America and Gaddafi’s Libya
In a prescient March 2004 installation of AEI’s Outlook paper series, Tom Donnelly and Vance Serchuk examined American policy toward Gaddafi’s Libya. Donnelly and Serchuk remind readers of the role that American armed intervention in Iraq- along with the disruption of the A.Q. Khan nuclear “black market”- played in leading Gaddafi to forgo nuclear weapons. Still, Donnelly and Serchuk were circumspect about Gaddafi’s intentions at home and abroad, and warned that placation of Libya would undermine the broader Bush Doctrine of democracy promotion.
This warning went unheeded as the United States, the United Kingdom and others sought to ‘rehabilitate’ Gaddafi and reintegrate Libya into the international political order. Gaddafi’s recidivism today both affirms the value and foresight of Bush’s democracy promotion and the peril of a foreign policy that ignores internal political dynamics.
