Too Little, Not Yet Too Late

Much of official Washington has greeted the evidence of an ongoing massacre in Libya with a helpless shrug. "We don't have personal relations at a high level," lamented David Mack, a former U.S. diplomat in North Africa, in a Washington Post article titled "U.S. struggles with little leverage to restrain Libyan government."

Numerous articles in recent days, clearly influenced by what U.S. officials are telling reporters on background, have stressed this theme: The United States doesn't have deep ties with the Libyan military, as it did with the Egyptian and Bahraini militaries; it does not provide large amounts of aid to the Qaddafi regime; U.S. diplomats don't have friends in the Libyan government to whom they can make reasoned arguments about the need to change their ways. Therefore, even as Libyan leader Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi deploys warplanes, helicopters, and troops to crush the growing challenge to his rule, it is assumed that there is nothing the United States can do about the catastrophe under way.

But wait a moment. The United States doesn't have any military or diplomatic ties with Iran either, but we don't hear U.S. diplomats whining about how they are unable to press Tehran to give up its nuclear program. Nor did they plead limited influence when the world was pressing Libya, through sanctions and other tools, to compensate the victims of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, which was carried out by a Libyan intelligence officer. When an issue is important to Washington, U.S. officials figure out what leverage they have and use it as assertively and creatively as they can. They don't make excuses.

The U.S. military's connections to Egypt and Bahrain have unquestionably proved useful at key moments in the dramas that have unfolded there in recent weeks, allowing Pentagon officials to urge counterparts they knew well to show restraint. But those connections -- and the Pentagon's fear of losing them -- also held the United States back from pressuring those countries for reforms in years past. To say that deep military-military engagement is essential to having influence -- and an unvarnished good from the standpoint of promoting human rights -- is preposterous. Such ties can be helpful at key moments, but they can also reinforce the perception that the United States supports the status quo. In Egypt and Bahrain, they created popular mistrust of the United States that will take years to overcome.

The absence of close military and diplomatic relations can also free the United States to take more decisive steps to support democratic change and restrain repressive regimes such as Libya. Indeed, the international community has exercised such leverage effectively with Libya to pursue other goals in the past. Gaddafi was so eager for Western investment to develop his oil fields that he abandoned his nuclear program in 2003, ended his support for terrorist groups, agreed to a settlement on the Pan Am bombing, and in 2007 freed a group of Bulgarian nurses spuriously charged with spreading HIV among Libyan hospital patients. In each case, the West used the stick of sanctions and isolation and the carrot of closer economic and diplomatic ties to influence Libyan behavior.