In the early evening of March
28, 2011, President Barak Obama addressed the American people and the world to
explain his administration’s involvement in the international coalition that
had been implementing a no fly zone over Libya while protecting Libyan
civilians from their own ruler. He sounded much more like the first President
Bush than the second in terms of foreign policy. Similar to how the
elder Bush had restrained himself from going all the way to Baghdad after he
had joined an international coalition in removing the Iraqis from Kuwait, Obama
said that directing American troops to forcibly remove Colonel Qaddafi from
power would be a step too far, and would “splinter” the international coalition
that had imposed the no fly zone and protected civilians in rebel areas of
Libya. Interestingly, in taking the elder Bush’s route, Obama came out strongly
against that of Bush II. Referring to the alternative of extending the U.S.
mission to include regime change, Obama stated, “To be blunt, we went down that
road in Iraq . . . regime change there took eight years, thousands of American
and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can
afford to repeat in Libya.”[1]
In effect, Obama was exposing a fundamental difference between George H.W. Bush
and his son by saying essentially the same thing as the elder Bush had done
while excoriating the foreign invasion of his son. Yet Obama did not stop
there. He added a theoretical framework that the elder Bush could well have
used.
The New York Times put the theory quite well. “The
president said he was willing to act unilaterally to defend the nation and its
core interests. But in other cases, he said, when the safety of Americans is
not directly threatened but where action can be justified — in the case of
genocide, humanitarian relief, regional security or economic interests — the
United States should not act alone. His statements amounted both to a rationale
for multilateralism and another critique of what he has all along characterized
as the excessively unilateral tendencies of the George W. Bush administration.”[2]
In other words, even in providing a basic framework, Obama was able to distance
Bush the father from Bush the son. Interestingly, Obama had awarded
the senior Bush with the Metal of Freedom over a month earlier. I would be very
surprised if Obama would award Bush the Son such a prize. In terms of foreign
policy, the philosophical line in the sand clearly distinguishes the second
Bush from both his own father and Barak Obama.
Of course, the President’s
speech left his audience hanging in other respects. For instance, averting a
large-scale massacre in Libya is in the U.S. strategic or national interest
because of our humanitarian values as well as the proximity of Libya to the
nascent upheavals in Tunisia in Egypt. So would not protecting a mass protest
in Yemen, which is next to Saudi Arabia, or in Syria, which has particular
strategic interest to the U.S. on account of Syria’s connection with Lebanon
(and thus relevant for Israel) and Iran, also be in the American national
interest? The President could argue that neither Yemen (or Bahrain)
nor Syria had come to the point where the civilians in a major city were at
risk—but it could still be asked, what if? Must
there be a baleful hint of genocide in a city commensurate to the Libyan city
of Benghazi for protesters to warrant invoking principled leadership with or
without allies when a ruler has effectively lost his right to rule by having
turned on his own people?
I contend that the President
treated the U.S. strategic interest quite broadly by including the protection
of large numbers of civilians against their own ruler, particularly when even
the portent of carnage could destabilize emergent republics next door. Such interest
is broader than questions such as, how
the civilians would view the U.S. were they to gain power? and what effect would a new government have on
Iran and Israel? Such questions pertain to a narrower conception of
national interest—one that is much less of value to a country. Viewing the good
will of protesters as an opportunity—essentially taking on the wider,
humanitarian-inclusive, notion of national interest—Syria, Bahrain and Yemen
become like Libya as soon as their respective protests and prospect of
government brutality reach a certain threshold that Libya had surpassed. What
that threshold is—meaning in terms of scale as well as brutality—is something
the American Congress and President needed to decide. For had that been set,
attention could have turned to the mechanism involved in forming an
international coalition should a country cross the line.
Differing from Obama, I submit
that the establishment of a threshold can be relied up such that principled
leadership could be invoked by the U.S. even in the absence of partners at the
outset. Such unilateralism would differ appreciably from that of Bush the
Younger, whose invasion of Iraq was based on a criterion used for that one case
alone (WMD). In other words, unilateralism need not mean
capriciousness or impulsiveness. A humanitarian threshold undergirded by a
strategic interest in there being a world wherein rulers serve rather than
violently turn on their own people can justify not only international
coalitions, but also instances of principled leadership.
[2] Ibid.
