Who'll Fill Void If Gadhafi Falls? U.S. Wishes It Knew
The big question swirling around Washington is who or what will fill the void. The United States only renewed ties with Libya a few years ago — and it is scrambling to identify the next power broker there.
When the authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt crumbled under the weight of widespread protests, the U.S. could take some comfort in knowing — and having contact with — the people and institutions that would fill in temporarily.
Libya is a whole different situation. Relations between Washington and the Gadhafi regime have been turbulent over the decades, says Frederic Wehrey, a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation who recently returned from Libya.
"You have to remember that relations began really in early 2009 with the opening of the embassy, and they've been quite incremental since then," Wehrey says. "And much of the evolution of the relationship has been ... held hostage to Gadhafi's whims."
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Wehrey says for the past four decades, Libya has been an incredibly centralized state — all decisions had to run through Gadhafi. That made it difficult for the United States to get a sense of whom to engage beyond Gadhafi.
Diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks showed that U.S. embassy staff in Tripoli were only beginning to get a grasp of Libya's key players and their allegiances, says Dirk Vandewalle, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth and the author of A History of Modern Libya.
Vandewalle says this has hampered U.S. efforts to identify who may emerge as the next leader.
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