From Saudi Arabia, in the east to Syria, in the West, the Middle East regimes are under pressure, and their leaders are considering how to avoid the fate of Gaddafi.
This is one of the lessons: dictatorships with nuclear and chemical weapons are not bombed. Libya is attacked because it has shot its own citizens, but North Korea has escaped unpunished even though millions of people starved and it attacked a neighbor. President Barack Obama’s recent message to the Iranian people has not mentioned anything about a threat to the regime.
Libya understood earlier this geopolitical reality. In 1970, Libya offered China 100 million dollars for a nuclear bomb. Fortunately, Zhou Enlai, the Chinese Premier back then, refused. Then, in 1997, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear specialist, accepted a similar offer and began to supply parts for Libya’s uranium enrichment and a blueprint for building a nuclear bomb.
In 1986, after Tripoli was bombed for sponsoring terrorism, the country began to produce chemical weapons. But, in 1999, weakened by years of sanctions, Libya has opened contact bridges with the West which led ultimately to abandon its strategic weapons program in return for reintegration into the global economy. We can speculate that, looking back, Colonel Gaddafi probably thinks that he gave up too early.
A second lesson is that tyrants must have the resources to kill many people quickly. Libya’s army, with more than 100,000 troops, could not commit large-scale massacres before the coalition intervention. The West must develop a clear set of rules that its regional partners should adhere to and implement them rigorously. Gaddafi’s release from power is not worth anything if the other despots in the region and beyond will become stronger after this experience.