Well, not really. I do expect that the sovereign leader of Libya will remain a devotee of the Islamic faith. Nevertheless, the Colonel's done something that I regard as intelligent.

Several points:

1. The Country Pundit is glad this worked without (publicly-known) direct military action. We're a little busy elsewhere, and don't need to be getting too many irons in too many fires.

2. TCP likes sanctions as part of a daily breakfast an overall diversified portfolio of diplomatic options that starts with "The United States would like to express its displeasure..." and stops just short of the shiny things in the silos.

3. Bouncing off of the point above, I'm not entirely sure when the relevant sanctions were put into place, and I'm not sure what they were put into place for. These sanctions things do, unfortunately, take a long time and you're never guaranteed that they'll do much other than enrich the local dictator and irritate the people he's ruling.

4. It's good that the United States is ready and willing to cut deals when the opportunity arises. The 'no regime change' for Libya in exchange for whatever it is exactly that the Colonel's giving up is a good deal, and we've made it before, with Castro. Leaving that nitwit in power down in Cuba was probably a decent deal in exchange for getting the Soviet missiles out of there. Admittedly, it wasn't too good for the Cuban people, but that can't be helped.

5. Both withdrawals of sanctions seem to have been intelligent moves. Call it the two-carrot approach if you will; the problem is that this doesn't always work, and so you have to keep a big stick laying around.

6. Hopefully the State Department had a positive hand in this, and can start pulling its weight instead of being like a dead-in-train locomotive.

7. Also, this may set a good example: Work with us, and you stay in power. Keep up your NBC program (or keep acting like you've got one) and we bring the hurt. Crude, not particularly subtle, but probably effective.

In summary: I'm glad this worked and so forth. I'm hopeful that "Libya" can stop being short-hand for "state sponsor of terrorism" and can move towards the group of nations who at least act like they've got a measure of civilization about them. Hooray for Washington and for London.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:37 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 407 words, total size 2 kb.