted Arab countries, and its more recent policy of turning its back at the West and focusing on Africa, have established its position as a strange bird even among the Middle East's already bizarre ecosystem of generalissimos, princes, and kinglings.
Now, with Saddam Hussein universally exposed as a coward, and Gaddafi not only admitting some of his crimes but even hoping to repent for them, one hopes that at least some across the Arab world will start candidly asking what their post-colonial leaders have done to their countries.
Led by Washington, the West is likely to first focus now on verifying that Gaddafi actually deliver on his much-heralded promises, and indeed dismantle his WMD programs. This should not mean that his own people should stomach him any longer than they already have or that Libya should be exempt from American calls for freedom in the Middle East.
Gaddafi's promise is an accomplishment and a Western victory, but it does not vitiate the rule that dictatorships, even tamed ones, cannot form a lasting foundation for peace and stability.
