From EXIT THE COLONEL: The Hidden History of the Libyan Revolution by Ethan Chorin. Reprinted with permission from PublicAffairs.

How Gaddafi Ruined His Remake

As we have seen, the prevailing impression of Libya in Western policy circles in the few years (if not the few months) before the revolution was one of a success. Despite the fact that the pace of economic reform was slower than wished for, Gaddafi had basically served his purpose and could be left on autopilot. The US and UK governments still referred to reconciliation with Libya occasionally as a model counterproliferation and counterterror initiative, but with far less verve. The US and UK intelligence communities appeared to be getting what they felt was some useful information out of the arrangement (exactly what has not been disclosed, even if information on some of the methods has been exposed), and huge commercial opportunities were lurking within reach.

As time went by, however, Gaddafi seemed to be going more and more off the rails—again. Indeed, it is hard to think of anyone Gaddafi had spent much time and energy courting while sanctions were in place that he had not personally embarrassed or insulted. In the same way, he was compelled to try to prove his righteousness by exploiting “unfinished business” like the remaining Lockerbie payments, the Bulgarian nurses case, and various unconsummated commercial deals to extort return reparations from the West. There appeared to be no way that Gaddafi’s mind could let him “forgive” an exogenous event like the Wikileaks scandal and let its trove of personal slights go unpunished, just as he was not able to prevent himself from pulling together a team to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah, during the very time when he was trying to strike a deal with the West.

Thus, rather than spending his golden years enjoying the fruits of a tremendously successful rehabilitation campaign, Gaddafi chose, again, to try to resurrect his “honor” at the expense of his personal and Libya’s national interests, unsettling the foreign oil companies, and embarrassing his closest allies. At the same time, he was deepening relationships with the West’s strongest competitors, especially Brazil, Russia, India, and China (the BRIC countries) and universally loathed foreign rulers, like Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, who had spent the previous few years chasing out many of that country’s foreign investors.

Gradually, those individuals who had assisted with Libya’s transformation—those who were still alive or in office—came to realize that they might have a problem on their hands. The State Department further drew down embassy staff while trying to figure out the next move. No one, at least outside government and intelligence circles, seemed to know what to make of Mismari’s defection and rumors of Saif ’s apparent decision to remove himself from Libyan politics. Some felt the best course of action was simply to wait out the storm; a new ambassador might smooth things over. Or maybe not.

The fact remains that both Gaddafi and the West shared responsibility for this state of affairs, which had direct roots in the 2003 WMD deal and subsequent rapprochement. As we have seen, the conditions for Gaddafi’s rehabilitation were framed largely in terms of compensation for past acts of terror (the Lockerbie bombing), “declarations” (abandonment of WMD), and “willingness to cooperate” on high-level issues, like counterterrorism. Still, very little attention was paid to more systemic problems of human rights and trying to control Gaddafi’s natural, disruptive tendencies. So, while the West was able to crow that it had succeeded in “flipping” Libya from the dark side, it was not long before Gaddafi started to complain that he had been swindled by the West, which was not living up to its various implicit promises of proper respect for a major world leader with continental influence (i.e., Gaddafi). With nothing to anchor them to an objective reality, the narratives spun by the West and Libya about the reasons for the rapprochement and their respective obligations allowed both sides to revert to traditional adversarial positions, with increased righteousness.

Gaddafi had another, problem, however. Just as he had been constrained by key associates and tribal leaders in responding to the Western demands for Libya to turn over Megrahi and Fhima for trial, he was constrained to some degree by the needs and wishes of those people within his circle who had been the pillar of his repressive apparatus for more than three decades. These people had done his dirty work, had been compensated for it, and would have a very hard time finding a role within any new, more open, more respectable Libya.

So Gaddafi found himself between a reform process and narrative he knew was necessary to maintain on some level in order to continue to buy time—before he had another plan. Those who had fought his previous battles for him were increasingly unhappy and were becoming recalcitrant, if not an outright danger. The overriding anxiety and paralysis Mahmoud Jibril had seen in Gaddafi months earlier may have made it impossible for him to do anything other than what he had always done—try to play all sides against the middle. Yet the rules of the game had fundamentally changed. The West, unwittingly, may have simply added too many balls to Gaddafi’s already immensely complicated juggling game—such that it was only a matter of time before he would lose his grip.