Learning the Lesson of Libya

What Bush claimed as a winning game of intimidation in Libya, was in fact, hard nosed negotiation sculpted by the British. The West offered assurances of no attempts to run Muammar Kaddafi out of the country, and he offered to support the war on terror and give up any intentions to go to WMDs. This is what Iran and North Korea have been asking for all along.
The Bush Administration can't learn from experience, they already have all the answers. It's better to look tough, even if that allows rogue regimes with nuclear bombs.
Hirsh: Newsweek

No, the real model that the Bush administration ought to be paying attention to is the British one for dealing with international rogues like Kaddafi. Rule one of this model is: if you can't destroy regimes—and we can't, not anymore, not after Iraq—then you try to turn them. You flip them. You hold your nose and negotiate, preferably from a position of strength. You have no other choice, unless you want to attack. And we really don't want to attack: even Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, faced with a rebellion from inside his own Pentagon, has been publicly skeptical about the military options in recent days. Yet the Bush administration has still not learned the lesson of its greatest diplomatic success.


[...]This uncompromising stance is still, in effect, the president's policy toward both North Korean and Iran. In both cases the administration is pretending to negotiate through proxies—through the Europeans in the case of Iran; through the Chinese in the case of North Korea—while in practice Washington is essentially issuing ultimatums as an opening bargaining position. Bush is maintaining his insistence that these regimes give up the store—agree to surrender their WMD programs—before Washington will even come to the table. In other words, the president continues to follow the old John Bolton line.


[...]No one is suggesting there will ever be an easy way out of the Iran and North Korea problems. But there is ample evidence that, for several years, both Iran and North Korea have been seeking assurances similar to what Kaddafi got before they will negotiate. Flynt Leverett, who served on Bush's National Security Council in the first term, revealed last week that the president has squandered previous openings with Tehran.

Even a snake in the grass like Kaddafi can negotiate. I suspect he may have already figured he was next on the list because he was caught red handed attempting to destabilize Saudi Arabia.
Newsweek

the Saudis concluded that in the summer of 2003 Kaddafi ordered Musa Kusa, the director of Libyan intelligence, and others “to work to destabilize Saudi Arabia and to effect the assassination of Saudi leaders, Crown Prince Abdullah being the primary target.”