MAKING THE UNIPOLAR MOMENT by Hal Brands

Author:Hal Brands
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS
Published: 2016-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

The Travails of Counterterrorism

The issues posed by Middle Eastern terrorism proved no less troublesome. Taking office in the wake of the Iran hostage crisis, Reagan had staked out a forward position on that threat from day one. With the dangers from extremists and their state sponsors metastasizing, he argued, it was imperative to stand firm and act assertively—to refuse to be coerced or extorted, to hinder terrorists’ operations whenever possible, and to strike back powerfully when attacks did occur. “Let terrorists be aware,” Reagan warned in January 1981, “that when the rules of international behavior are violated, our policy will be one of swift and effective retribution.” “We are determined,” he added two weeks later, “to wage an effective fight against terrorism.”90 As the decade unfolded, however, U.S. officials would continually struggle to gain the initiative in this fight, and mastery of the terrorist challenge remained frustratingly elusive.

Those frustrations began to manifest quite early, via the confrontation with Qaddafi’s Libya. If Iran was viewed as the very epitome of a terrorist state by U.S. policymakers, Qaddafi’s regime was a strong challenger for the title. Driven by eclectic influences including Islamist ideology, pan-Arabism, and anti-imperialism, the Libyan leader had established himself as a leading Middle Eastern radical and bitter opponent of U.S. influence. His regime made major purchases of Soviet arms, sought to deny the U.S. Navy and other maritime traffic access to international waters in the Gulf of Sidra, and destabilized moderate or pro-Western governments across the region. These initiatives, in turn, were underwritten by support for myriad terrorist groups, which offered a low-cost, plausibly deniable means of punishing Qaddafi’s enemies and waging his militant agenda abroad. By 1981, Libyans or Libyan-supported extremists had murdered anti-Qaddafi dissidents in Europe and America, targeted Saudi royals and other U.S. allies for assassination, and pursued violent subversion in countries such as Chad, Egypt, and Sudan. “Libya under Qadhafi is a significant threat to U.S. interests throughout the Middle East/African region and, in the broader sense, to our concept of an international order,” Haig wrote.91

Within months of taking power, the administration was developing a multi-pronged campaign to contain the threat. Reagan ordered the closing of the Libyan People’s Bureau (embassy) in Washington, allegedly a hub for terrorists seeking to operate on U.S. soil. The administration also gave covert and overt military support to anti-Qaddafi leaders in neighboring countries, to bolster them while increasing the strains on Tripoli.92 Most dramatically, the Navy conducted aggressive Freedom of Navigation exercises in the Gulf of Sidra, to show that the United States would not be intimidated by Qaddafi’s threats, and that it possessed its own powerful tools of deterrence and coercion. This approach, Haig said, “will be helpful . . . to show that we are ‘putting screws’ on Qadhafi.”93 When Libya interfered with the exercises, naval aviators downed two of Qaddafi’s Soviet-made jets. The United States, Reagan reiterated, would use its power energetically, to throw Qaddafi off balance and show that terrorist activities carried a price. He did “not want Colonel Qadhafi dead but just confined,” the president remarked.

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