Frigid temperatures this weekend prompt cold weather advisories

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support


      For over four decades, the wily Libyan strongman has locked
horns with Western leaders, including eight U.S. presidents, and so
far he's mostly managed to emerge unscathed. There's a reason why
he's held onto power for so long, analysts say, and that survivor's
instinct may yet help him wiggle out from under new U.N.-sanctioned
air strikes.


      How do the United States and its allies deal with Gadhafi now -
after demanding he step down, signing onto a UN-sanctioned no-fly
zone and expressing solidarity with the rebels? Very warily,
suggest American officials. "This is a fluid and dynamic
situation. We are going to be not responsive or impressed by words.
We would have to see actions on the ground, and that is not yet at
all clear," said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.


      The fact that Gadhafi has vexed a string of U.S. presidents,
beginning with Richard Nixon, doesn't offer much guidance to
President Barack Obama as he attempts to navigate a careful path
between exercising too much U.S. military power in yet another
Muslim country, and doing too little to help rebels seeking
Gadhafi's ouster.


      "The driving consideration is what comes next if a no-fly zone
doesn't work," said Aaron David Miller, a former Mideast adviser
to six U.S. secretaries of state.


      "I think Gadhafi's capacity to survive has little or nothing to
do with us. If anything, we've lent to his bizarre system of
government through the way we've demonized him in the past. To some
degree, we've played into his hands," said Miller, now with the
Woodrow Wilson Center think tank.


      The Security Council's vote to authorize military action and the
imposition of a no-fly zone to protect rebels seeking to oust
Gadhafi was met by an announcement Friday from Libya of an
immediate cease-fire and "the stoppage of all military
operations."


      But after weeks of violence, rebels seeking to oust Gadhafi were
skeptical, saying shelling by regime forces was continuing despite
the purported cease fire. The rebels' skepticism was shared by
Clinton and other U.S. officials.


      Still, Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign policy fellow at the
Brookings Institution think tank, suggested that "Obama has a
fundamentally different choice than any other American president
had with Gadhafi."


      Coordinated military action against Libya "has the potential to
fundamentally affect the whole nature of the broader era of revolt
in the Middle East," O'Hanlon said. "How this plays out affects
the entire cascading series of events in the Middle East."


      The troubled relationship between Gadhafi and the West began in
1969 on Nixon's watch, when the young Libyan military officer
overthrew Libya's frail King Idris. He shortly expelled American
and British troops from Libya and demanded - and received - higher
prices for his country's oil exports, much of them going to Europe.


      Concerned that Gadhafi's Libyan Arab Republic was cozying up to
the Soviet Union, Nixon tried to isolate him by increasing U.S.
military aid to Saudi Arabia and Iran, two Cold War allies of the
time.


      That strategy collapsed when Saudi Arabia and Iran joined other
oil-producing countries in the Arab oil boycott of 1973, mainly in
retaliation to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military
during the Yom Kippur War. And the Western-backed government of the
shah of Iran fell in the 1979 revolution.


      Throughout the 1970s, Gadhafi supplied weapons, training and
safe haven to terrorists, including Italy's Red Brigades and the
Irish Republican Army.


      President Jimmy Carter denounced Gadhafi as a "polecat" and
tried to keep his distance. But, in an embarrassment for the
president, his brother Billy made three trips to Libya, obtained a
controversial $250,000 loan, and even registered as a foreign agent
of the Libyan government.


      Shortly after his inauguration in 1981, Reagan expelled Libyan
diplomats from Washington upon reports that Libyan assassination
teams were targeting U.S. envoys. Reagan labeled Gadhafi the "mad
dog of the Middle East."


      In 1986, when Libya was linked to the bombing of a Berlin
nightclub frequented by US soldiers, Reagan ordered air strikes
against Gadhafi's compound and other targets in Tripoli and
Benghazi. More than 100 people were killed, including Gadhafi's
young adopted daughter. But Gadhafi escaped unharmed to continue to
taunt Reagan.


      In 1988, at the end of Reagan's two terms, Pan Am Flight 103
exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270, many of them
Americans. Libyan agents were blamed for the bombing. Years later,
Libya would accept responsibility for the bombing and agree to
monetary settlements.


      After Reagan, Gadhafi sought to court President George H.W.
Bush, praising him and Secretary of State James A. Baker III for
not attacking him personally and seeming "to be serious" about
seeking peace in the Middle East. Bush wasn't impressed. He
extended Reagan's sanctions and declaration of a national emergency
with respect to Libya.


      President Bill Clinton maintained and expanded those sanctions,
telling Congress in 1994 that Libya posed 'a continuing unusual and
extraordinary threat" to U.S. national security.

      After being treated as an international pariah for three
decades, Gadhafi did an about-face in 2003, after President George
W. Bush's invasion of Iraq.


      Fearing his country might be next on Bush's list, Gadhafi agreed
to Bush's demands that he give up his nuclear- and chemical-weapons
programs. He also renounced terrorism, leading the U.S. to remove
it from the list of "state sponsors of terrorism." And in 2008,
the U.S. and Libya established full diplomatic relations.


      Following Bush's example, European leaders also rushed to openly
court Gadhafi.


      French President Nicolas Sarkozy allowed him to pitch his
Bedouin tent in Paris, while Italy's Silvio Berlusconi gave Gadhafi
red-carpet treatment in Italy. British Prime Minister Tony Blair
flew to Libya in 2004 and for face-to-face talks with Gadhafi.


      Trade flourished. The U.S. and European countries sold Libya
billions of dollars of military and paramilitary equipment as
recently as 2010.


      Was Bush's outreach a blunder? At the time, "it was a pragmatic
decision on the part of Bush, and a pragmatic decision for
Gadhafi," said Richard Downey, an African expert at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies. "Gadhafi saw the tide
turning. The invasion of Iraq gave him a jolt."


      But relations began to sour again after former Libyan
intelligence officer Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only person
convicted for the 1988 bombing, was released by Scottish officials
in August 2009 on humanitarian grounds.


      Gadhafi, of course, greeted him as a celebrity.
      

Gallery

For over four decades, Col. Moammar Gadhafi has locked
horns with Western leaders, including eight U.S. presidents, and so
far he's mostly managed to emerge unscathed.

Analysis: West steps up to Gadhafi after years of feints

Go Deeper.

Like this?