WI: Libya Joins the Warsaw Pact, 1987

In a May 1987 interview with NBC, the Colonel of Many Spellings threatened that if the U.S. struck Libya again he would declare Libya a communist nation and apply for Warsaw Pact membership. He went further to say that he would offer the USSR a port at Tobruk and allow the deployment of Soviet nuclear weapons within Libya.

Obviously nothing of the sort happened, but what if it had? Let's say that US and Libyan ships get into another scrape-up in the Med circa August '87 and Libya attempts to join the Warsaw Pact.

Would Moscow really be willing to hitch it's cart to Gadhafi and risk World War 3 for someone so willing to provoke the Americans - especially at a time where Gorbachev is trying to improve US-USSR relations? Would the Soviets be willing to take the PR loss that not defending a fellow communist nation begging for aid against the American imperialists would incur?

Would the facilities and privileges Gadhafi is offering them be sufficient to make up for any concerns of upsetting the US?
 
This scenario would be like the US making making apartheid South Africa a member of NATO during the worst of that country's battles with the front-line states and the township comrades.

In other words, no, not gonna happen. Though it would confirm the worldview of certain far-right journalists of the time, who, among other things, ran political cartoons portraying Gadhaffi as a ventriloquist's dummy controlled by Gorbachev.
 
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