Nikolas K. Gvosdev: Tripoli Today, Havana Tomorrow?
[Nikolas K. Gvosdev, a senior editor at The National Interest, is a professor of national-security studies at the U.S. Naval War College. The views expressed are entirely his own.]
Is the shift in U.S. rhetoric about Libya indicative of a changed attitude toward other entrenched autocratic, historically anti-American regimes around the world? Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quite blunt in laying out her vision for the future of Libya’s “Brother Leader” Muammar Qaddafi: “It is time for Qaddafi to go -- now, without further violence or delay.” She noted too that the United States will consider all possible options—including military action—to assist the process of regime change in Tripoli and served up the classic Washington formulation that nothing is “off the table"
This, of course, reverses the earlier approach, first embarked upon by the George W. Bush administration and continued by the Obama team, of engagement with Qaddafi. Indeed, two years ago, the president even shook Qaddafi’s hand at the G-8 summit in Italy while Denis McDonough, now the deputy national security advisor, defended the outreach by observing that Barack Obama “wants to see cooperation with Libya continue in sectors such as Tripoli's decision a few years ago to give up its nuclear program, an absolutely voluntary decision that we consider positive.”
Qaddafi might have believed that his more constructive posture in global affairs—giving up his weapons of mass destruction, trying to make a positive contribution to the Arab-Israeli dispute with his “Israstine” proposal, and opening up Libya’s energy industry to foreign companies—would buy him a certain degree of immunity. That calculation has failed. But its failure may also make it more difficult for the Obama administration to sustain support for its efforts to engage constructively with another regime that has been even longer-lived than Qaddafi’s: Cuba. Although he stepped down as president in 2008, allowing his brother Raul to succeed him, Fidel Castro, the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, has been at the island’s helm since 1959—ten years before Qaddafi’s coup against King Idris...
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Is the shift in U.S. rhetoric about Libya indicative of a changed attitude toward other entrenched autocratic, historically anti-American regimes around the world? Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quite blunt in laying out her vision for the future of Libya’s “Brother Leader” Muammar Qaddafi: “It is time for Qaddafi to go -- now, without further violence or delay.” She noted too that the United States will consider all possible options—including military action—to assist the process of regime change in Tripoli and served up the classic Washington formulation that nothing is “off the table"
This, of course, reverses the earlier approach, first embarked upon by the George W. Bush administration and continued by the Obama team, of engagement with Qaddafi. Indeed, two years ago, the president even shook Qaddafi’s hand at the G-8 summit in Italy while Denis McDonough, now the deputy national security advisor, defended the outreach by observing that Barack Obama “wants to see cooperation with Libya continue in sectors such as Tripoli's decision a few years ago to give up its nuclear program, an absolutely voluntary decision that we consider positive.”
Qaddafi might have believed that his more constructive posture in global affairs—giving up his weapons of mass destruction, trying to make a positive contribution to the Arab-Israeli dispute with his “Israstine” proposal, and opening up Libya’s energy industry to foreign companies—would buy him a certain degree of immunity. That calculation has failed. But its failure may also make it more difficult for the Obama administration to sustain support for its efforts to engage constructively with another regime that has been even longer-lived than Qaddafi’s: Cuba. Although he stepped down as president in 2008, allowing his brother Raul to succeed him, Fidel Castro, the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, has been at the island’s helm since 1959—ten years before Qaddafi’s coup against King Idris...