Christopher Caldwell writes in the Financial Times how Libyan thug-dictator Muammar Gaddafi has successfully used an unholy trinity of terror, petroleum and hostage-taking to blackmail the West, and predicts that Libya will win integration into the international order on its terms, not the West's. Noting how Gaddafi cut off oil shipments for two days to Switzerland to protest its trying to reign in his wayward thug-son Hannibal for committing assaults inside the country, CC concludes:
Much of the discussion of Britain’s release of Mr Megrahi has focused on non-issues, such as the erosion of the US-UK special relationship. While the US public is indeed furious over the release of Mr Megrahi, the Obama administration’s criticisms are probably pro forma. From his apologetic speech in Cairo to the Ramadan dinner he held at the White House last week, Mr Obama has placed good-faith gestures at the heart of his Middle East policy. It is almost as if he believes that the west’s tensions with the Muslim world involve an accounting of manners. We have run up a big deficit of slights, which must now be paid down with courtesies. Letting Mr Megrahi go is consistent with that. Susan Rice, America’s UN ambassador, described the US as “offended by the reception accorded to Mr Megrahi in Libya upon his return from the UK”. That is not a criticism of the Brown government.
Yet the west has a big problem with Col Gaddafi. There is a standard Gaddafi method that was visible in both the Swiss and Scottish cases. Right and wrong are put to one side, and only bargaining chips remain. After Libya’s prosecution of Bulgarian nurses in 2004 on the absurd charge of infecting local babies with the Aids virus, Col Gaddafi negotiated their return with French and other diplomats. His son, Saif al-Islam, claimed that an arms agreement was negotiated as part of the deal. The very same Saif said recently that Mr Megrahi’s release was always “on the table” whenever Libya discussed oil contracts with Britain. Revealing such details would seem to risk killing the goose that laid the golden egg. But Col Gaddafi is after something bigger than wringing money and technology out of the west. He means to sully its good name and expose its corruption, which is part of what he and his fellow officers professed to be revolting about in 1969.
In this he has succeeded. He has revealed that there are exceptions to the “norms” of international law. What is the legal principle under which Chilean generalísimos and Balkan strongmen get hauled before European courts but Col Gaddafi can travel to Italy for the G8 and to New York for the opening of the UN? He has revealed that there is impunity under Swiss law for certain playboys, that Scots nationalism is either a sign of British weakness or an avenue of diplomatic corruption, that the UK government, confronted with questions about terrorism, can go two weeks without giving a straight answer – in short, that reintegrating Libya into the international community is likely to be done on Libya’s terms.
Daily Telegraph columnist Janet Daley praises Conservative Party opposition leader David Cameron's public display of anger over the Lockerbie Affair.
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