The Libyan sanctions

Sept. 8, 2003
The Libyan sanctions The US should hold its nose and end trade sanctions against Libya.

The US should hold its nose and end trade sanctions against Libya. Muammar Qadhafi, the Libyan president, has had no conversion to righteousness. He's a career despot who changes for pragmatic reasons. But he has changed enough to shed the sanctions.

Last month, Qadhafi's government accepted responsibility for the Dec. 21, 1988, bombing of the Pan Am Flight 103 jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 people perished. It further agreed to distribute as much as $2.7 billion to families of the victims. Those actions are enough for the United Nations to lift the sanctions it imposed on Libya in 1992 and suspended in 1999. They also should be enough for the US to lift its sanctions.

US balking

The US, however, is balking. It has officially supported removal of the UN sanctions but declared it will keep its trade barriers in place. Statements from the White House and State Department cite Libya's poor record on human rights, lack of democratic institutions, contributions to regional conflicts in Africa, and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Those are valid concerns. But they don't warrant extension of sanctions implemented for different reasons.

Trade restrictions surely helped pressure Qadhafi into surrendering two bombing suspects for trial in 1999 and now, after the conviction of one of them, into accepting responsibility for the terrorism. Sanctions do influence behavior, especially in combination with culpability exposed in various courts around the world. Qadhafi's government earlier paid $33 million to families of 170 people killed in the 1989 bombing of a French airliner over Niger, for which a French court convicted six Libyans in absentia. And it is reported to be ready to make similar payments to non-US victims of the 1986 bombing by Libyan agents of a Berlin nightclub, for which the US retaliated with air strikes.

While sanctions can work, they take a long time to produce results. They subvert diplomacy. They deliberately inflict general hardship and foment alienation. They don't confine collateral damage to the target country. And, as the Libyan case shows, they leave open the searing question of sufficiency.

The backlash effect will assure that the US hurts its own interests if it continues to insist on having things both ways in Libya. Retention of its sanctions will further strain relations with the UN and European allies. In the absence of UN sanctions, the main barrier against foreign commerce in Libya will be the largely ignored but deeply resented third-party provisions of the US Iran-Libya Sanctions Act.

Furthermore, retention of sanctions after Qadhafi's submission looks capricious, especially in the chronically suspicious Arab and Muslim world. Whatever his motivations—which are never easy to discern—Qadhafi has satisfied the world's expectations of him regarding the Lockerbie tragedy. He's accepting blame and paying blood money. And he has, according to various governments, including that of the US, shunned terrorism since 1992 and suppressed his African provocations.

None of that makes him a savory world leader. He's still a mercurial autocrat with blood on his hands who will revert to old habits when doing so suits his needs. For now, though, he has made the changes demanded of him when sanctions took effect. The US must acknowledge the shift. It should lift the sanctions, allow American companies to return to Libya, and enlist the support of allies in asking the Libyan strongman hard questions about weapons of mass destruction.

Financial commitment

Those moves won't feel sufficient. That's another problem with sanctions, which seem like stronger response than they really are to international wickedness—partly because they dispense hardship in so many wrong places. What can be sufficient here? Money can't compensate for the murder of 270 airline passengers. Neither can the enforced impoverishment of 6 million Libyans, few of whom had anything to do with the terrorism over Lockerbie.

Whatever the US does, Qadhafi will expiate mass murder with a financial commitment equivalent to 6.6% of his country's annual economic output. The US and UN agreed to these terms when they decided to respond economically to Libyan acts of war. It's too late now to say it isn't enough. It's not too late to promise to skip the sanctions step the next time Qadhafi sponsors murder.