Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-1990

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

Political Science

Major Professor

Robert Peterson

Committee Members

Robert Cunningham, Vernon Iredell

Abstract

On April 14, 1986, U.S. warplanes bombed a number of "terrorist facilities" in Libya, including the headquarters of Libyan's revolutionary leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi, in retaliation against Libya's alleged sponsoring of international terrorism. Since then, a significant number of studies have sought to uncover the true motives behind the decision to bomb Libya. Few, however, have attempted to link the decision making process leading to the raid to its broader political context, the Reagan administration's proactive counterterrorism policy. Similarly, little attention has been paid to the question of why the planning of the Libyan raid could occur simultaneously with the U.S.-Iranian arms-for-hostages negotiations and the Iran Contra affair. This study develops a competitive analytic frame to generate alternative explanations of what determined the decision making process leading to the bombing of Tripoli. Two analytic approaches are used, the bureaucratic politics model and the psychological approach. Both are used to develop four major determinants of the decision making process to bomb Libya: The first two consist of the development and bureaucratic coordination of the U.S. counterterrorism strategy and President Reagan's management of the National Security Council system. The latter two are direct determinants of the decision. One focuses on the role of intelligence and assessment that were used to justify the raid, in particular, the assessment of the Rome and Vienna airport massacres in December 1985 and the La Belle disco bombing in West Berlin in April 1986. The other examines the military planning of the raid, specifically the question of how the political objective of punishing a state-sponsor of international terrorism was translated into military objectives. The study draws on literature on theories of foreign policy analysis and decision making related to both paradigms and more recent publications on international terrorism, and the U.S. counterterrorism strategy in the 1980s. Additional information was gathered primarily through first-hand accounts and biographical information. Thus, a large number of articles and newspaper accounts were also used to put a lot of different information into a systematic context. The decision to bomb Libya, like the U.S.-Iranian arms-for-hostages negotiations, was not a one-time issue. It was a product of a policy making system characterized by the lack of management and bureaucratic coordination, and a highly competitive NSC-led policy planning group. It was also the result of a conceptually flawed counterterrorism strategy. The common interpretations of the Libyan raid as a disguised assassination plot or the justified use of military force to punish governments for supporting terrorism are based on a narrow ideological outlook and mostly unsystematic analytic methods. A competitive explanation links important aspects of the policy planning and decision making process to the decision; among them are Reagan's detached management style and personal conception of presidential responsibilities with regard to decision making, the inability of the major U.S. departments and agencies to exercise lead responsibility, and the control and channeling of relevant intelligence in support of existing policies. The analytic frame as well as the determinants for policy planning and decision making within the Reagan administration that are developed in this study go beyond the explanation of the decision to bomb Tripoli. They are designed to explain related foreign policy issues, such as the U.S. arms-for-hostages negotiations, and the Iran-Contra affair.

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