United States: A Chance for Improvement?

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Libyan-American relations have always been contentious. After a period of good relations following American support for Libyan independence in 1951 and the short monarchical period, since the 1970s, belligerent confrontations and periods of strong tension have characterized this relationship with the regime of Gaddafi. In 1986, the U.S. President Ronald Reagan ordered a series of airstrikes on Tripoli and Benghazi that led to more than 40 casualties. The strikes were in retaliation to a bombing that occurred at a West Berlin discotheque, a frequently attended nightclub by U.S. soldiers, which the U.S. accused Libya of orchestrating. The situation further deteriorated during the later part of the 1980s, when Pan Am Flight 103, a transatlantic flight from London to New York, was bombed mid-air. Relations grew more strained as, what is known as the Lockerbie bombing, which left 270 dead, became the subject of an international investigation led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Subsequently, after the FBI found Libya to be the main culprit behind the Pan Am Flight attack, the U.S. placed Libya under heavy sanctions through the United Nations Security Council, a move which set the two countries at even greater odds. These violent outbursts laid the foundation for fraught relations between the two countries for the following ten years at least.

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