Strategic Assessment

Over the past few months, Libya has taken final steps to return to the community of law-abiding nations and to the arena of consensus within the international community. Libya’s actions follow decades of being cast as a pariah state, primarily due to its support of international terrorism and its involvement in developing non-conventional weapons. Such an extreme and seemingly sudden reversal in the foreign policy of a “rogue” state is not a routine development in international relations. Perhaps for this reason it is a particularly encouraging indication of the possibility of putting rogue states back on the “normative” track without the use of military force, but rather by means of diplomatic activity complemented by sanctions enforced and coordinated by many countries, especially ones with international political and economic influence.