Libya's Col. Moammar Gadhafi, whose regime had armed and funded Mr. Taylor, called it an "immoral act" and warned that "every head of state could meet a similar fate."

When Nigeria delivered exiled Liberian leader Charles Taylor to an international court in 2006, Libya's Col. Moammar Gadhafi, whose regime had armed and funded Mr. Taylor, called it an "immoral act" and warned that "every head of state could meet a similar fate."


Now that the International Criminal Court has opened an investigation into Col. Gadhafi himself, such fears may well be a reason why the Libyan leader has chosen to battle his own people instead of seeking exile like Mr. Taylor or Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the former Tunisian president now residing in Saudi Arabia.

Col. Gadhafi's behavior illustrates a thorny moral dilemma: An international drive to ensure ousted dictators answer for their crimes may, perversely, end up prolonging their rule—and extract a heavy toll in human lives.

"The very real fear that Gadhafi & Co. effectively may have no place to go outside Libya where they would be safe from pursuit…provides a compelling incentive to fight on," explains Wayne White, a scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington and a former State Department intelligence official.

For the international community, the dilemma has often amounted to a trade-off between conflict resolution and justice. In recent years, though, the arc of history has leaned toward justice, no matter the consequences.

In 1986, the U.S. convinced Haiti's Jean-Claude Duvalier to depart as he faced an uprising. "We were able to say, 'the only way you can stay is if you kill a lot of people. Wouldn't your life be better if you went to France instead?' And he did," recalled Elliott Abrams, who was assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs in the 1980s.

In South Africa, in the early 1990s, the choice was made to give amnesty for apartheid-era atrocities to those who confessed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission—ensuring a democratic transition.