Chapter one: Nuclear ‘drivers’

Abstract

For over three decades, driven by the core motive of deterring external threats to its security, Libya sought to acquire nuclear weapons. Having attempted but failed to procure them ‘off the shelf’ from several states during the 1970s, by late 2003 it had succeeded in assembling much of the technology required to manufacture them. Nevertheless, following secret negotiations with the UK and US governments, in December 2003 Colonel Muammar Gadhafi resolved to abandon the pursuit of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. This decision reflected the regime's radically altered security perceptions during the 1990s and early twenty-first century. The pursuit of nuclear weapons had come to be viewed as a strategic liability.

This Adelphi Paper examines the motives for Libya's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, from Gadhafi's rise to power in 1969 through to late 2003. It assesses the proliferation pathways that the regime followed, including early dependence on Soviet technology and assistance and, subsequently, its reliance on the A.Q. Khan network. It examines the decision to give up the quest for nuclear weapons, focusing on the main factors that influenced the regime's calculations, including the perceived need to re-engage with the international community and the United States in particular. The process of dismantling the nuclear programme is also addressed, as is the question of whether Libya constitutes a ‘model’ for addressing the challenges posed by other proliferators.

Notes

¹ Shahram Chubin, ‘Middle East’, in Mitchell Reiss and Robert S. Litwak, eds, Nuclear Proliferation After the Cold War (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Centre Press, 1994), pp.53–5.

² Mark, ‘CRS Issue Brief for Congress: Libya’, pp.5–7, 12–14.

³ Jon B. Alterman and J. Stephen Morrison, Middle East Note–Africa Notes: Is it Time to Engage Libya? A Conference Report, (Washington DC: Center for Security and International Studies, December 2003), pp.1-4: http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/anotes_0312.pdf.

⁴ ‘Libya’, Country Profiles, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office: http://www.fco.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1007029394365&=KCountryProfile&aid =1019149793547.

⁵ Oye Ogunbadejo, ‘Qaddafi's North African Design’, International Security, vol.8, no.1, Summer 1983, p.155.

⁶ Milton Viorst, ‘The Colonel in His Labyrinth’, Foreign Affairs, vol.78, no.2, March/April 1999, p.64.

⁷ Ogunbadejo, ‘Qaddafi's North African Design’, p.157.

⁸ Ronald Bruce St John, ‘The Soviet Penetration of Libya’, The World Today, vol.38, no.4, April 1982, pp.133, 138.

⁹ ‘Libya’, The World Factbook, US Central Intelligence Agency: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ly.html; Ogunbadejo, ‘Qaddafi's North African Design’, p.155; ‘Libya’, Country Profiles, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

¹⁰ Office of the Secretary of Defense, Proliferation: Threat and Response (Washington DC: Department of Defense, January 2001), pp.45–9: http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/ptr20010110.pdf.

¹¹ Joseph Cirincione with Jon B. Wolfstahl and Miriam Rajkimar, Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002), pp.305–12.

¹² St John, ‘The Soviet Penetration of Libya’, p.133.

¹³ ‘Libya: A Country Study’, The Library of Congress Country Studies, http://countrystudies.us/libya/82.htm.

¹⁴ Ogunbadejo, ‘Qaddafi's North African Design’, p.156; Viorst, ‘The Colonel in His Labyrinth’, p.64.

¹⁵ Bhatia, Nuclear Rivals in the Middle East, pp.64–71.

¹⁶ Jacob Abadi, ‘Pragmatism and Rhetoric in Libya's Policy Toward Israel’, The Journal of Conflict Studies, vol.20, no.1, Fall 2000, pp.92–3.

¹⁷ Ogunbadejo, ‘Qaddafi's North African Design’, p.156.

¹⁸ Alterman and Morrison, ‘Is it Time to Engage Libya?’, pp.1–4.

¹⁹ Abadi, ‘Pragmatism and Rhetoric in Libya's Policy Toward Israel’, pp.80, 86–7, 97.

²⁰ Roger F. Pajak, ‘Soviet Arms Aid to Libya’, Military Review, July 1976, p.83.

²¹ Abadi, ‘Pragmatism and Rhetoric in Libya's Policy Toward Israel’, p.87.

²² Ibid., p.85.

²³ Kenneth Katzman, Congressional Research Service, CRS Report for Congress, ‘Terrorism: Near Eastern Groups and State Sponsors’ (Washington DC: Library of Congress, 13 February 2002): http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL31119.pdf.

²⁴ National Foreign Assessment Center, Patterns of International Terrorism 1980 (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, June 1981), p.9, cited in Claudia Wright, ‘Libya and the West: Headlong into Confrontation?’, International Affairs, vol.58, no.1, Winter 1981–82, p.17.

²⁵ Abadi, ‘Pragmatism and Rhetoric in Libya's Policy Toward Israel’, p.88.

²⁶ Mark, ‘CRS Issue Brief for Congress: Libya’, pp.1, 5–7.

²⁷ George Joffé, ‘Libya and Europe’, The Journal of North African Studies, vol.6, no.4, Winter 2001, p.84.

²⁸ Claudia Wright, ‘Libya and the West’, p.23.

²⁹ St John, ‘Libyan Foreign Policy: Newfound Flexibility’, Orbis, vol.47, no.3, Summer 2003, p.472.

³⁰ Andrew J. Pierre, The Global Politics of Arms Sales (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), p.74.

³¹ St John, ‘The Soviet Penetration of Libya’, p.135.

³² St John, ‘Libyan Foreign Policy’, p.472.

³³ St John, ‘The Soviet Penetration of Libya’, p.136.

³⁴ Ibid., p.134.

³⁵ Youssef M. Ibrahim, ‘Libya and the World: Interview with Colonel Qaddafi, 10 December 1979’, Survival, vol.22, no.2, March/April 1980, pp.80–82.

³⁶ Claudia Wright, ‘Libya and the West’, p.38.

³⁷ Tim Zimmermann, ‘The American Bombing of Libya: A success for coercive diplomacy?’, Survival, vol.29, no.3, May/ June 1987, pp.196–9.

³⁸ Ambassador Ronald Neumann, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, 4 May 2000. See: ‘Neumann's Senate Testimony on US Policy Toward Libya’, 4 May 2000: http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/libya/000504-libya-usia1.htm.

³⁹ National Foreign Assessment Center, Patterns of International Terrorism 1980, (Washington DC: US Central Intelligence Agency, June 1981), p.9, cited in Claudia Wright, ‘Libya and the West’, p.17.

⁴⁰ St John, ‘Libyan Foreign Policy’, pp.463–4.

⁴¹ ‘Neumann's Senate Testimony on US Policy Toward Libya’, 4 May 2000.

⁴² Tim Zimmermann, ‘The American Bombing of Libya’, pp.196–9.

⁴³ Mark, ‘CRS Issue Brief for Congress: Libya’, pp.5–7.

⁴⁴ National Security Decision Directive 205, Acting Against Libyan Support for International Terrorism (Washington DC: The White House, 8 January 1986): http://www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB55/nsdd205.pdf.

⁴⁵ Mark, ‘CRS Issue Brief for Congress: Libya’, pp.5–7.

⁴⁶ Ibid., pp.5–7.

⁴⁷ ‘Neumann's Senate Testimony on US Policy Toward Libya’, 4 May 2000.

⁴⁸ Frederick Zilian, Jr, ‘The US Raid on Libya – and NATO’, Orbis, no.30, Fall 1986, pp.499, 509–10.

⁴⁹ Britain had officially broken off diplomatic relations with Libya in 1984 after the shooting of WPC Yvonne Fletcher in St James's Square outside the Libyan Embassy.

⁵⁰ ‘Libya’, Country Profiles, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

⁵¹ ‘Libya: IRT-1’, Research Reactor Database, International Atomic Energy Agency, http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/rrdb/; ‘Documentation: NPT Parties’, PPNN Newsbrief, no.24, Fourth Quarter 1993, p.23: http://www.ppnn.soton.ac.uk/nb24.pdf; Bhatia, Nuclear Rivals in the Middle East, p.68.

⁵² INFCIRC/282: The Text of the Agreement of 8 July 1980 Between the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and the Agency for the Application of Safeguards in Connection with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, October 1980).

⁵³ Ibrahim, ‘Libya and the World’, pp.80–82.

⁵⁴ ‘Libya: A Country Study’, The Library of Congress Country Studies, The Library of Congress: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/lytoc.html.

⁵⁵ Craig R. Black, Deterring Libya: The Strategic Culture of Muammar Qaddafi, The Counterproliferation Papers: Future Warfare Series No.8 (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: USAF Counterproliferation Center, October 2000), p.6: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/cpc-pubs/black.pdf.

⁵⁶ Spector and Smith, Nuclear Ambitions, p.178. See also Frank Barnaby, The Invisible Bomb: The Nuclear Arms Race in the Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris, 1989), p.150; Black, Deterring Libya, p.6.

⁵⁷ Greg Giles, Candice Cohen, Christy Razzano and Sara Whitaker, Future Global Nuclear Threats, a report prepared for the Advanced Systems and Concepts Office (Ft Belvoir, VA: Defense Threat Reduction Agency, 4 June 2001), pp. A27–8.

⁵⁸ Abadi, ‘Pragmatism and Rhetoric in Libya's Policy Toward Israel’, p.91.

⁵⁹ Ibid., p.91.

⁶⁰ Ibid., p.93.

⁶¹ Feldman, Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control in the Middle East, pp.63–5.

⁶² Abadi, ‘Pragmatism and Rhetoric in Libya's Policy Toward Israel’, p.92.

⁶³ Mati Peled, Ha’aretz (Hebrew), 9 September 1985, pp.61–3 (via the Nuclear Threat Initiative [NTI] Nuclear Database, http://www.nti.org/db/nuclear/1986/n8600658.htm).

⁶⁴ ‘Beyond the Axis of Evil: Additional Threats from Weapons of Mass Destruction’, Address by John R. Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, to the Heritage Foundation, Washington DC, 6 May 2002: http://www.state.gov/t/us/rm/9962.htm.

⁶⁵ Paul Kerr, ‘IAEA praises Libya for disarmament efforts’, Arms Control Today, April 2004: http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_04/Libya.asp.

⁶⁶ See, for example, Robert Waller, ‘Libyan Threat Perception’, Jane's Intelligence Review, vol.7, no.9, September 1995, p.408; Future Global Nuclear Threats, pp. A27–8.

⁶⁷ Spector and Smith, Nuclear Ambitions, p.183.

⁶⁸ Director General, IAEA, Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (Vienna: IAEA, 28 May 2004), pp.4–5: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/libya/iaea0504.pdf; ‘Japanese Parts Used in Libya's Nuke Program’, Herald Asahi, 13 March 2004.

⁶⁹ Chubin, ‘Middle East’, p.53.

⁷⁰ Spector and Smith, Nuclear Ambitions, p.178.

⁷¹ Nuclear Proliferation News, 1 June 1995, p.8, via World Information Service on Energy: Uranium Project, published by WISE News Communiqué, 16 June 1995: http://www.antenna.nl/wise/433-4/brief.html.