The Power of Carrots

Today's New York Times has an interesting article titled, "In U.S.-Libya Nuclear Deal, A Qaddafi Threat Faded Away". In it, David Sanger explains how a 2003 nuclear disarmament agreement with the Libyan strongman and his son has removed a risk factor in the current upheavals:

Today, with father and son preparing for a siege of Tripoli, the success of a joint American-British effort to eliminate Libya’s capability to make nuclear and chemical weapons has never, in retrospect, looked more important.

Senior administration officials and Pentagon planners, as they discuss sanctions and a possible no-fly zone to neutralize the Libyan air force, say that the 2003 deal removed Colonel Qaddafi’s biggest trump card: the threat of using a nuclear weapon, or even just selling nuclear material or technology, if he believed it was the only way to save his 42-year rule.

How and why was a deal reached? The Times makes a hint in an earlier paragraph when it describes a 2009 dispute about its execution:

Meeting with the American ambassador, Gene A. Kretz, the younger Qaddafi complained that the United States had retained “an embargo on the purchase of lethal equipment” even though Libya had turned over more than $100 million in bomb-making technology in 2003. Libya was “fed up,” he told Mr. Kretz, at Washington’s slowness in doling out rewards for Libya’s cooperation, according to cables released by WikiLeaks. 

Was Libya only in it for the "rewards" from Washington? The Times reiterates that argument a few paragraphs later when explaining Qadaffi's regrets upon giving up his nuclear program:

But Colonel Qadaffi appeared to sense that loss of leverage over the last two years. The cables indicate a last-minute effort to hold on to the remnants of the program, less to assure his regime’s survival than to have some bargaining chips to get the weapons and aid that Colonel. Qaddafi and his son insisted they were promised. 

Again, was it still only about receiving aid from the U.S.? And, why did the deal happen in 2003? Why not five years earlier, or five years later? The Times takes another shot at explaining it:

In an interview with The New York Times and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for a documentary, “Nuclear Jihad,” Seif Qadaffi complained that the West never followed through on many of its promises.

By 2009, when the Qaddafis were refusing to turn over the remaining highly enriched uranium, he said the decision to give up the weapons had been “contingent on ‘compensation’ from the U.S. including the purchase of conventional weapons and nonconventional military equipment,” a cable in late 2009 reported to the Obama administration.

Compensation? Was it only carrots (and not sticks) that got Libya to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons? Qadaffi gave up his weapons program 10 days after the capture of Saddam Hussein. Was that a factor? The Times won't say. Saddam is never mentioned in the piece, and the only appearance of the word "Iraq" is cryptic:

“Imagine the possible nightmare if we had failed to remove the Libyan nuclear weapons program and their longer range missile force,” said Robert Joseph, who played a central role in organizing the effort in 2003, in the months just after the invasion of Iraq. 

Were the two events connected? That is the most the Times will say about it.