Libya fallout: Why Iran, North Korea now less likely to drop nuclear ambitions

In 2003 Qaddafi struck a deal with the US and Great Britain allowing the longtime international pariah to rejoin the international community in exchange for renouncing terrorism and giving up WMD programs. As part of the deal, the Libyan government is believed to have made good the following year on its promise to turn over nuclear materials including thousands of centrifuges, parts for a nuclear weapon, and an advanced bomb design.

At the time the Bush administration hailed Qaddafi’s decision as an example for other “rogue” states facing a choice between increased isolation and the benefits of cooperating with the international community.

Muammar Qaddafi: Five ways Libya's leader has held onto power

In the Obama administration, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has often said Iran and North Korea face that same choice.

North Korea was even more direct than Iran in addressing the “lessons” of Libya. Calling the deal the US extended to Qaddafi in 2003 “an invasion tactic to disarm the country,” Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry declared this week that Libya’s nuclear dismantlement “turned out to be a mode of aggression whereby the [US] coaxed [Libya] with such sweet words as ‘guarantee of security’ and ‘improvement of relations’ to disarm, and then swallowed it up by force.”

Misreading Libya's lessons?

US officials say the Iranians and North Koreans are sadly (for their own people) misreading the lessons of Libya, and that it was Qaddafi’s turning on his own people that returned him to pariah status.

But what will matter most to the global security agenda in the coming months is not so much which interpretation of the lessons of Libya is correct, but rather how the Iranians (and the North Koreans) respond to the Libya operation, some foreign policy analysts say.

Tehran and Pyongyang have concluded that “the US and its allies had a plan for premeditated treachery [against Qaddafi] where none likely existed,” writes Doug Bandow in Friday’s online issue of The National Interest. Still, he adds, Iran and North Korea’s version of events – that once Qaddafi was “disarmed’ and “vulnerable,” the Libyan uprising “created an opportunity” for the West to “do what it had wanted to do all along” – is likely to reverberate beyond those two countries.

Looking beyond the immediate crisis to US nonproliferation goals, Mr. Bandow, the senior fellow at Washington’s Cato Institute, paints a bleak picture for President Obama’s vision of a world without nuclear weapons.

“The US government’s aggressiveness has demonstrated yet again that the only sure protection against American military action is possession of nuclear weapons,” he says. “Washington’s policy of peaceful nonproliferation where it matters most is dead.”

IN PICTURES: Who has nukes?

Previous

1 | 2