THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 61, February 21, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
EUROPEAN LIBYAN POLICY IS CYNICAL
By Dr. Michael Rubin
EUROPE'S CURRENT POLICY TOWARD LIBYAN DICTATOR, TERRORISM SUPPORTER, & INTERNATIONAL TROUBLE-MAKER
MUAMMAR QADHAFI: EUROPEAN LEADERS CLAIM SUCCESS IN THE REFORM & REHABILITATION OF THE LIBYAN
POLITICAL REGIME & CITE THEIR SOCALLED "SUCCESS" AS EVIDENCE THAT EUROPE'S POLICY OF SLOW, DELIBERATIVE
ENGAGEMENT WITH ROGUE REGIMES WORKS -- THE REALITY: QADHAFI'S ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN RIGHTS &
TERRORISM REMAIN UNCHANGED -- NOT ONLY DOES QADHAFI CONTINUE TO SPONSOR TERRORISM & VIOLATE HUMAN
RIGHTS, HE MAY AT ANY TIME USE THE EUROPEAN INJECTION OF CASH & TECHNOLOGY TO RESURRECT HIS WMD
PROGRAMS
FULL STORY:
In December, 2007, Libyan strongman Muammar Qadhafi toured Europe, triumphant. No longer an international outcast, he
received a statesman's welcome. Feted by President Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysee Palace, he could ignore slights by Foreign
Minister Bernard Kouchner. After all, Kouchner may have refused to dine with him, but Qadhafi still walked away with
nearly $15 billion in new contracts. Across Europe, Qadhafi's pariah status is a fading memory.
European leaders highlight their rehabilitation of Libya as evidence that their policy of slow, deliberative engagement works.
On October 11, 2004, for example, the European Union's Council of Ministers, citing Tripoli's willingness to surrender its
WMD program and compensate victims for Libya's past terrorism, agreed to lift the trade and arms embargo against Libya.
Explaining the move, European Commission Ambassador Marc Pierini credited "the constant and confident dialogue
entertained by Colonel Muammar Qadhafi and President Romano Prodi during these decisive years."
The European engagement was a decade long. In 1995, European foreign ministers meeting in Barcelona launched the
Euro-Mediterranean Partnership that sought to establish political and security dialogue, gradually establish a free trade zone
and encourage civil society. The European Union initially excluded Libya but, four years later, the EU Presidency invited
Libyan observers to attend a follow-up conference in Stuttgart. There, they extended Libya an offer of membership upon the
lifting of UN sanctions and the Libyan government's acquiescence to existing Barcelona protocols.
European policy is cynical, however, based more on a desire to promote trade and constrain African migration to the
Schengen zone, and less on any human rights or political reform concerns. Qadhafi may be the guest of honor in European
capitals, but any change in the Libyan leader or his regime is more illusionary than real. While European officials and their
U.S. counterparts recast Libya as an integrated member of the international community, Qadhafi's attitudes toward terrorism
and human rights remain unchanged.
Take terrorism: In 2004, as European officials welcomed Qadhafi on his first trip to Europe in 15 years and discussed his
rehabilitation, the colonel reminded them of what he would do if they did not meet his demands. Standing beside Prodi, the
Libyan leader warned: "We do hope that we shall not be obliged or forced one day to go back to those days where we bomb
our cars or put explosive belts around our beds and around our women." Diplomats can claim the Libyan leader has had a
change of heart but, for Qadhafi, terrorism remains on the menu of acceptable options should European bribery or diplomacy
prove less than fruitful.
The Libyan regime's renunciation of terrorism was never substantive. As the Libyan government negotiated payments to
victims of the Pan Am flight 103 and UTA 772 bombings, Tripoli funneled money to Abu Sayyaf terrorists in the Philippines,
swelling the group's ranks and increasing the frequency and lethality of its attacks. More recently Iraqi officials reported that
Seif al-Islam, the Libyan leader's son and the face of reform at European cocktail parties, financed a group responsible for
bombings and dozens of deaths in Mosul.
Qadhafi's conversion on human rights has been no more sincere. He released five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor
held on fabricated charges not because European engagement had encouraged a change of heart, but rather because
European officials arranged a ransom payment of $400 million and Paris agreed to ship advanced weaponry and even nuclear
technology to the North African state. That the arrangement allowed Qadhafi to draw moral equivalency between airline
bombings and Bulgarian nurses seeking to help Libyan children should embarrass European diplomats for decades.
Europe's willingness to prioritize commercial ties above any other consideration also undercuts international efforts to
prosecute war crimes. As former Liberian President Charles Taylor awaits judgment in The Hague, the Special Court for Sierra
Leone has uncovered evidence that Qadhafi trained and underwrote the forces that most victimized civilians. European
willingness to exculpate such criminality for a cash payment makes a mockery of its human rights rhetoric. Even as European
statesmen and company chairmen visit Tripoli to sign lucrative contracts, Fathi Eljhami, Libya's leading advocate of political
reform, remains in solitary confinement, unacknowledged in Brussels.
Libya has not changed, U.S. and European testaments to the contrary notwithstanding. Today, Brussels and Washington
both hold Libya up as a success, either for engagement or the Bush doctrine. Reality matters. Turning a blind eye, however,
to the falsity of reform is dangerous. Not only does Qadhafi continue to sponsor terror and violate human rights, the
mercurial leader may at any time use the European injection of cash and technology to resurrect his weapons programs.
Failure will not be limited to Libya, however. Rogues like Syria, Iran, and North Korea now understand that Western demands
are ephemeral and delay will pay.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Europe, European States, Politics, & Public Policy
North Africa -- The Arab States of Islamic North Africa
Dr. Michael Rubin, a Ph.D. in History (Yale University) and a specialist in Middle Eastern politics, Islamic culture and Islamist
ideology, is Editor of the Middle East Quarterly, a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School, and a resident
scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Dr Rubin is author of Into the Shadows: Radical
Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001) and is co-author, with Dr. Patrick Clawson,
of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Dr. Rubin served as political advisor to the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Baghdad (2003-2004); staff advisor on Iran and Iraq in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense
(2002-2004); visiting lecturer in the Departments of History and International Relations at Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(2001-2002); visiting lecturer at the Universities of Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan (2000-2001); Soref
Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1999-2000); and visiting lecturer in the Department of History at Yale
University (1999-2000). He has been a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Leonard Davis Institute at Hebrew
University, and the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.
The foregoing article by Dr. Rubin was originally published in Bitterlemons International, February 28, 2008, and
can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which seeks to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(Article URL: http://www.meforum.org/article/1862)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
February 28, 2008
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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