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Libya was considered a rogue, terrorist-harboring state with an active nuclear weapons program just a few short years ago. Today, its Prime Minister Moammar Gadhafi compared the US to Al Qaeda by likening the 9/11 attacks to US strikes on the capital in 1986. Yesterday, a longtime Gadhafi ally and compatriot Ali Abdessalam Treki was acclaimed (rather than voted) President of the United Nation's General Assembly, and recently the Libyan economy has been one the rising stars of Africa.
Other states considered pariahs, notably Iran and North Korea, thus may have a lot to learn from Libya and its leaders, especially as Gadhafi announced an Obama-like "new era" in relations with its former colonizer, Italy, where he visited for the first time and made the comparison of terrorist tactics in validly urging a shift of focus to terorrists' motives. Here are three such lessons:
3. You don't need to stop the critical rhetoric if it is part of a constructive dialogue. Gadhafi took power by coup in 1969, a non-democratic means by definition, and was this February elected Chair of the African Union. Days later, his son and likely heir-to-be was welcomed in Washington on the assumption that the country will transition to a constitutional democracy. The point is that the legitimacy gained by doing what foreign powers want-- however gradually-- is much more valuable than radicalism.
2. Drop the nuclear weapons program and terrorism support, reap the benefits of being accepted by the international community. It is that simple. Libya currently has a non-permanent seat on the 15-nation UN Security Council, arguably the most powerful body ever put in place by humankind. They did this by playing the global security game not on their terms, but on those demanded of them.
1. Pretending can get you there, but not keep you there (sort of). One of the ironies of Gadhafi's speech was his insistence that Western powers do not interfere in internal affairs of other countries, a pillar of the 17th-century Westphalian system. What he might have meant was that non-Western countries can get away with almost anything domestically if they bowto the West in foreign affairs. As things stand there is dangerously close to no limit to this principle, and rogue states stand to gain.
Libya is a litmus test for 21st-century coercion of the best kind (paradox intended), that geared towards creating a safer world. Whether these lessons are worth learning by Iran and North Korea will be determined as much as by these states as their adversaries. They are jointly but asymmetrically current events creating a future in which nations can gain universal respect and legitimacy on two falsely disconnected fronts: domestically and in foreign affairs.
