Reinterpreting Libya's WMD Turnaround – Bridging the Carrot-Coercion Divide

The dominant explanations of Libya's nuclear reversal in 2003 privilege either coercion or carrots treating these instruments as alternatives. Indoing so they ignore that it took a combination of coercion, carrots and confidence-building to turn Libya around. This article demonstrates this by developing and deploying a theoretical framework that integrates these three instruments into a more coherent and convincing explanation of the case. It highlights that analysts and policy-makers would do well to focus more on how different policy tools can be used in combination to achieve desired outcomes than on how individual tools can be employed with decisive effects. It also demonstrates that the Libya success will be hard to replicate.