Rehabilitating a Rogue: Libya’s WMD Reversal and Lessons for US Policy

Abstract

O n 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. 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). 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. 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. The Bush Administration and analysts