Public Diplomacy between the United States and Libya

Farah Bushashia Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy Research Paper for Ambassador Rugh‟s DHP D204 April 23, 2008

I. INTRODUCTION

Public diplomacy between the United States and Libya has been and indeed partly remains hindered by tenuous political relations and limited official and unofficial contacts. Paradoxically, the preconditions likely to conduce genuine if imperfect mutual engagement would be best fostered by the type of cultural, long-term-looking and somewhat de-politicized interactions typifying public diplomacy; yet carrying out public diplomacy presupposes reasonable stability of the political relationship. Unfortunately, in the case of the United States and Libya, the bumpy political relationship has been characterized by unresolved security and strategic goals, reciprocal domestic caricaturing to pursue wider internal and external aims, and significant overlap with broader, more exigent, regional and international political realities. Asymmetric power and recognition complicate matters: the Libyan revolution enshrined identity forcibly separate from if not in opposition to America and the West whereas to America Libya since independence constituted a peripheral state viewed primarily in terms of the Cold War, oil, and terrorism. As the global community becomes smaller such that the idea of periphery enters obsolescence and the United States faces considerable challenges in the Arab and Muslim worlds requiring in-depth regional knowledge and coalition-building ability, public diplomacy remains a valuable tool to enhance relationships and provide feedback for crafting of future policy. In the case of Libya, public diplomacy will be key to securing broad political engagement and a participatory role in the development of civil society. This paper will chronologically examine U.S.-Libyan public diplomacy in light of political relations, with a view to identifying themes and establishing continuity with the current rapprochement era.

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II. PUBLIC DIPLOMACY AND SCOPE OF PAPER

Public diplomacy will be defined as actions taken by the United States government to promote understanding of the United States in Libya, through educational, cultural and informational programs officially administered; and, actions taken by the Libyan government to tell its story to the American people and officials. Because the U.S.-Libyan relationship lacks deep ties and has largely been vexed, much interaction has been between high-ranking government officials, and as such the paper will rely extensively on statements of the Executive branch in the United States and Colonel Qadhafi in Libya. The nature of the political system in Libya, the governmental control of Libyan media and the research materials available in English combine to produce reliance on the personal comments of the Libyan head of state as a gauge for foreign policy direction and a proxy for public opinion. Analyses of decision making methods in Libya suggest that Colonel Qadhafi advances possible courses of action to certain people to measure reaction and chooses accordingly. Insofar as American public opinion of Libya informs Congressional positions and checks Executive policy and therefore public diplomacy, considerable attention will be given to media coverage of Libya in leading American newspapers. Finally, through discussion of larger foreign policy issues involving Libya, such as the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Third Worldism, development, and terrorism, the paper will seek to provide broader justification for U.S. public diplomacy efforts.

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III. U.S.-LIBYAN RELATIONS PRIOR TO THE 1969 REVOLUTION

Although the United States enjoyed formal treaty relations with Libya dating from the November 4, 1796 treaty of peace and friendship, discord over privateering in the Mediterranean led to the Barbary War in 1801, from which the following U.S Marine Corps Hymn verse derives: “from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we fight our country‟s battles in the air, on land and sea.”1 At the time, Libya existed in the form of three provinces attached to the Ottoman Empire but ruled by the Karamanli Dynasty, which on May 14, 1801 requested a $250,000 annual fee for safe passage of U.S. ships that was refused by the Jefferson administration. The Tripolitanian war ensued, during which the first U.S. plot to unseat the Tripoli government and install a more pliant leader was unsuccessfully executed in 1805, and shortly thereafter the June 1805 treaty of peace was signed.

What relevance does this have for today? Each side took away a historical memory of a clash, made permanent for the United States, although arguably its origin obscured, in the Marine Corps Hymn and in the English language definition of Barbary Coast as, “a district or section of a city noted as a center of gambling, prostitution, and riotous nightlife.”2 Colonel Qadhafi‟s second eldest son recently wrote that, “Libyan schoolchildren learn that our first encounter came in 1800, when American warships entered our harbors to bombard Tripoli and Derna.”3 Since the years thereafter witnessed scant U.S.-Libyan interaction including the

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“The Marines’ Hymn,” Heritage Section of the U.S. Marines Official Website, < http://www.marines.com/page/usmc.jsp?pageId=/page/Detail-XML-Conversion.jsp?pageName=MarineHymn&flashRedirect=true> (accessed March 10, 2008). 2 Ronald Bruce St. John, Libya and the United States: Two Centuries of Strife (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 36. 3 Saif Aleslam al-Qadhafi, “Libyan-American Relations,” Middle East Policy X (1) (Spring 2003): 36.

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closure of the U.S. Embassy in 1882 whose main duties included raising the American flag on Independence Day and the Battle of New Orleans anniversary,4 in all likelihood the war faded away from active national recollection in the United States. Interestingly, one could draw a parallel between President Jefferson and President Reagan both targeting Libya as a relatively weak foe through which to solve larger regional issues and assert American hegemony. For Americans, the initial encounter largely constitutes a relevant but more arcane piece of knowledge contributing much more to stereotypes than to any sort of policy calculation. Yet insofar as the 1800 clash figures more prominently in the minds of Libyans, it remains relevant.

American perception of Libya specifically and Arabs in general affects willingness to embark upon public diplomacy programs and sets the tone for the degree and type of engagement desired. A brief look at the genesis of American involvement in and awareness of the Middle East provides a backdrop to the current efforts. In 1823, Pliny Fisk, a missionary aiming to, “take the best America then had to offer to the heathen world,” inaugurated the first American school in the Middle East.5 In 1837, the field of biblical archeology/geography was conceived at the Union Theological Seminary in Boston by Edward Robinson. By 1862, blueprints were drawn for what later became American University Beirut. In 1880, an Egyptian obelisk was built in New York City‟s Central Park. The 1893 Chicago‟s World Columbian Exposition featured Middle Eastern displays viewed by millions of Americans. In 1909, the State Department Division of Near Eastern Affairs was established, and in 1910 President Roosevelt toured the Middle East. After World War I, President Wilson attempted to negotiate more independent terms for the Middle Eastern countries. In 1923, Hollywood released its first 4

Ronald Bruce St. John, 28. Michael B. Oren, Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2007), 82. 5

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Middle-Eastern-themed movie, entitled The Sheikh of Araby. This history informs the present in that public opinion toward the Arab world developed amidst minimal exposure, and a remote shared history (biblical) much removed from the Enlightenment overlap and kinship with Europe, the more traditional diplomatic interlocutor of the United States. To a certain extent, remoteness persists in perception of North Africa, which could increase the challenge of devising a successful public diplomacy program and inure the public to the occasional use of force or incomplete diplomatic relations.

In the years leading up to World War II, the United States played a minimal role in North Africa, and Libya went from Ottoman administration to Italian colonization. For Libya, colonization brought high fatalities with an estimated one-half of the population dying in the 1930s and the population in 1950 roughly equal to that of 1911. Omar Mukhtar, a religious teacher from a small town, emerged as a national hero, defying the Italians from the Green Mountains and leading a twenty-year struggle culminating in his capture and public hanging in 1931. Fifty years later, in 1981, Syrian-American director Moustapha Akkad made a film about Omar Mukhtar called Lion of the Desert, which elicited a New York Times review revealing much about contemporary frictions: “[i]t cannot be a coincidence that his[Mukhtar‟s] carefully stressed beliefs in a fundamental kind of Islam evoke the image of Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya, where most of the film was shot, nor that the Libyan leader sees himself as the leader of that part of the Moslem world that rejects the international policies of someone like President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt.”6 The USD 35 million invested by Colonel Qadhafi in this movie likely did not yield the desired public diplomacy results. A political nerve was struck; perhaps 6

Vincent Canby, “„Lion of the Desert,‟ Bedouin vs. Mussolini, The New York Times, April 17, 1981. (accessed April 4, 2008).

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due to the close timing with the Iranian revolution the movie was analogous to, “ayatollahs on horseback.”7 The New York Times reviewer later asks whether the viewer is to “equate the camps the Italians put the Bedouins into with the Palestine refugee camps in Lebanon and even the Nazi concentration camps” or see Yasir Arafat as a modern-day Mukhtar.8 Thus, the legacy of the colonial experience and uses of history to explain contemporary events remain areas in which greater understanding could be reached and in which public diplomacy programs would need to show sensitivity. Omar Mukhtar‟s visage now appears on the ten dinar note in Libya and his legacy bears on the present as an ongoing reminder of resisting foreign domination.

Independence came after World War II, with the United States and Great Britain jointly involved in maintenance of the new Libyan Arab Republic led by King Idris. Initially, at the 1945 Potsdam Conference, the United States government would have been amenable to demilitarized Italian sovereignty in Libya or partition of Libya into trusteeships.9 The Soviet Union under Stalin sought territory in Libya, so securing the military bases of Libya played a prominent role in motivating Western involvement. Balancing realistic geostrategic needs with Wilsonian idealism, the United States together with Britain played leading roles in evolving the newly independent Libya under the Sanusi monarchy. King Idris‟ grandfather, Muhammad bin Ali al-Sanusi, had founded the Sanusi religious order in 1837 in Mecca, where contemporary Wahhabi thinking informed his beliefs, which centered around spiritual and intellectual revival in light of declining Moslem political power. The fundamentalist legacy remains today, in that 7

Juan Cole, “The Strange Death of Moustapha Akkad: Zarqawi and Halloween,” Informed Comment Blog, November 15, 2005. < http://www.juancole.com/2005/11/strange-death-of-moustapha-akkad.html> (accessed April 4, 2008). 8 Canby. 9 United States Department of State, “Possible Trusteeship for Italian Colonial Territories and Korea,” Briefing Book Paper No. 246, Foreign Relations of the United States: diplomatic papers: the Conference of Berlin (the Potsdam Conference), 1945, Vol. I, 1945, p. 305. (accessed April 5, 2008).

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Colonel Qadhafi sees his vision as a better way to address the same concerns of the Sanusi, who saw working closely with Western powers as the most viable route to restore political power.

In 1952, however, U.S. policy emphasized Libyan sovereignty, with Secretary of State Dean Acheson outlining dual policy objectives of obtaining base rights and securing independence. In 1950, Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern, South Asian, and African Affairs George McGhee had observed in a memo to Acheson that, “[o]ur prestige is probably higher in Libya than in any other part of the area because of U.S. support of Libyan independence.”10 Yet the simultaneous pursuit of base rights left the intentions of the U.S. government unclear and paved the way for future tensions, to be highlighted by Radio Cairo and the growing opposition to the monarchy. The American consul general in Tripoli observed in 1950 that the exchange of base rights for financial aid (Libya was one of the poorest countries in the world at that time) opened the U.S. to “perpetual blackmail.”11 Interestingly, in 1954 the chief U.S. diplomat in Tripoli, Minister Villard, sent a telegram to the State Department noting that the Libyan government position was, “tantamount to blackmail and showing little change from [the] barbary pirate tradition.”12 Ambassador Tappin later reiterated this type of thinking about Libyans in stating that, “Libyans feel they have been good children and cannot understand why Santa Claus came with instruction to leave scooter when they needed and had asked for bicycle.”13 While the foregoing quotes most likely were expressed in conjunction with frustrating episodes, such perceptions colored diplomatic efforts.

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Ronald Bruce St. John, 61. Ibid., 62. 12 Ibid., 69. 13 Ibid., 72. 11

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The role of public diplomacy served to clarify U.S. intentions and to counter the influence Egypt wielded through its radio and contingency of teachers in Libya as well as to stem the tide of pan-Arabism. Libya‟s strategic value prompted information programs under the aegis of the USIA and educational programs designed to enhance “understanding of and friendship with the United States, and…appreciation by Libya of the importance and desirability of retaining U.S. military facilities in the area.”14 Information centers were opened in 1951 in Tripoli and in 1952 in Benghazi.15 In a 1956 memorandum to the White House, it was observed that, “[o]ne of the most effective means of Egyptian penetration in Libya has been through the provision by Egypt of some 700 subsidized Egyptian teachers for Libyan schools...culminating in civil disturbances led by Egyptian teachers…[and leading to the Libyan Government request that] we help recruit Arabic-speaking, non-Egyptian teachers to replace the Egyptian teachers and is considering the withdrawal of the approximately 300 Libyans who are studying at the University of Cairo.”16 In response, American educators set up teacher training programs in Libya as well as coordinated study abroad in America for qualified Libyan students and faculty members. On the media front, the consul general warned that the “US [is] now undergoing serious propaganda attacks in local anti-govt[government] Arabic press. We are being accused of being new imperialists who plan to take over all of Libya…opposition to govt is strong and antiforeign line popular one.”17 Too, a 1958 National Security Council memo noted that, “Libyans resented many of the activities the U.S. was carrying on in Libya,” and as such President Eisenhower proposed to give “facts and news over the Voice of America but not 14

National Security Council Report, “Statement of U.S. Policy toward Libya,” NSC 6004, March 15, 1960, United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume XII, p. 740. < http://images.library.wisc.edu/FRUS/EFacs2/1958-60v13/reference/frus.frus1958-60v13.i0012.pdf> (accessed April 5, 2008). 15 William A. Rugh, American Encounters with Arabs: The ‘Soft Power” of U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Middle East (Westport, CT: Praeger/Greenwood, 2006), 30. 16 Ronald Bruce St. John, 73. 17 Ibid., 66.

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entertainment programs or propaganda broadcasts.”18 On the other hand, while the United States loomed large in the Libyan press, Secretary Acheson lamented how the U.S. press barely covered the aid given to Libya, including grain sent for drought relief.

As the 1960s wore on, the monarchy‟s legitimacy strained under the weight of pursuing pro-Western policies in a pan-Arab climate, persuasion from Radio Cairo and Egyptian and Palestinian teachers, and newfound oil wealth altering sociopolitical realities. The United States, in its novel position of world co-hegemon, struggled to formulate policies for a region with which it had little experience and that was viewed largely in the context of the Cold War. The public diplomacy conducted during Libya‟s nascent nationhood left a legacy of respect for American pedagogy, which would manifest itself in continued demand for American education.

IV. FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE ONE SEPTEMBER REVOLUTION

Colonel Qadhafi came to power in 1969 promulgating, “freedom, unity, and socialism” as revolutionary aims, just as Nasser had in 1952 in Egypt. As he stated in a televised interview on October 14, 1969, “[t]he true cause of the revolution lay in the backward Arab life which reduced the Arab to an almost complete lack of affiliation with the twentieth century. It is by turning to the three slogans that the Arab world rediscovers [its] dignity and [its] place in history.”19 Unlike other modernizing Moslem leaders such as Ataturk of Turkey and Reza Shah

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“Memorandum of Discussion at the 390th Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, December 11, 1958,” NSC 5716, United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume XII, p. 728. < http://images.library.wisc.edu/FRUS/EFacs2/1958-60v13/reference/frus.frus1958-60v13.i0012.pdf> (accessed April 5, 2008). 19 Mahmoud G. ElWarfally, Imagery and Ideology in U.S. Policy Toward Libya, 1969-1982 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988), 44.

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of Iran, Colonel Qadhafi kept Islam as an integral part of state ideology. In Libya then, nationalism and Islam together underpinned the foreign policy agenda, and determined the way in which Libya participated in the pan-Arab program toward redemption of past humiliation and newfound strength in unity. Colonel Qadhafi had lived through the 1956 Suez War and the disastrous 1967 Six-Day War, and took very seriously the duty of his government to continue the struggle for the Palestinian cause and against imperialism. Given the foregoing orientations, Libyan activity abroad during this period centered on elimination of Israel by force, countering U.S. policies in the region, and ridding the region of regimes dependent on the U.S. for survival. As qualifiers, Colonel Qadhafi advocated removal of Israel but not the Arab Jews who he described as, “our cousins and brothers…[who] should live in our midst in peace as they did in the past;” and as for the United States, Colonel Qadhafi saw American exploitation as limited to oil (which was resolved in 1970 as seen below) and said that, “unlike other great powers, the U.S. had not shared in the accumulation from colonialism” and therefore welcomed relations and the opportunity to try to change U.S. policy toward Israel.

Libyan policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict operated from the basic assumption that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union would satisfactorily resolve the situation, which would be better solved by the Arabs, and focused on achieving Arab unity to this end, aiding the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and increasing Libyan military capability. Specifically, during the first months of the revolution: Egyptian envoy Mohammed Heikal was told that Libya would be at Nasser‟s “disposal for the battle”; Colonel Qadhafi and Arafat called for Arab volunteers for the Palestinian Resistance Movement (PRM), which volunteers Libya offered to train; an “al-Jihad” fund was created in support of the PRM; and Qadhafi met with

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Arab heads of state to lobby for renewed efforts.20 Colonel Qadhafi faced a challenge with the September 28, 1970 death of Nasser and the rise of the more moderate Sadat, and relations between Egypt and Libya grew tenuous as disagreement over policy toward Israel came to the fore. For example, when a Libyan civilian flight that veered off course on its way to Cairo was shot down by Israel in February 1973, Colonel Qadhafi alleged that Sadat could have defended the plane; Sadat thwarted Qadhafi‟s order to destroy the Queen Elizabeth II and its JewishAmerican passengers; and, finally, Sadat‟s relative exclusion of Qadhafi from the 1973 October War and their differing over battle objectives, with Qadhafi calling Sadat‟s limited war aims a “comic opera.”21 Sadat in turn labeled Colonel Qadhafi a lunatic and a terrorist, and charged him with exacerbating the Lebanese Civil War in 1975. The disagreements came to a head with Sadat‟s 1977 visit to Israel, after which Libya broke diplomatic relations with Egypt.

The rift with Egypt spilled over into Libyan policy toward the United States, in that increasing American aid to Egypt was viewed as threatening and upsetting the regional balance of power, so in 1974 an arms deal with the Soviet Union was completed despite distaste for Soviet ideology. Interestingly, the second Libyan arms deal with the Soviet Union, completed in May 1975, was reported by Egypt‟s Al-Ahram as worth USD 4 billion, whereas Sadat told the Los Angeles Times that the deal was worth USD 12 billion, which discrepancy constituted an early example of Libyan image distortions in the United States that would contribute to ongoing low public opinion of Libya.22 The U.S. government, as many others, was surprised by the Libyan revolution and worked to gain knowledge of the new government. Ambassador Joseph Palmer wrote to President Nixon and Secretary of State Rogers: “the still anonymous 20

Ibid., 46-47. Ibid., 49. 22 ElWarfally, 61. 21

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young men of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) promise to protect all Western interests, including the pumping of oil” and the RCC has, “proclaimed a kind of Muslim welfare state, drastically raising wages and banning alcohol as a step toward implementing Koranic law in the new republic.”23 A Washington Special Action Group convened in November 1969 to discuss the revolution, with National Security Council head Kissinger and a minority of others suggesting covert regime change, and Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs and former ambassador to Libya David Newsom disagreeing with such action since, “[w]e had about 5,000 citizens in Libya, we had economic interests (oil) to protect…[and] [b]esides, the hostile action would attract hostile reaction from other Arab countries.”24 In sum, the new regime‟s willingness to protect American oil interests and its anticommunist stance paved the way for the initial phase of relations described by Newsom in 1971 as “effective and satisfactory.”25

Until the Soviet arms deals, the United States had viewed Colonel Qadhafi as firmly anti-Soviet, and in fact informed him of at least three countercoup attempts, including the famed “Hilton Assignment.”26 Contemporary U.S. policy in the Middle East generally derived from three interests: oil, safety of Israel, and containment of the Soviet Union. Preserving the status quo of friendly leaders also comprised policy bedrock, so Colonel Qadhafi‟s harangues and actions against “puppet” regimes were unwelcome in that regard. However, Libyan ideological distance from the Soviet Union and neutrality vis-à-vis the superpowers together with its openness to working with American oil companies in the exploitation of its high-quality crude

23

Ibid., 75. Ibid., 85. 25 Ibid., 87. 26 Ibid.. 24

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tempered the U.S. response to the regime and enabled overlooking of some of its revolutionary zeal. Although Libya demanded the evacuation of Wheelus Air Force Base, this did not unduly cloud U.S.-Libyan relations as the very existence of a foreign base in 1969 was anachronistic, and compounded in light of regional anti-American sentiment after the June War. Moreover, as Kissinger noted, Wheelus was “of marginal significance” and U.S. oil interests would be best protected by “separating them from military matters.”27 Too, the increasing prevalence of nuclear weapons made land bases of diminished strategic importance, and changed the nature of warfare, making the WWII geostrategic valuation of Libya less important. Similarly, although oil policy changed (in 1970 Libya became the first Middle Eastern or North African country to negotiate successfully a raise in oil prices28), in 1973 Libyan oil numbered as the second largest source of U.S. oil imports (likely causing damage in the 1973 oil embargo) and thousands of Libyan students came to the United States to study.29 The choice of institutions for study abroad failed to maximize regime elite ability to connect with American foreign policy and political elites though, in that Libyans opted for schools in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Colorado and Southern Illinois for reasons of climate and workload, instead of the Eastern elite schools attended by many American leaders.

1973 also witnessed the Cultural Revolution within Libya, proclaimed by Colonel Qadhafi, with the aim of solidifying cultural identity and stemming the tide of Westernization, or the “cultural crusade of the West,” that occurred after independence. Accretions of foreign 27

Ibid., 86. As Henry Kissinger noted in his book Years of Upheaval: “Until then the dominant role among the oil-producing countries was played by essentially conservative governments whose interest in increasing their oil revenues was balanced by their dependence on the industrial democracies for protection against external (and perhaps even internal) threats. Colonel Qadhafi was free of such inhibitions. An avowed radical, he set out to extirpate Western influence. He did not care if in the process he weakened the global economy.” (Taken from ElWarfally, 52.) 29 ElWarfally, 65. 28

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influence were attempted to be removed from Libyan culture, and an emphasis on Libyan history and Arabness was to foster authentic modernization. For example, in the 1960s passports of Libyan military officers were in English, much to the chagrin of Colonel Qadhafi, who insisted all passports be in Arabic, including those of foreign diplomats. On June 8, 1973, Libya expelled a U.S. diplomat lacking an Arabic translation of his passport, and to this day Libya requires all foreigners to have their passports translated into Arabic,30 reducing the flow of international visitors and therefore outside information. In addition, all signs and administrative affairs were Arabicized (although documents of oil companies were allowed to have double-columned sheets with both English and Arabic), and Western musical instruments were burned in 1973. Western support for Israel in the 1973 war led to the expulsion of American and British educational advisors. In 1985, amidst increasing tensions with the United States, Western musical instruments were again burned, but satellite television in the 1990s enabled Libyans to listen to and enjoy Western music such that the “revolutionary policy on music” faded away.31

Reducing outside influence also occurred in the educational sphere, with ramifications for public diplomacy efforts conducted within Libya, as seen from the following excerpt from Colonel Qadhafi‟s 1973 Cultural Revolution speech: “We adhere to God‟s book and I am sure there is no other theory that is equal to that book. …it is necessary to take up the cultural struggle, one in which I will destroy and burn all those dangerous imported books that confuse the minds of our youth. I will begin a revolution that includes the libraries, the universities, the curricula and all things written. …it is necessary that we burn all the wrong thinking and only allow the true thinking of people that comes from God‟s book to exist.”32 (emphasis added)

30

Sigrid Faath, ed., Anti-Americanism in the Islamic World (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2006), 19. Ibid.., 17. 32 Sigrid Faath, 16. 31

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On the other hand, Libyans admired and continue to value American education and sent many students to study abroad throughout the revolutionary era until the early 1980s when political relations precluded such activity. Nonetheless, it could be argued that such rhetoric undermined engagement with academic subjects pertaining to the “human condition” as conceptualized in Western academe and produced, together with pertinent infrastructural needs, focus on science and technology. For those who did pursue higher education in the social sciences, with thesis titles such as “The Political Leader and His Social Background: Muammar Qadafi”33 and “The Effect of the Leader‟s Belief System on Foreign Policy: The Case of Libya”34 as well as “The Analysis of Libya‟s Foreign Policy, 1962-1973: A Study of the Impact of Environmental and Leadership Factors,”35 it is not clear that study abroad contributed to increasingly nuanced understanding of American issues, to the extent that such understanding constitutes a goal of having international students study in the United States. Even today, Libyan universities enroll more students in science and technology than in humanities and the arts, suggesting the continuing currency of avoiding cultural contagion.36 In a positive sense, the quest for cultural authenticity led to desire for unique paths, such as the “third way” political, economic and social theories put forward in Colonel Qadhafi‟s 1975 Green Book.

Returning to the political front, authentic foreign policy challenged the U.S. position on the Arab-Israeli conflict and strained relations. U.S. support for Israel, or the “unholy alliance between imperialism and Zionism,” served as the chief impediment to comprehensive U.S.33

Musa M. Kousa, The Political Leader and His Social Background: Muammar Qadafi (M.A. Thesis, Michigan State University, Department of Sociology, 1978). 34 Mohamed Khalifa Arab, The Effect of the Leader’s Belief System on Foreign Policy: The Case of Libya (Ph.D. Dissertation, Florida State University, 1988). 35 Ali Muhammad Shembesh, The Analysis of Libya’s Foreign Policy, 1962-1973: A Study of the Impact of Environmental and Leadership Factors (Ph.D. Dissertation, Emory University, 1975). 36 Nick Clark, “Education in Libya,” World Education News and Reviews, July/August 2004, < http://www.wes.org/ewenr/04july/Practical.htm> (accessed March 10, 2008).

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Libyan relations, from the Libyan perspective. After Nixon‟s reelection in 1972, Colonel Qadhafi stated that, “[w]henever any U.S. president, whether Richard Nixon or anyone else, is able to get rid of the Zionist influence on U.S. policy, that day will not only be the beginning of the establishment of sound and healthy relations between this nation and the U.S., but will also be a national day for the United States, to celebrate the right to determine the policy of a major state like the United States.”37 Given this sticking point, Libya pursued a mixed policy toward the United States: open to economic and educational exchanges, but vociferously opposed to U.S. policy toward Israel.

The United States, on the other hand, initially had a mild view of Libyan support for anti-imperial and anti-Zionist movements, perhaps due to the categorization of Libya as hostile to the Soviet Union in the context of the Cold War, to the American oil interests that helped supply New York and New England in addition to Western Europe, as well as to the comparative lack of power of the nascent Libya. In a 1971 statement before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Newsom described Libyan revolutionary activity as such: “Libya has increasingly interested itself in sub-Saharan Africa through expressions in the past of support for Moslem populations in other states in opposition to what it regards as Israeli influence detrimental to the Arab cause in Africa.”38 Yet at this time, the Congress and Executive would begin a struggle lasting to the present over whether to designate Libya as a “terrorist” state: Congress pushed to categorize Libya as such whereas the Executive sought to scrap such legislation. According to Newsom, “[t]he Nixon and Ford administrations did this in the Libyan case. Congress wanted us to prepare a list, but we never did. This does not mean that

37 38

ElWarfally, 64. Ibid., 81.

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[the executive branch] did not know about Libya‟s “terrorist” activities at that time.”39 In a recent interview, a former senior official confirmed that the current rapprochement has been slowed by the same intergovernmental tensions. The way in which the Executive would seek to interact with Libya differed from the way in which certain constituents would seek to relate to Libya, as lately exemplified by the Lockerbie victims‟ lobby and consistently in the context of Zionist lobbies. Moreover, American foreign policy toward the developing world has been debated and evolved since World War II, and so too did the initial and ensuing policy toward Libya differ and lack consensus.

Over time, as Libya became more involved militarily in the Arab-Israeli conflict, nationalized four American oil companies, and signed arms deals with the Soviet Union, the United States began to ratchet down the level of relations, starting with not assigning a new ambassador to Libya in 1972. From late 1972 to 1980, the U.S. Embassy was led by a chargé d‟affaires. Displeasure was also expressed through delaying delivery of weapons ordered, and preventing Libyan air force members from training in the United States in 1975. Although Colonel Qadhafi provided safe haven for the members of the Black September group responsible for killing Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, the United States did not authorize Israel to take action against Libya as, according to former U.S. official Harold Sandres, “[w]e did not have any interests to be served if Israel attacked Libya.”40 Later on, such activities would be characterized as terrorist. While early actions taken to assert control of the oil industry were met with minimal response from the United States, when Libya nationalized American companies, the U.S. government released statements of disapproval.

39 40

Ibid., 81. Ibid., 89.

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Whether the statements were meant as anything more is debatable, as even President Nixon admitted that “our relations are not that close that we could have too much influence.”41 National newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times spoke out against the logic of the State Department and suggested that harsh response to Libyan nationalization would only drive Libya closer to the Soviet Union.

When Colonel Qadhafi traveled to the Soviet Union for the first time in 1976, the United States position shifted and was less inclined to overlook other irritants in the relationship that had been played down in light of anti-Soviet support. At his July 19, 1976 news conference, President Ford stated that, “[w]e do know that the Libyan Government has in many ways done certain things that might have stimulated terrorist activity,” and in response that the United States would work with the United Nations and other governments to “put forward a very strong antiterrorist effort in order to stop this kind of very unwarranted, unjustified action.”42 This represents a change from the earlier description of Libyan solidarity with certain movements among the Moslem populations, and willingness to apply political pressure to Libya within certain delineations, such as Executive Order 11905 interdicting political assassinations signed by President Ford in 1976.43 The thorny issue of terrorism itself was tackled at the first Arab-American People-to-People Dialogue Conference, which took place in Tripoli on October 9-12, 1978. At the conference, Colonel Qadhafi stated the following view of terrorism, which continues to be relevant to the U.S.-Libyan relationship and underscores events as recent as the 41

Ibid., 91. John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project [online]. Santa Barbara, CA: University of California (hosted), Gerhard Peters (database), (accessed April 1, 2008). 43 Colonel Daniel Smith, “Presidential Orders and Documents Regarding Foreign Intelligence and Terrorism,” CDI Terrorism Project, Center for Defense Information, Washington, D.C. (accessed April 1, 2008). 42

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March 2008 Libyan refusal to support the UN condemnation as an act of terrorism of an attack at a Jewish seminary:

“Foreign bases, nuclear weapons, starvation, economic warfare, naval fleets, hijacking of planes, the holding of hostages for ransom, and the killing of innocent people are all acts of terrorism. If we are serious in combating terrorism, we have to put all these deeds on one list and find the necessary solution for them. We are ready to put all our sources in the service of this objective. Why do Americans forget that the Palestinians have been expelled from their homeland and that the U.S. is helping the occupier keep hold of the land of the Palestinians? But when a Palestinian hijacks a plane to express his despair, the U.S. shakes the world by saying that this is terrorism and an end should be put to it. We are in agreement with the U.S., an end must be put to terrorism, but we should seek solutions to the underlying problems which have led to this kind of terrorism.”44

Notwithstanding these fundamental disagreements regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict and the nature of terrorism, the United States and Libya continued to pursue relations during this era. As early as 1976, Libya publicly suggested warming relations, perhaps owing to the power asymmetry whereby the United States could largely dismiss Libya from its radar screen whereas Libya crafted policy in response to and in seeking, however ineffectually, to change U.S. policy. Libyan press minister Mohammed Zwai bemoaned on September 27, 1976 that, “Libya would like to establish normal relations with the U.S. but the U.S. is deliberately opposed to any improvement in relations.”45 Economic relations, on the other hand, remained consistent and even grew during the period: U.S. imports from Libya increased from USD 215.8 million in 1973 to USD 2,188 million in 1976, and U.S. exports to Libya doubled from USD 103.7 million in 1973 to USD 277 million in 1976.46

44

ElWarfally, 72. Ibid., 66. 46 Ibid., 92. 45

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In sum, the U.S.-Libyan relations from 1969 to 1976 steadily deteriorated politically, but remained solid economically. Although the loss of the friendly monarchy proved upsetting to many American policy makers, Colonel Qadhafi‟s anti-Soviet leanings compensated at the outset. When Libya looked to the Soviet Union for weapons and revealed through several incidents the nature of its participation in the Arab-Israeli conflict, relations became tense. President Ford‟s last year in office witnessed the shift in description of Libya as a terrorist state and dates the inception of the Libyan trend of calling for better relations, due perhaps to its lesser power but also in recognition of the positive role of American oil companies and comparative preference for American influence rather than the prior European colonialists. Looking ahead, U.S. interests of oil, security of Israel, and Soviet containment would continue to inform policy until the end of the Cold War, whereas Libyan policies would stem from its views of the Arab-Israeli conflict, U.S. hegemony in the Middle East, and regional pro-Western regimes.

The Carter Presidency, 1977-1980

The Carter Administration foreign policy reflected the views of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who placed emphasis on dealing with developing countries themselves, rather than exclusively in the context of Cold War interests, and on arms control, and National Security Council Director Zbigniew Brzezinski, who took a more hard-line view toward the Soviet Union but advocated U.S. leadership through multilateral alliances. President Carter and his administration focused on human rights, environmental, and development issues, shifting anticommunism from the fore and leading the way for scrutiny of states such as Libya, now

20

seen as a destabilizing player and state-sponsor of terrorism. Libyan activities that in the early 1970s were seen as Moslem solidarity were now labeled terrorist activities: the State Department asserted in an April 17, 1977 letter to Senator Jacob Javits (R., NY) that Libya had “at least since 1972, actively assisted a number of terrorist groups and individuals, including the Palestinian „rejectionist‟ factions.”47 The Libyan support of the Palestinian rejectionists ran counter to the Carter Administration‟s willingness to move ahead with the peace process, including resurrecting the Geneva Conference and working with regional allies and the USSR, culminating in the 1978 Camp David Accords. Accordingly, the emphasis shifted from LibyanSoviet ties to Libyan efforts to derail the peace process.

Specifically, U.S. policymakers feared Libya‟s ability to undermine the peace process via destabilization of moderate Arab regimes through support for Palestinian extremists. Sadat and Begin also sought to portray Libyan closeness to the Soviet Union to effect favorable U.S. policy: Sadat received U.S. arms assistance in 1977 to offset the Libyan threat. Qadhafi and Sadat conducted numerous mutual assassination attempts and intrigues across the LibyanEgyptian border during this time as well. Libya viewed the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty as upsetting the balance of power, and in 1979 Colonel Qadhafi traveled to eight Arab countries to suggest the possibility of attacking Israel through southern Lebanon and also to secure assistance in the event of an Egyptian attack on Libya, as well as threatened to join the Warsaw Pact. After Sadat signed the peace treaty with Israel, Colonel Qadhafi aimed to fill the vacuum in opposition Arab leadership, and, until his 1980 break with Arafat over support for radical factions within the PLO, played a leading role in the conflict, convening a meeting to oppose Sadat in Tripoli on December 2-5, 1977 attended by Syria, Iraq, South Yemen, Algeria and the 47

Ibid., 116.

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PLO. Thus, Libyan policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict intensified in the wake of EgyptianIsraeli peace, and included support for Palestinian operations through financing, weapons provision, military training and battle participation.

Colonel Qadhafi had hoped that President Carter‟s religiosity would lead him to a more moral and fair view of the Arab-Israeli conflict and thus resolve the chief impediment, from the Libyan perspective, to warmer relations. In June 1977, during his visit to the USSR, Colonel Qadhafi expressed “hope that the current American administration will, perhaps, avoid the mistakes that were made by the previous American administration. We are ready to meet halfway any new American steps, if they are in keeping with the aspirations of the people.”48 Later in June, Libya repeated the request for America to send an Ambassador to Tripoli. Noting the emphasis on terrorism, Libya signed the international conventions on airplane hijacking, refused to allow a plane from Cyprus hijacked by Palestinians to land in Tripoli on February 14, 1978, and helped settle a hijacking of an Air Tunis plane by Tunisians over domestic issues in January 1979.49 Within the United Nations, Libyan representative Mansour Kikhia (who resigned in protest of Libyan policies in 1980 and mysteriously disappeared in Cairo in 1993 after years of denouncing the Qadhafi regime), informed the secretary-general in writing that, “Libya condemned the serious and worsening phenomenon of international terrorism, and that Libyan laws provided severe penalties for crimes of terrorism.”50 Generally speaking, optimism vis-à-vis an improved relationship with the United States leads to willingness to engage on contentious issues, whereas perception of hard-line policy evokes reciprocal antagonism.

48

Ibid., 106. Ibid., 113. 50 Ibid., 113. 49

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Libya also attempted public diplomacy in the United States to elucidate its position via the contemporary human rights idiom. At the previously mentioned 1978 Arab-American People-to-People Dialogue Conference, Colonel Qadhafi explained Libyan reluctance to talk about terrorism: “History has recorded the insult to the Americans by their mobilization of all their resources in the service of evil, reaction, backwardness, dictatorship, fascism and oppression. Therefore, the United States‟ talk about human rights is worthless to us. … It is a basic human right of the Libyan people to build socialism, to build the Jamahiriya, and to live in freedom. The United States exerts all its pressure against us – that is to say, it stands against human rights, against Libyan rights, and against Palestinian rights… It seems that in view of Americans, human rights are applied only to some people. … Oh, people of America – I cannot address you as friends because we were not friends, and we are not yet friends – I say: Oh American guests, after this review and all these explanations you should be able to understand whether or not we have aggressive intentions. You can also understand whether we are backward, or whether we have ideas.”51 The foregoing quotes from the “Message to the American People” illustrate the sense of American double-standard felt as well as show the fraught relationship yet to reach friendship in view of the Libyans. In this context, U.S. public diplomacy in Libya faced enormous challenges of bias rooted in historical perception and disagreement over fairly permanent foreign policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict. From the Libyan perspective, genuine consternation and anger at the American position led to public diplomacy efforts not entirely diplomatic and therefore less likely to succeed, such as Colonel Qadhafi‟s June 18, 1979 interview with Newsweek in which he asserted that, “[y]our so-called Congress does not know anything about what is happening in the world.”52

51

“A Message to the American People,” Arab-American People-to-People Dialogue Conference, October 9-12, 1978, Tripoli, Libya. < http://rahjx.net/amttap.htm> (accessed April 2, 2008). 52 ElWarfally, 108.

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Individuals were targeted to try and change American opinion, such as Billy Carter, Lillian Carter, Muhammad Ali and Senator William Fulbright (who also attended the ArabAmerican People-to-People Dialogue Conference (as did Najeeb Halaby)). President Carter‟s home state of Georgia was a focus for the efforts of the Foreign Liaison Bureau of the General People‟s Congress (Libya‟s public diplomacy ministry) as was Idaho, the home state of Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Frank Church. Farmers and businessmen from both states traveled to Libya in 1978, and Libyan groups made reciprocal visits in 1978-1979.

Billy Carter visited Libya with the Georgia delegation three times, including attending celebrations of the tenth anniversary of the Libyan revolution in September 1979, to which he brought his sister and mother, and apparently took photographs with Yasser Arafat and vowed to look into lifting the ban on delivering military equipment to Libya. 53 In return for his support, Billy Carter received a USD 220,000 loan from the Libyan government. Billy Carter‟s relationship with Libya would later be examined by a Senate sub-committee in a report entitled, “To Investigate Activities of Individuals Representing Interests of Foreign Governments (Billy Carter-Libya Investigation),” and became known in the press as “Billygate.” Libya believed its efforts were undermined by Zionist press publishing articles linking the visits to requests for release of weapons for delivery to Libya and to getting favorable candidates elected. Further mixing the messages, a State Department cable described Billy Carter‟s September 1978 visit as a “positive event” and concluded that: “As far as we can see, there has been no negative fallout from Billy Carter's visit to Tripoli. In fact, on the local scene we would rate it a very positive event which has opened some doors for this embassy and raised the morale of the American community. Furthermore, it has brought the embassy, the American community, and 53

Ibid., 109.

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an important element of the Libyan government (the liaison bureau) together in a way which could prove useful in the future.”54

The variety of opinion persisted, yet the Libyan public diplomacy efforts seemed unable to effect U.S. policy change. As it stood in June 1979, Colonel Qadhafi observed that, “[t]he State Department itself does not agree with the Congress on Libya…[t]he Libyan delegation which visited America came back with quite different ideas of the American people…[whose] ideas are quite different than Congress…so if the American government‟s attitude is different from that of Congress toward Libya, and the American people‟s attitude is different from Congress, then who is Congress representing?”55

Although the State Department had changed its view of Libya, Congress and some of the public continued to see Libya as, in the words of Congressman Larry McDonald, “a Soviet surrogate.”56 This strategic lag also occurred more recently in the Executive rapprochement with Libya in light of the Global War on Terror and the Congressional emphasis on the earlier Lockerbie affair. Neither view of Libya, as terrorist or communist, served to motivate extensive U.S. public diplomacy, and the policy focused more on modifying the behavior of the regime rather than engaging the population, especially since regime change ostensibly ceased to be an option with the passage of Executive Order 11905. To give an idea of numbers, in 1979 an estimated 3,000 Libyan students pursued higher education in the United States and about 2,000 Americans lived in Libya.57 Too, the authoritarian nature of the regime complicated efforts at reaching the population, with restrictions such as media control. Also, American perceptions of

54

“Cables from Libya: Billy Carter‟s Visit „a Positive Event‟,” The Washington Post, August 1, 1980, A7. ElWarfally, 108. 56 Ibid., 123. 57 Ronald Bruce St. John, 114. 55

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Libyans were clouded by adjectives associated with the government such as “fanatic,” “terrorist,” and “subversive,” precluding a push from below to change the Congressional position on Libya and decreasing likelihood of funding for ventures in Libya. Finally, the asymmetry of the relationship was such that the U.S. could afford to be in a deadlock situation, ideally with the oil flowing.

The relationship moved from deadlock to hostility, however, when 2,000 demonstrators burned the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli in solidarity with the Iranian hostage-taking and the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia. Although the Libyan regime officially condemned the Iranian hostage crisis and apologized and offered compensation for the embassy burning, distrust set in and was exacerbated by allegations of Libyan involvement in an attack in Tunisia and Libyan assistance to Idi Amin in the Ugandan-Tanzanian War. Although the public diplomacy contact made with Billy Carter enabled President Carter to seek Libyan assistance in resolving the Iranian hostage crisis, Libyan comments regarding U.S. Arab-Israeli policy and Carter‟s reelection irked Washington and the drift continued. The burning of the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan amplified the Third-World issues faced by Washington and decreased its tolerance for Libyan rhetoric and actions. Moreover, the Billygate affair and purported ex-CIA agents working in Libya distracted and discredited President Carter‟s administration, as he recalled that, “[t]he Libyan mess, which was dominating the news, was wreaking havoc with our efforts to deal with anything else on the political scene and Congress.”58 By February 1980 the U.S. chargé d‟affaires was withdrawn from Tripoli, and in May the Libyan People‟s Bureau in Washington was closed down and the remaining American diplomats in Libya were recalled. 58

ElWarfally, 131.

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Decisive action was also taken toward another irritant, the Libyan “stray dog” policy of assassinating regime opponents abroad, and in May 1980 the State Department asked the FBI to place under surveillance Libyan citizens in the United States suspected of plotting to eliminate members of a 24-person hit list.59 Universities attended by Libyan students were also informed of the plot. Tensions simmered between pro-regime and anti-regime Libyan students in the United States on August 23, 1980 when 200 masked demonstrators carried signs reading, “No torturing, no murdering, no Qaddafi,” were peacefully challenged by pro-Qaddafi students holding posters of the Libyan leader.60 After 1980, pro-regime Libyan elements began to dwindle in the United States, and thereafter protests or demonstrations tilted toward dissident elements. The absence of regime supporters in the United States likely contributed to American understanding of the Libyan political scene in a one-sided fashion and fostered selective awareness of issues facing the regime, which in turn created a perception amenable to the maintenance and intensification of severed diplomatic relations.

V. PERIOD OF SEVERED DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS (1980-2004)

The Reagan Presidency, 1981-1989

Foreign policy under President Reagan took a more aggressive turn, with the Reagan Doctrine emphasizing the U.S. role to “nourish and defend freedom and democracy, and to

59 60

Richard D. Lyons, “(Libya),” The New York Times, May 9, 1980, p.11 col. 1. “Masked Libyan Rally Here to Protest the Libyan Regime,” The New York Times, August 23, 1980, B2.

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communicate these ideals everywhere we can.”61 This active Wilsonian policy was coupled with a renewed determination to squelch communism, to be achieved through CIA projects and increased military spending in both the arms race and in gearing for low-intensity conflicts in newer nations. Tensions with Libya accordingly escalated as the United States took a more decisive position under its new commander-in-chief. Presidential perception also played a role, insofar as, “Colonel Qadhafi was to Reagan what Castro was to Kennedy and what Nasser was to Prime Minister Eden – an international pariah bent on exporting revolution and confronting American and British interests worldwide.”62 Major regional issues during the 1980s included the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (to which Libya sent mujahideen to be trained by the CIA), the Iran-Iraq War, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and the Iran-Contra scandal. On the general subject of non-democratic regimes, Jeane Kirkpatrick‟s distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian states enjoyed currency in the early 1980s, and justified selective American involvement with dictators. Definition of terrorism also remained fluid and applied based on national interests at stake or linkage with other international issues, with groups such as the IRA under the radar screen at the time. For its part, Libya posited distinction between liberation movements and terrorists, to some extent conceptually similar to Reagan‟s notion of freedomfighters as those anticommunist elements struggling to gain power in unfree nations. In sum, conflict in the 1980s centered on American perception of Libya as a Soviet surrogate and a subversive force willing to use terrorist methods.

61

“Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union,” John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters,The American Presidency Project [online]. Santa Barbara, CA: University of California (hosted), Gerhard Peters (database) (accessed April 3, 2008). 62 Mansour O. El-Kikhia, Libya’s Qaddafi: the Politics of Contradiction (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1997), 140.

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In shades of President Franklin D. Roosevelt‟s 1937 quarantine speech likening Japan to a public health risk, Secretary of State Alexander Haig described the Libyan regime as, “a cancer that has to be removed.”63 Colonel Qadhafi also channeled a historical foreign policy theme when he had earlier noted that, “history repeats itself…after over 170 years, the United States fills the Mediterranean with its fleets and practices terrorism against the peoples.”64 With the closure of the Libyan Embassy, Colonel Qadhafi addressed directly the American people in an open letter to Presidents Carter and Reagan published as a paid advertisement in The Washington Post, in which he warned the United States to keep its navy away from the Libyan borders.65 Armed skirmishes between the United States and Libya near Mediterranean borders however took place in the 1980s, the first of which occurred in the Gulf of Sidra on August 19, 1981. The Gulf of Sidra incident represented the first American military engagement against Arabs since the Barbary wars.66 Prior to this incident, Colonel Qadhafi had reconciled with the “reactionary” Arab regimes in light of Israel‟s bombing of Saddam Hussein‟s nuclear reactor in Iraq, so the Arab regimes denounced the U.S. attacks in the Gulf of Sidra in a short-lived warming with radical Libya.

On September 1, 1981, Colonel Qadhafi opined, “how could he[Reagan] become president of the greatest state on earth? What a comedy- the comedy of the 20th century, the absurdity of the 20th century, the triviality of the 20th century.”67 This quote typifies the mutual antipathy between Colonel Qadhafi and President Reagan, but also reveals a respect for the 63

Terisa Turner, “Exxon Decides to Withdraw from Qaddafi‟s Revolutionary Nation: U.S. Oil Giants Have Become Part of Reagan‟s Plan to Destablize Libya,” Multinational Monitor 2 (12) (December 1981): < http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1981/12/turner.html> (accessed April 11, 2008). 64 Ronald Bruce St. John, 112. 65 Ibid., 115. 66 Michael B. Oren, 551. 67 ElWarfally, 152.

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United States as “the greatest state on earth,” as evidenced in Libyan engagement with American oil companies and interest in American higher education. Libyan people as well were not immune to American soft power: “[t]he average Libyan spends his $9,000 annual per capita income on, among other things, Dial soap, Fritos, Marlboros, video tapes of American television shows like „I Dream of Jeannie,‟ and other necessities of American life.”68 This line of thinking suggested that vilification of Qaddafi would quash domestic dissent, which was high at the time due to internal policies, in a rally-round-the-flag way, and make outward support of the United States impossible despite openness to American ways and people. In October 1981, however, the Reagan administration asked American oil companies to leave Libya, reducing local presence and influence. Libyan nationals applying for American visas were subject to security scrutiny, and contact drastically reduced between the two countries.

The Reagan administration sought to mold public opinion toward Libya via a disinformation campaign portraying, “Qaddafi the lunatic, Libya the Soviet proxy, Qaddafi the major source of international terrorism, and repressive Libya, all of which were also reflected increasingly in official statements from the U.S. government.”69 Various smear articles came to Western press from ostensible sources in Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and Israel and from Phalangist Lebanese. In a recently declassified document, a USIA strategy to sway Western European allies to antagonize Libya was outlined as follows: “A public diplomacy strategy focused on Europe should: 1) Define terrorism as a scourge being waged against the West and its values by ruthless opponents; 2) Define Libyan terrorism as a cold-blooded instrument of Libya‟s national policy directed against Libyan dissidents, other Arab states; in effect anyone opposed to Qaddafi, 68 69

Lisa Anderson, “Ignore Qaddafi,” The New York Times, December 17, 1981, 31A. Ronald Bruce St. John, 125.

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rather than as an expression of pan-Arab solidarity; 3) Document Libyan involvement over the years in terrorist actions, including those outside Europe as well as in Europe; and, 4) De-mythologize Qaddafi both as a man and leader.”70 Because the public diplomacy campaign sought to achieve political ends of mobilizing opinion against Colonel Qadhafi, and according to a former senior official President Reagan never had any intention of conversation or moderation in policy toward Libya, it can be assumed that within Libya the U.S. public diplomacy efforts had a negative effect, producing a feeling of defensiveness persisting to the present. Moreover, insofar as the full complement of specific actions of the Libyan state contributing to the aggressive U.S. policy likely were not disclosed in full detail to Libyan citizens, Libyan public opinion could accept the notion parlayed by some that they were targeted in a one-sided fashion by the United States, leading to a sense of mistrust possessed by many to this day.

Support of dissident groups complemented disinformation campaigns and economic isolation, including a 1982 embargo of Libyan oil. The National Front for the Salvation of Libya employed a radio program entitled, “Voice of the Libyan People,” broadcast from Khartoum and likely with American assistance.71 Perhaps in part due to the American isolation tactics, Libya inevitably looked to the Soviet Union and continued its support of groups such as Abu Nidal. The December 1985 attacks in Rome and Vienna airports carried out by Abu Nidal raised the level of U.S.-Libyan tensions, leading to the remaining 1,000-1,500 Americans in Libya to be recalled and to President Reagan toughening his stance, stating that, “Qadaffi deserves to be treated as a pariah in the world community” after Libya claimed responsibility 70

Nicholas Laham, The American Bombing of Libya: A Study of the Force of Miscalculation in Reagan Foreign Policy (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2008), 66-67. 71 William Gutteridge, ed., Libya, still a threat to Western interests? (London: Institute for the Study of Conflict, 1984), 23.

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for the December attacks.72 On April 14, 1986, Operation El Dorado Canyon bombed select targets in Libya, the first prime-time military operation in America. The operation enjoyed a 76 percent approval rating according to an April 24-28, 1986 Washington Post-ABC News Poll,73 leading to later speculation that the actions against Libya stemmed from domestic political motivations as well as a desire to appear strong on terrorism. Too, a poll taken in January 1986 named Libya as the first choice as a country for the American military to target to counter terrorism, with 53 percent of respondents choosing Libya from a list of states.74 “Taking on Libya was the counterterrorism equivalent of invading Grenada – popular, relatively safe, and theatrically satisfying.”75

While official statements were careful to distinguish between the Libyan leader and the Libyan people, American public opinion probably applied sentiments felt toward Colonel Qadhafi to the country as whole, reducing public diplomacy efforts and coloring the later rapprochement. Although President Reagan specifically stated that, “[t]he Libyan people are a decent people caught in the grip of a tyrant,” and that, “most Libyans are ashamed and disgusted that this man has made their country a synonym for barbarism around the world,” 76 the latter message of Libya as a barbaric country likely sank in, especially given that American troops had just launched an attack against the country, which to those historically attuned reprised the Barbary Wars. That administration officials publicly urged coup attempts in Libya which never materialized added to the image of Libyans as not only stuck in a bad situation, but 72

Ronald Bruce St. John, 132, 134, Nicholas Laham, 157. 74 Nicholas Laham, 158. 75 Ronald Bruce St. John, 135. 76 “Address to the Nation on the United States Air Strike Against Libya, April 14, 1986,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1986, Book I (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1988), 468-469. 73

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unable to rise to the occasion and oust a “cancerous” leader, further alienating the country from American ideals of efficiency and Depression Era, bootstraps self-help. Yet the situation was more complicated than a despotic leader, as seen in international opinion not entirely convinced of Reagan‟s actions: many European allies considered the U.S. raids as treating a symptom rather than the cause of terrorism, which was intertwined with the Arab-Israeli conflict and U.S. policy in the region; and numerous Arab, Islamic and Non-Aligned states supported Libya in the aftermath of the attack.

The George H. Bush and Clinton Presidencies

Although Colonel Qadhafi initially spoke publicly and made overtures in hopes that the election of President George H. Bush represented an opportunity to improve U.S.-Libyan relations, the Bush administration followed the policy of the Reagan administration for the most part, with the Cold War prism changing to Rogue State doctrine in the early 1990s, but having a similar effect on relations with Libya. Also complicating this era was the coming to light of evidence linking Libya to the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in response to which evidence the U.S. government called for unilateral and multilateral sanctions. Sanctions as a policy tool, in Libya like elsewhere, produced economic hardship for the population and less impact on the ruling elite. Chemical weapons development at facilities in Rabta and Tarhuna posed another policy challenge, with the Libyan government arguing its right under international law to develop such weapons, as other countries had. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 served to eliminate discussion of “peace dividends” arising from the end of the Cold War and instead spoke to the continuing need for U.S. military strength in the

33

face of challenges to world order. Libya, together with Iraq, Iran, North Korea and sometimes Cuba, constituted rogue states, who, as Secretary of State Madeline Albright described, “feel that they not only have no stake in the system but, on the contrary, that their very being revolves around the fact that they want to undo the system, literally throw hand grenades into it.”77

With a near total ban on economic relations, and travel ban to Libya using U.S. passports, contact between the two countries was minimal and chiefly consisted of government statements and UN actions. Yet it could be argued that a strategy of isolation exacerbates the feeling of wanting to “throw hand grenades into” the international system, and that creating a sense of involvement or holding a stake in the system would be more effective over time at creating a multilaterally acceptable nexus of values. Public diplomacy constitutes a prime tool for eliciting engagement and assuring acceptance of a relationship beyond temporal political realities and could in the long-term produce leadership less likely to antagonize. Nevertheless, the U.S. policy direction at the time opted for waiting to interact with the Libyan government until specific preconditions were met. U.S. opinion toward Libya remained low in light of Lockerbie, allegations of development of weapons of mass destruction, support for terrorism and anti-Western orientation in Libya. The younger generation in Libya, lacking memory of or contact with the United States to balance Libyan government views, became more susceptible to domestic statements regarding the intentions of the United States such as mass support for the notion that the CIA was behind the infection in the 1990s of over 400 children in Benghazi

77

“Albright Remarks at Howard University April 14, 1998,” U.S. Department of State, Office of the Spokesman, USIS Washington File, April 15, 1998 (accessed April 14, 2008).

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with AIDS.78 The isolation between the two countries decreased levels of understanding of each other‟s political system and therefore the efficacy of public statements made by either government, the main form of public diplomacy in this era of severed relations.

Each time a new American president is elected, Colonel Qadhafi makes optimistic remarks suggesting beliefs that the fundamental United State position toward Libya could change rapidly by virtue of a new head of state and/or political party and that the incumbent candidate would naturally desire a less hostile relationship. When President Clinton was elected in 1992, Colonel Qadhafi made the following remarks at Al-Fateh University in Tripoli, misreading both Clinton and the nature of the Democratic Party: “Clinton…said that a political revolution should take place in America to make America look inward…Clinton won and the Democratic administration succeeded. The whole world believes that America will change during the era of the Democratic administration. The Democrats originally consisted of minorities, the oppressed. We have been defending these people during the Reagan era. Because of this, Reagan‟s vengeance against us increased, because we used to back the blacks, the Red Indians, the minorities, the workers, and the oppressed, who actually were the foundations of the Democratic Party. In actual fact, the force that formed the Democratic Party to which Clinton belongs, this force is actually is our ally. When it was in opposition, we used to back it. We thank God for this result and give a deep sigh and the whole world feels really satisfied.”79 The Clinton Administration in fact pursued a more advanced version of the Rogue Doctrine and put forward a neo-Wilsonianism in which U.S. power was to promote democracy around the world. Under the Clinton administration, Libya came under closer scrutiny for non-democratic behavior at home, with administration leaders such as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Anthony Lake linking domestic non-democratic behavior to contravention of

78

Official Libyan statements blamed the CIA, Mossad and/or pharmaceutical companies for this tragedy, and indicted Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor working in Benghazi for working with these groups to infect the children to “destabilize the state of Libya.” 79 Ronald Bruce St. John, 169.

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international norms.80 One example of Libyan government actions toward one of its citizens making headlines in the United States was the 1994 disappearance of then soon-to-be-a-U.S.citizen, dissident Mansour Kikhia while on a trip to Egypt, whose wife was reportedly offered a bribe to quiet her criticism of the Libyan regime, as reported in The New York Times81 and thereby impacting American public opinion regarding not just Libyan foreign policy but also its policies toward its citizens in this continuation of the “stray dog” policy of assassinating regime opponents.

When Democratic presidents such as Carter and Clinton do not shift policy toward Libya substantially, Colonel Qadhafi presents another view of the American political system: “Anyway, we have no problems with Clinton at all. He is a man who came from a small state. He is a young man. He is not from the generation of World War II and he has no colonization ambitions in the world. Yet, he likes to show that he is the President of the United States which can launch a missile, can threaten, and do whatever. Naturally, there are imperialist circles manipulating him. Damn them. They are in the Pentagon, State Department, CIA, National Security Council, and the 400 families of the largest companies. These are the hellish circles manipulating the world in the name of America.”82 This like many of Colonel Qadhafi‟s quotes reveals some misunderstanding of the U.S. political system, which opacity effective public diplomacy might remedy. Interestingly, in a recent interview with Mohammed Eljahmi, brother of Libyan prisoner of conscience Fathi Eljahmi, Eljahmi described the Libyan political system as concentric circles of power centering around Colonel Qadhafi with “free-lance” politicians vying for influence with varying degrees of

80

See Anthony Lake, “Confronting Backlash States,” Foreign Affairs March/April 1994. Youssef M. Ibrahim, “Wife of Missing Libyan Says Colonel Qadhafi Aide Sought to Muffle Her,” The New York Times, May 18, 1994 < http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C02E5DA1438F93BA25756C0A962958260&scp=2&sq=youssef +m.+ibrahim+libya+wife&st=nyt> (accessed April 14, 2008). 82 “Interview with Libyan Leader al-Colonel Qadhafi by Hamdi Qandil in the Sirte Conference Center, followed by question and answer session,” Libyan Television Network, Broadcast live on August 29, 1997 (accessed April 14, 2008). 81

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success.83 Lacking extensive knowledge of the American political system, Colonel Qadhafi perhaps extrapolated from his own experiences.

VI. RAPPROCHEMENT TO THE PRESENT

British efforts led the way for the U.S.-Libyan rapprochement, with conversations between Libyan and British officials occurring from the early 1990s onward. In exchange for British assistance intermediating with the United States regarding the settlement of the Lockerbie issue, Libya provided Britain with information on the activities of the Irish Republican Army as well as domestic economic concessions.84 Although Libya was added to the August 5, 1996 Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, the Executive branch did so in compromise with Congress, members of which had constituents affected by the Lockerbie case. In June 1999, British and American diplomats met with the Libyan ambassador to the United Nations, in the first official contact between Libyan and American diplomats since 1981.85 Progress toward rapprochement remained slow, with the Clinton administration unsure of how to gauge Libyan actions, not willing to risk a backslide, and not having significant national interest in Libya to move along with haste. Deputy Assistant Secretary Ronald Neumann wrote in February 2000 that, “the picture of Libya‟s current actions is only slowly coming into focus, and our understanding of Libya‟s intentions or how the Libyan government sees itself in the world remains quite unclear.”86 In March 2000, the State Department sent four consular officers to Libya to assess the situation on the ground for the purposes of re-evaluation the

83

Interview with Mohamed Eljahmi, conducted by the author on January 25, 2008. Saif Aleslam al-Qadhafi, 40. 85 Ronald Bruce St. John, 178. 86 Ronald E. Neumann, “Libya: A U.S. Policy Perspective,” Middle East Policy 7.2 (February 2000): 142. 84

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travel ban on Libya, which visit marked the first since the early 1980s. Yet Libyan intentions were considered opaque, and Colonel Qadhafi‟s continued anti-Western comments made the Senate wary, so on April 28, 2000, a nonbinding resolution requested that the Clinton administration keep the travel ban to Libya in place until the resolution of the Lockerbie trial.87

As the Clinton administration wound down, U.S. statements continued to reflect caution yet slow change in policy, such as Secretary Albright stating on June 19, 2000 that rogue states were now to be seen as “states of concern” instead.88 In January 2001, when President George W. Bush took office, his administration brought a more realist, less Wilsonian and more unilateral approach, exemplified by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell. Intervention in other states would occur where U.S. interests were at stake, not for humanitarian or other purposes. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, however, policy shifted to face the new challenge of terrorism. By September 2002, a National Security Strategy of pre-emptive action was launched, and by September 2003, President Bush, at an address to the United Nations, declared that, “[a]ll governments that support terror are complicit in a war against civilization.”89 The policy finally evolved to spreading democracy throughout the world in an effort to achieve global peace, a Wilsonian echo, but put forth in the context of rooting out conditions conducive to recruitment, training and harboring of terrorists. After reelection, in his January 2005 inaugural address, President Bush stated that:

“The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. 87

Ronald Bruce St. John, 184. Ibid., 189. 89 “President Bush Addresses the United Nations General Assembly,” Office of the Press Secretary, September 23, 2003, < http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/09/20030923-4.html> (accessed April 19, 2008). 88

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…America‟s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. …So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”90 In sum, American interests were now explicitly defined as including ending tyranny, so the scope of foreign policy action expanded beyond prior, more limited conceptions, of American interests, and had a strong ideological component stemming from the logic of “winning hearts and minds” and insuring peace through democracy.

For the Executive, and some policy makers and think tanks, a changed perspective on Libya began in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, after which a common enemy of Islamic radicalism led the way to intelligence cooperation and accelerated political rapprochement. Libya had in fact been the first to report Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda to Interpol in 1998.91 In a statement made to the American people, Colonel Qadhafi denounced the terrorist attacks and said that, “[d]espite political differences and conflicts with America, this should not become a psychological barrier against offering assistance and humanitarian aid to U.S. citizens and all people in America who suffered most from these horrific attacks.”92 Libya itself faced domestic challenge, including assassination attempts on Colonel Qadhafi in June 1996 and June 199893, from radical groups mostly comprised of returning mujahideen, such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which President Bush named as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity via Executive Order 12334 signed on September 23, 2001.94

90

“George W. Bush, 55th Inaugural Ceremony,” The White House, (accessed April 19, 2008). 91 Luis Martinez, John King, trans., The Libyan Paradox (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), xi. 92 Ronald Bruce St. John, 191. 93 Ray Tayekh, “Colonel Qadhafi‟s Libya and the Prospect of Islamic Succession,” Middle East Policy 7.2 (February 2000): 154. 94 Evan F. Kohlman with Josh Lefkowitz, “Dossier: Libyan Islamic Fighting Group,” The NEFA Foundation, October 2007 < http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/nefalifg1007.pdf> (accessed February 3, 2008).

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In January 2002, Libya unveiled an English-language website seeking information on Islamist adversaries of the regime, which also served to foster feelings of facing a common foe and shift mental categorization of Libya among Western analysts, policy makers and publics.95 Despite these overtures, American opinion of Libya remained 68% unfavorable in a 2002 Gallup poll, suggesting the weight of historical experience and perception; yet compared to the 88% and 84% unfavorable ratings of Iraq and Iran, respectively, Libya had ratcheted down its spot on the enemy list.96 Public opinion toward Libya would continue to moderate, reaching 63% and 58% unfavorable by 2004 and 2006, respectively.97 Although opinion has been decreasing in unfavorableness, with over half of respondents categorizing Libya as such, rapprochement will be long-term effort.

Days after the capture of Saddam Hussein, and pursuant to secret negotiations with the United States and Great Britain, Libya voluntarily renounced its weapons of mass destruction in December 2003, successfully addressing the second of three major U.S. policy goals regarding Libya, namely to: “end Libyan support for terrorism, prevent Libya from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, and contain Libya‟s regional ambitions, at least those counter to U.S. interests.”98 Another major concern, Lockerbie, had been largely resolved by Libya‟s acceptance of the verdict in August 2003 and the UN lifting of multilateral sanctions on September 12, 2003, although the U.S. sanctions continued. It could be argued that by leaving sanctions in place, the U.S. government increased pressure on Libya to change and garnered 95

Ronald Bruce St. John, “Libya is Not Iraq: Preemptive Strikes, WMD and Diplomacy,” The Middle East Journal 58 (3) (Summer 2004): 386. 96 George Horace Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 2002 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 52. 97 Gallup Poll, February 6-9, 2006, PollingReport.com, < http://www.pollingreport.com/nations.htm> (accessed April 20, 2008). 98 Chester A. Crocker, chair and C. Richard Nelson, rapporteur, U.S.-Libyan Relations: Toward Cautious Reengagement (Washington, DC: Atlantic Council of the United States, 2003), 1.

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more concessions than a more forthcoming conciliation would have yielded. This strategy was summarized by Acting Undersecretary for Political Affairs William Burns: “Since the establishment of a high-level political dialogue in February 2004, we have emphasized to Libya that the quality and warmth of our bilateral relations will be influenced strongly by the decisions it makes with respect to modernizing its political and economic systems, and by the rights it provides its citizens. As President Bush said in welcoming Libya‟s December 2003 decision to abandon its WMD and missile programs, „should Libya pursue internal reform, America will be ready to help its people build a more free and prosperous country.‟”99 The specific reforms expected by the U.S. government remain murky to some Libyans, leading to frustration with the pace of rapprochement and a sense of having significantly changed policy only to have the U.S. government issue occasional positive statements about cooperation.

On the other hand, the decision was made in light of the “recent trend towards postrevolutionary realpolitik in Libyan foreign and security policy,”100 and suited internal needs of economic revitalization and regime security, which would be gained from full normalization with the West, as Libya was explicitly viewed by the State Department as “not Iraq” and not a candidate for regime change. Nevertheless, the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, which was opposed by Libya, raised the specter of intervention and likely figured into the calculation to renounce WMD. Additionally, one of the goals of the Libyan nuclear program had been to balance Israel, but with Palestinian statehood and other recent developments, Libya‟s challenge to Israel has given way to new policy aims, such as the establishment of “Isratine,” a state for

99

U.S. Congress. House. Committee on International Relations. Libya: Progress on the Path Toward Cautious Reengagement. 109th Cong., 1st sess., March 16, 2005, 13-14. 100 Malfrid Braut-Hegghammer, “Libya‟s Nuclear Turnaround: Perspectives from Tripoli,” The Middle East Journal 62 (1) (Winter 2008): 55.

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both Israelis and Palestinians. Ultimately, U.S. and Libyan interests, and to some extent worldviews, converged, more so for Libya than for the United States, but nevertheless enough to lead to restoration of direct diplomatic relations with Libya on June 28, 2004 and announcement of Embassy status for the U.S. mission in Libya on May 15, 2006. At present, Congress approved moving the U.S. Embassy from a hotel in Tripoli to an office, which occurred on April 13, 2008, but stalled on confirmation hearings for an Ambassador to Libya and as such U.S. representation in Libya is topped by a chargé d‟affaires ad interim, and is likely to remain so given the plethora of other regional issues facing the Bush administration, making pushing forward with Libya an improbable focus in the administration‟s last months.

During this period, public diplomacy consisted of public statements of U.S. officials made domestically concerning Libya, and Libyan attempts to address the American people through newspaper articles and interviews. Some of the U.S. statements were broadcast on the Al-Hurra television channel, which according to some enjoys higher viewership in Libya than in other regional countries, and according to others yet is rarely consulted as an outside source, with more people tuning into Al-Jazeera‟s Maghreb bulletin. (Radio Sawa, another U.S. regional information product, does not have an FM channel in Libya since Libya lacks private FM stations.) In a remarkable January 12, 2003 interview, Colonel Qadhafi said that he was “optimistic” about U.S.-Libyan relations, and that, “[d]uring the time of wars of liberation, we waged war. Now it is time for peace, and I want to be part of world peace.”101 Libya also used other means, such as Colonel Qadhafi crowing American citizen Tecca Zendik as Miss Net World in Tripoli in 2002 and appointing her as the general coordinator of the Libyan-American

101

“On Saddam, Lockerbie, Bin Laden and Peace,” The Washington Post, January 12, 2003, B01.

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Friendship Association on January 7, 2003.102 English-language Libyan newspapers also appeared, such as The Tripoli Post in 1999, and English-language websites were created for the Jamahiriya News Agency, the Qadhafi Charity Foundation, the Green Book Center, and the World Islamic Call Society.103 Notably, on March 22-23, 2006, the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs held a conference entitled, “The Prospects for Democracy: A Libyan-American Dialogue,” attended by, among others, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs C. David Welch, 45 Libyan scholars, and included a videoconference with Colonel Qadhafi in which he asserted that, “[t]here is no state with a democracy except Libya on the whole planet.”104 Other regime officials have adopted the vernacular of democracy, civil society and reform, no doubt in response to the Bush administration policy goals. Overall, Libya has sought to distance itself from Lockerbie and terrorism and urge a new era in relations.

On the educational front, a delegation of U.S. officials traveled to Libya in April 2004 to assess renewal of exchanges and relationships, including sending senior U.S. faculty members to Libya and developing English teaching curricula (in 1986 Libya banned teaching of English due to political reasons, which though resurrected in the 1990s requires curriculum updating).105 A reciprocal Libyan delegation traveled to Washington, Arizona, Texas, and New York, seeking to increase the number of Libyan students in the United States from 33 in 2002 to 500 by 2005.106 In May 2006, the Fulbright Foreign Student Program, International Visitors

102

Sigrid Faath, 21. Ibid., 15. 104 “Gaddafi Gives a Lesson on Democracy,” BBC News, March 24, 2006 < http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4839670.stm> (accessed April 19, 2008). 105 “Educational Cooperation Between the U.S. and Libya,” Thomas Farrell, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Academic Programs, U.S. Department of State: Delegation of Senior Libyan Representatives Visting the U.S., Foreign Press Center Roundtable, July 1, 2004 (accessed February 22, 2008). 106 Beth McMurtrie, “American and Libyan Academics Re-Establish Ties,” The Chronicle of Higher Education 50 (46) (July 23, 2004). 103

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Leadership Program, and the Undergraduate Exchange Program were re-opened to Libya, and the website of the U.S. Embassy in Libya currently features testimonial of one Libyan Fulbrighter, who despite losing his luggage on the way over, writes that, “over the past months, I have really come to understand that it doesn't matter what religion you believe in or what language you speak as long as the content of your character reflects the true, good side of your humanity”107 Oklahoma State University, whose educational ties with Libya date back to the 1950s, received a Libyan exchange student in 2006 who spoke positively of his experiences, although he was unable to travel over Thanksgiving break due to the single-entry visas now being issued to Libyans, and enjoyed the opportunity to educate Americans about Libya, some of whom, “don‟t know where Libya is…[or] thought it was near Pakistan.”108 Likewise in Libya, due to the prolonged isolation, many Libyans lack information or conception of the United States, which information deficit will be an ongoing challenge for the U.S. Cultural Center slated to be opened before the end of 2008 (though several American graphic and performing artists have already visited Libya). Finally, NASA and several archaeological missions have been involved with projects in Libya, and on January 3, 2008, the United States and Libya signed their first bilateral agreement since the rapprochement, the Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement.

107

Milood S. Al-Omrani, “Perspective from a Libyan Fulbright FLTA,” Website of the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya < http://libya.usembassy.gov/perspectives_from_a_libyan_fulbright_flta2.html> (accessed April 1, 2008). 108 Kirit Radia, “Libyan Students Return to U.S.: Former Enemies Now Paying Tuition,” ABC News, November 14, 2006 < http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=2653285&page=1> (accessed February 22, 2008).

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VII. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

At the moment, the rapprochement continues to unfold cautiously, with an Ambassador yet to be appointed to Libya and Colonel Qadhafi making inroads with Western European countries and having recently received Russia‟s President Putin for a visit. As Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalqam described in an interview on Al-Jazeera: “We don‟t beg for relations with America and we paid high price for independence. We are not and won‟t be a banana republic. [Libya] is not a „Yes State‟ to America or others. Freedom to our country and independence are our guiding principles and political resolution. It is what we inherited from Omar Mukhtar.”109 This quote suggests impatience with the pace of rapprochement, fear of the possible depth of U.S. involvement, and implies threat to ally with other powers, many of whom might be less likely than the United States to enforce “transformational diplomacy”110 and use their power to help build well-governed states responsive to their citizens‟ needs; yet as one Libyan-American scholar noted, “70 percent of Libyan elites [are] American-educated…[and] the United States is in a unique position to exert a positive influence over Libya by helping to foster civil society by encouraging political reform and advocating cultural exchanges with Americans.”111 Nevertheless, bogged down by other regional involvements and lacking strong national interest in Libya, the U.S. government efforts reflect the asymmetry in need for the relationship, which asymmetry the Libyan government attempted to reciprocate in Minister Shalqam‟s above quote. 109

“Aljazeera interview with Abdelrahman Shalqam,” January 13, 2008, Translation on Libya News Views and Comments < http://www.akhbarlibyaenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=282&Itemid=40> (accessed January 30, 2008). 110 “Transformational Diplomacy,” Secretary Condoleezza Rice, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, January 18, 2006 < http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/59306.htm> (accessed April 10, 2008). 111 Joseph Kirschke, “Libya Comes in From the Cold,” Worldpress.org, November 19, 2007 < http://www.worldpress.org/Mideast/2991.cfm> (accessed April 2, 2008).

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With Libya as with other smaller countries, the question boils down to what effort would be appropriate for a country in which the United States has minimal interests as defined in a traditional, realpolitik sense. Yet this rationale falters insofar as the dominance of liberal democracies (or the “Free World”) leads to an emphasis on the individual, and cordoning off individuals by virtue of their country of residence implies selective application of values and undermines attempts at creating a more workable international order. Past patterns of cultivating contacts with dissidents have a mixed if not negative record, and generate suspicion within the target countries, which translates into mistrust and difficulty gaining support for future policy. Engaging with the population would lend credibility to American values as applied abroad and reduce support for policies pursued by “rogue” governments justified by non-acceptance in the international order. Public diplomacy figures as a top choice, both in the tools available to the public diplomatist and the official endorsement given, which in the case of Libya would go over better than the placement of less transparent bodies such as NGOs, given the CIA track record in the region. Too, the mission of government differs from that of business and private interest, and tends to be received with more gravity.

As Secretary Rice recently remarked, “Diplomacy of the future will increasingly take the form of aligning our people with those of the world.”112 Deepened engagement with a view to civil society improvement would also address concerns of Libyan democrats, both exiled and domestically self-censored, as well as Arab democrats, and their current feeling that, “[t]oday, the State Department puts out a welcome mat for regime operatives but slams the door on

112

“Rice Urges Transformational Diplomacy,” Georgetown University News, February 14, 2008 < http://explore.georgetown.edu/news/?ID=31268> (accessed April 20, 2008).

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dissidents.”113 On the other hand, multiplicity of opinion needs to be taken into account: Colonel Qadhafi has not remained in power for nearly 40 years solely based on monopoly of force, and continues to enjoy prestige on the “Arab street,” with a recent poll in Saudi Arabia ranking Qadhafi as the third most-admired world leader. 114 A balanced, people-to-people approach, expanded beyond past compartmentalized engagement with developing nations in the forms of economic aid, relations with ruling elite, and informal influence through globalized business and culture, would be most effective over the longer term. Denying relations to another country shortchanges U.S. policymakers of insight, stagnates public opinion, and derails diplomatic options when contentious issues arise. Given the eclipse of the “unipolar moment,” the infeasibility of fighting the transnational phenomenon of terror unilaterally, and the likelihood of learning lessons applicable to other regional involvements, such as Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict, moving ahead in the rapprochement with Libya, including comprehensive public diplomacy programs, is justifiable and necessary both intrinsically and extrinsically.

113 114

Mohamed Eljamhi, “Libya‟s Inconvenient Truth,” The Washington Post, January 2, 2008, A13. Shibley Telhami, The Stakes; America and the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2002), 47.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Chester A. Crocker, chair and C. Richard Nelson, rapporteur, U.S.-Libyan relations: toward cautious reengagement (Washington, DC: Atlantic Council of the United States, 2003). Mansour O. El-Kikhia, Libya’s Qaddafi: the politics of contradiction (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1997). Mahmoud G. ElWarfally, Imagery and Ideology in U.S. Policy toward Libya, 1969-1982 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988). Sigrid Faath, ed., Anti-Americanism in the Islamic World (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2006). Glen Fisher, Mindsets: The Role of Culture and Perception in International Relations (Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 1988). Fitzhugh Green, American Propaganda Abroad: from Benjamin Franklin to Ronald Reagan (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1988). William Gutteridge, ed., Libya, still a threat to Western interests? (London: Institute for the Study of Conflict, 1984). Giles Kepel, The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2004). Nicholas Laham, The American Bombing of Libya: A Study of the Force of Miscalculation in Reagan Foreign Policy (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2008). Luis Martinez, John King, trans., The Libyan Paradox (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). Joseph S. Nye, Jr., The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone (New York: Oxford Press, 2002). Michael B. Oren, Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the present (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2007). William A. Rugh, American Encounters with Arabs: The ‘Soft Power” of U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Middle East (Westport, CT: Praeger/Greenwood, 2006). William A. Rugh, Ed., Engaging the Arab and Islamic Worlds through Public Diplomacy, (Washington DC: Public Diplomacy Council, 2004). Ronald Bruce St. John, Libya and the United States: two centuries of strife (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002).

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Shibley Telhami, The Stakes; America and the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2002). Dirk J. Vandewalle, A history of modern Libya (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

INTERVIEWS Interview with former senior official A, March 2008. (Ambassador Pelletreau) Interview with former senior official B, March 2008. (Ambassador Mack) Interview with Mohamed Eljhami, brother of Fathi Eljahmi, January 25, 2008. Interview with former American oil Executive working in Libya from 1975-1981, March 2008. Interview with member of U.S. Embassy, Tripoli, Libya, April 2008. Interview with former educational consultant in Libya during both monarchy era and the early Qadhafi era, April 2008. (Mr. Mize) Interview with member of Libyan Embassy in Washington, DC, April 2008.

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