Reinterpreting Libya's WMD Turnaround – Bridging the Carrot-Coercion Divide

Abstract

The dominant explanations of Libya's nuclear reversal in 2003 privilege either coercion or carrots treating these instruments as alternatives. Indoing so they ignore that it took a combination of coercion, carrots and confidence-building to turn Libya around. This article demonstrates this by developing and deploying a theoretical framework that integrates these three instruments into a more coherent and convincing explanation of the case. It highlights that analysts and policy-makers would do well to focus more on how different policy tools can be used in combination to achieve desired outcomes than on how individual tools can be employed with decisive effects. It also demonstrates that the Libya success will be hard to replicate.

Key Words:

• Carrots
• Coercion
• Confidence-building
• Diplomacy
• Engagement
• Inducements
• Libya
• Regime Change
• Statecraft
• Use of Force
• Weapons of Mass Destruction

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Elizabeth Kier, Jens Ringsmose, Sten Rynning, Gary Schaub and the two anonymous reviewers for useful comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

¹Hillary Clinton, ‘Transcript Senate confirmation hearing’, New York Times, 13 Jan. 2009.

²Colin Gray, War, Peace and International Relations – An Introduction to Strategic History (Abingdon, UK: Routledge 2007), 283; B.H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2nd rev. ed (London: Faber 1967), 322.

³Colin Dueck, ‘Strategies for Managing Rogue States’, Orbis 50/2 (Spring 2006), 223–41.

⁴Daniel L. Byman and Matthew C. Waxman, ‘Kosovo and the Great Air Power Debate’, International Security 24/4 (Spring 2000), 7–14.

⁵A taste of the sanctions debate is Robert A. Pape, ‘Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work’, International Security 22/2 (Fall 1997), 90–136; David A. Baldwin and Robert A. Pape, ‘Evaluating Economic Sanctions’, International Security 23/2 (Fall 1998), 189–198; Kimberly Ann Elliott, ‘The Sanctions Glass: Half Full or Completely Empty?’, International Security 23/1 (Summer 1998), 50–65; Robert A. Pape, ‘Why Economic Sanctions Still Do Not Work’, International Security 23/1 (Summer 1998), 66–77.

⁶Examples of works regarding positive inducements as neglected and superior to economic sanctions are David Cortright (ed.), The Price of Peace: Inducement Strategies for International Conflict Prevention (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield 1997); and Richard N. Hass and Meghan L. O'Sullivan (eds), Honey and Vinegar: Incentives, Sanctions, and Foreign Policy (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press2000); Miroslav Nincic, ‘Getting What You Want: Positive Inducements in International Relations’, International Security 35/1 (Summer 2010).

⁷See David A. Baldwin, Economic Statecraft (Princeton UP 1985), 54, 68.

⁸Bruce W. Jentleson and Christopher A. Whytock, ‘Who ‘Won’ Libya? The Force-Diplomacy Debate and Its Implications for Theory and Policy’, International Security 30/3 (Winter 2005/06).

⁹Although Iraq and South Africa were also subjected to strong international pressure and persuasion prior to giving up their nuclear programmes and weapons, these cases differ in important respects. Iraq never publicly complied with international demands and had its regime overthrown militarily in 2003. South Africa's isolation was not caused by its nuclear weapons, which it acquired and dismantled in secret, but by its policy of Apartheid, and its decision to give up its weapons stemmed primarily from a more positive threat environment created by the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Apartheid regime.

¹⁰Mark Caprio, ‘Nuclear Dominoes: Will North Korea Follow Libya's Lead?’, Foreign Policy in Focus, 14 April 2004; Dana Moss, ‘Reforming the Rogue. Lessons from the US-Libya Rapprochement’, Policy Focus 105 (Aug. 2010); Paul R. Pillar, ‘Engagement and the Libyan Example’, The National Interest, 10 Aug. 2010.

¹¹Byman and Waxman, ‘Kosovo and the Great Air Power Debate’, 11.

¹² Vice Presidential Debate, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, 5 Oct. 2004 <www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/debatereferee/debate_1005.html>.

¹³Lisa Anderson, ‘Rogue Libya's Long Road’, Middle East Report 24 (Winter 2006), 46; Gawdat Bahgat, ‘Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Case of Libya’, International Relations 22/1 (Summer 2008), 107; Joseph Cirincione, ‘The world just got safer: give diplomacy the credit’, Washington Post, 11 Jan. 2004; Gary Hart, ‘My secret talks with Libya, and why they went nowhere’, Washington Post, 18 Jan. 2004; Martin S. Indyk, ‘The Iraq war did not force Gadaffi's hand’, Financial Times, 9 March 2004; Jentleson and Whytock, ‘Who ‘Won’ Libya?’, 75; George Joffe, ‘Libya: Who Blinked, and Why?’, Current History 103/673 (May 2004), 221–5; Flynt Leverett, ‘Why Libya gave up on the bomb’, New York Times, 23 Jan. 2004; Randall Newnham, ‘Carrots, Sticks, and Bombs: The End of Libya's WMD Program’, Mediterranean Quarterly 20/3 (Summer 2009), 78; Nincic, ‘Getting What You Want: Positive Inducements in International Relations’, 74; Geoff D. Porter, ‘The faulty premise of pre-emption’, New York Times, 31 July 2004; Ronald Bruce St. John, ‘“Libya is not Iraq”: Preemptive Strikes, WMD, and Diplomacy’, Middle East Journal 58/3 (Summer 2004), 386–402; Ron Suskind, ‘The Tyrant Who Came in from the Cold’, Washington Monthly 38/10 (Oct. 2006), 23; Yahia H. Zoubir, ‘The United States and Libya: From Confrontation to Normalization’, Middle East Policy 8/2 (Summer 2006), 60–1.

¹⁴Sammy Salama, ‘Was Libyan WMD Disarmament a Significant Success for Nonproliferation?’, NTI Issue Brief (Sept. 2004), <www.nti.org/e_research/e3_56a.html>.

¹⁵Bruce W. Jentleson, ‘Coercive Diplomacy: Scope and Limits in the Contemporary World’, Policy Analysis Brief (Dec. 2006), 4. See also Jentleson and Whytock, ‘Who “Won” Libya?’.

¹⁶Newnham, ‘Carrots, Sticks, and Bombs’, 78.

¹⁷I employ the 3C terminology because it does not privilege any of the 3Cs. Although the coercive diplomacy literature does incorporate all three, it still privileges coercion. Similarly, the literature on positive inducements privileges the carrots and the confidence-building mentioning coercion only in passing. The 3C framework represents a way of avoiding these conceptual pitfalls.

¹⁸For comprehensive reviews see Patrick C. Bratton, ‘When is Coercion Successful? And Why Can't we Agree on it?’, Naval War College Review 58/3 (Summer 2005), 99–120; Peter Viggo Jakobsen, ‘Pushing the Limits of Military Coercion Theory’, International Studies Perspectives 12/2 (May 2011), 152–69.

¹⁹Alexander L. George and William E. Simons, ‘Findings and Conclusions’, in idem (eds), Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (Boulder, CO: Westview 1994), 287.

²⁰Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 1966), 72.

²¹Robert J. Art, ‘Coercive Diplomacy: What Do We Know’, in Robert J. Art and Patrick M. Cronin (eds), The United States and Coercive Diplomacy (Washington DC: USIP 2003), 393–402; George and Simons, ‘Findings and Conclusions’, 282–6; Peter Viggo Jakobsen, ‘Coercive Diplomacy’, in Alan Collins (ed.), Contemporary Security Studies (Oxford: OUP 2010), 277–98.

²²George and Simons, ‘Findings and Conclusions’, 286; Schelling, Arms and Influence, 74–5.

²³Janice Gross Stein, ‘Reassurance in International Conflict Management’, Political Science Quarterly 106/3 (Fall 1991), 441–3.

²⁴Scott Snyder, ‘North Korea's Nuclear Program: The Role of Incentives in Preventing Deadly Conflict’, in Cortright, The Price of Peace, 74.

²⁵Hitler preferred the destruction of the German nation to surrender in 1945 and so did some Japanese military leaders after the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but they were overruled in both instances. Derek Smith, ‘Deterrence and Counterproliferation in an Age of Weapons of Mass Destruction’, Security Studies 12/4 (Summer 2003), 165–6.

²⁶Peter Viggo Jakobsen, Western Use of Coercive Diplomacy after the Cold War: A Challenge for Theory and Practice (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press 1998); Jakobsen, ‘Coercive Diplomacy’.

²⁷Meghan L. O'Sullivan, Shrewd Sanctions: Economic Statecraft in an Age of Global Terrorism (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press 2003), 177; Department of Defense, Defense Science Board 1997 Summer Study Task Force, DoD Responses to Transnational Threats, 1: Final Report (Oct. 1997), 15–16.

²⁸O'Sullivan, Shrewd Sanctions, 190–1.

²⁹O'Sullivan, Shrewd Sanctions, 213–15.

³⁰Since the UTA bombing Libya has only been tied to one terrorist incident: a 2003-plot to kill Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. See Ken Silverstein, ‘How Kadafi went from foe to ally’, Los Angeles Times, 4 Sept. 2005.

³¹Cited in Ian Hurd, ‘The Strategic Use of Liberal Internationalism: Libya and the UN Sanctions, 1992–2003’, International Organization 59/3 (Summer 2005), 505.

³²O'Sullivan, Shrewd Sanctions, 194.

³³Clyde R. Mark, ‘Libya’, CRS Issue Brief for Congress IB93109, 22 Aug. 2003,15.

³⁴O'Sullivan, Shrewd Sanctions, 194–7.

³⁵Mary-Jane Deeb, ‘Qadhafi's Changed Policy: Causes and Consequences’, Middle East Policy 7/2 (Feb. 2000), 149; Tim Niblock, Pariah States & Sanctions in the Middle East: Iraq, Libya, Sudan (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2001), 68–9, 74–80; Ray Takeyh, ‘The Rogue Who Came in from the Cold’, Foreign Affairs 80/3 (May/June 2001), 65.

³⁶Alison Pargeter, ‘Libya: Reforming the Impossible?’, Review of African Political Economy 33/108 (2006), 221; Diederik Vandewalle, ‘The Origins and Parameters of Libya's Recent Actions’, Arab Reform Bulletin 2/3 (March 2004).

³⁷O'Sullivan, Shrewd Sanctions, 203–4.

³⁸Dafna Hochman, ‘Rehabilitating a Rogue: Libya's WMD Reversal and Lessons for US Policy’, Parameters 36/1 (Spring 2006), 68–9; Ronald Bruce St John, ‘Libyan Foreign Policy: Newfound Flexibility’, Orbis 47/3 (Summer 2003), 466.

³⁹Suskind, ‘The Tyrant Who Came in from the Cold’, 22. See also Patrick E. Tyler, ‘Libyan stagnation a big factor in Qaddafi surprise’, New York Times, 8 Jan. 2004.

⁴⁰Lyn Boyd-Judson, ‘Strategic Moral Diplomacy: Mandela, Qaddafi, and the Lockerbie Negotiations’, Foreign Policy Analysis 1/1 (March 2005), 73–97.

⁴¹An excellent overview of the evolution of Libya's nuclear programme is Wyn Q. Bowen, Libya and Nuclear Proliferation: Stepping Back from the Brink, Adelphi Paper 380 (London: IISS 2006), 23–45.

⁴²Hart, ‘My Secret Talks With Libya’; Barbara Slavin, ‘Libya's rehabilitation in the works since early 90s’, USA Today, 26 April 2004.

⁴³Stephen Fidler et al., ‘Return to the fold: how Gaddaffi was persuaded to give up his nuclear goals’, Financial Times, 27 Jan. 2004; Joffe, ‘Libya’, 223.

⁴⁴Bowen, ‘Libya and Nuclear Proliferation’, 62–6; Michael Evans, ‘Libya knew game was up before Iraq war’, The Times, 13 March 2004; Douglas Frantz and Josh Meyer, ‘The deal to disarm Kadafi’, Los Angeles Times, 13 March 2005.

⁴⁵Judith Miller, ‘How Gadhafi lost his groove’, Wall Street Journal, 16 May 2006.

⁴⁶Cited in Zoubir, ‘The United States and Libya’, 57.

⁴⁷Maalfrid Braut-Hegghammer, ‘Libya's Nuclear Intentions: Ambition and Ambivalence’, Strategic Insights 8/2 (April 2009), 7–8. See also Miller, ‘How Gadhafi lost his groove’.

⁴⁸Robin Gedye, ‘UN should fight for rights, says Berlusconi’, Daily Telegraph, 4 Sept. 2003; Miller, ‘How Gadhafi lost his groove’.

⁴⁹Charles Lambroschini, ‘Interview: Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi’, Le Figaro, 11 March 2003, <www.worldpress.org/europe/989.cfm#down>.

⁵⁰Zoubir, ‘The United States and Libya’, 58.

⁵¹Judith Miller, ‘Gadhafi's leap of faith’, Wall Street Journal, 17 May 2006.

⁵²Tony Blair, ‘PM Welcomes Libyan WMD Announcement’, 10 Downing Street, 19 Dec. 2003; George Bush, ‘President Bush: Libya Pledges to Dismantle WMD Programs’, The White House, 19 Dec. 2003.

⁵³Michael Nguyen, ‘UK offers Libya security assurances’, Arms Control Today, Sept. 2006.

⁵⁴Michael Hirsh, ‘The real lesson from Libya’, Newsweek, 17 May 2006, <www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12836710/site/newsweek/page/3/>.

⁵⁵For a detailed description of the implementation process see Bowen, ‘Libya and Nuclear Proliferation’, 71–9

⁵⁶Jim Walsh, Learning from Past Success: The NPT and the Future of Non-proliferation (Stockholm: The Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission 2005), 12.

⁵⁷David Cortright and Raimo Väyrynen, Towards Nuclear Zero, Adelphi Papers 410 (London: IISS 2009), 62–3.

⁵⁸South Korea, Sweden, and Taiwan had programmes that were stopped by means of security guarantees and economic incentives in their early stages, and these instruments were also used successfully to persuade Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine to give up the nuclear arsenals that they inherited from the Soviet Union. See Virginia I. Foran and Leonard S. Spector, ‘The Application of Incentives to Nuclear Proliferation’, in Cortright, The Price of Peace, 21–53.

⁵⁹An excellent review of the literature is Scott Sagan, ‘The Causes of Nuclear Proliferation’, Annual Review of Political Science 14 (June 2011), 225–44.

⁶⁰Maalfrid Braut-Hegghammer, ‘Libya's Nuclear Turnaround: Perspectives from Tripoli’, Middle East Journal 62/1 (Winter 2008), 60; Joseph Cirincione et al., Deadly Arsenals. Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Threats (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2005), 318.

⁶¹James R. Clapper, ‘Unclassified Statement for the Record on the Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’, 2 Feb. 2012, 5–7.

⁶²See Shahram Chubin, Iran's Nuclear Ambitions (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2006), 7, 19; Cirincione et al., Deadly Arsenals, 296–8; Ali Rahigh-Aghsan and Peter Viggo Jakobsen, ‘The Rise of Iran: How Durable, How Dangerous?’, Middle East Journal 64/4 (Autumn 2010), 561–2, 570.

⁶³Cirincione et al., Deadly Arsenals, 280; Michael J. Mazaar, ‘Going Just a Little Nuclear: Nonproliferation Lessons from North Korea’, International Security 20/2 (Autumn 1995), 93–5, 100–1.

⁶⁴Rahigh-Aghsan and Jakobsen, ‘The Rise of Iran’, 566.

⁶⁵Mark McDonald, ‘North Korea suggests Libya should have kept nuclear program’, New York Times, 25 March 2011.

⁶⁶Evans J.R. Revere, ‘Re-Engaging North Korea after Kim Jong-il's Death: Last, Best Hope or Dialogue to Nowhere?’, Brookings Policy Paper, No. 29 (Jan. 2012), 12–14.

⁶⁷Rahigh-Aghsan and Jakobsen, ‘The Rise of Iran’.

⁶⁸Dan Reiter, Preventive War and Its Alternatives: The Lessons of History (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute/ US Army War College 2006), 15.

⁶⁹Vernon Loeb and Peter Slevin, ‘Overcoming North Korea's “tyranny of proximity’”, Washington Post, 20 Jan. 2003.