Source: all-breaking-news.com
In laying out his justification for the American-led assault on Libya on Monday night, the president offered the most detailed portrait of when he might commit the countrys military might in a tumultuous world. He would take action, he said, if vital national security interests were at stake. He would consider it if economic interests were threatened, or if there was a humanitarian crisis so deep it could not be ignored. But in those two instances, he would hesitate unless there was international participation, and the cost was not too high. But these conditions seemed tailor made for Libya, and the president seemed to provide little guidance for what position he would take in other, more vital nations in the region now roiled by an Arab Spring of popular uprising. Nor did Mr. Obamas speech on Monday shed light on whether the president would use force in other trouble spots. If there were ever a speech more dedicated to eliminating the idea of a doctrine, this was it, said David J. Rothkopf, the author of Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power. He basically said, We have American values and theyre going to define us, and were going to stick to them provided its not too hard to do so. Some of Mr. Obamas advisers have said he has studiously avoided turning Libya into a case study for his view of foreign policy, given that it is not vital to American interests in the region and that his administration is trying to play down the United States role in what they hope will be a NATO-led mission. To their minds, the limited use of air power in Libya does not call for an inspiring or sweeping statement of the role of governmental power. The Libya standard may not apply to the rest of the world. In fact, Mr. Obamas description of his criteria for military intervention offers little hint of what he might do in Ivory Coast, for example, where the United Nations says at least 700,000 people have fled their homes in Abidjan to escape daily gunfire spurred by Laurent Gbagbos efforts to stay in power after losing a presidential election in November, and where 10,000 civilians were holed up in a Catholic mission in one town, seeking refuge from Mr. Gbagbos forces. Nor does it easily apply to Darfur, where the Sudanese government is defying a United Nations Security Council resolution by bombing rebels, and where the United Nations estimates that at least 300,000 people have died in a humanitarian crisis sparked by a counterinsurgency campaign that began in 2003. As for the rest of the Middle East, White House officials say the president will respond to the unfolding events on a country-by-country basis, and will resist a one-size-fits-all American policy. One administration official argued that Libya was different from Ivory Coast because, he said, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, had threatened to hunt down civilians in Benghazi in their homes. Mr. Obama alluded to that in his speech, when he compared Benghazi to Charlotte, N. C., a city of a similar size, with a population of 700,000. In the cases where America did act, Mr. Obama had a number of caveats. He said that the burden of action should not be Americas alone that there needed to be a multilateral partnership and that regime change should not be the task of the United States military. To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq, the president said, in a swipe at his predecessor, President George W. Bush. Not that he spared President Bill Clinton, either. Mr. Obama never used the word Rwanda, where genocide took the lives of one million people during the Clinton administration. But he invoked it indirectly. As president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action, he said. In a 28-minute speech, Mr. Obama, a reluctant commander in chief who campaigned against the war in Iraq and set his primary agenda as creating jobs and passing the health care overhaul, staked out a vexing middle ground. If anything, some analysts said, it revealed a deeply pragmatic president, one less ideological than some predecessors, and more likely to balance many issues, including budgets and an analysis of American interests. There is no Obama doctrine because the president is not doctrinaire, said Robert S. Litwak, vice president for programs at the Woodrow Wilson Center. In Libya, he is grappling with persisting tensions in U.S. foreign policy that can be managed but not resolved between mulitilateralism and unilateralism and in confronting a humanitarian challenge rooted in the character of the Qaddafi regime, which is seeking international cover behind the principle of state sovereignty. Although the presidents address was not viewed as enunciating a true, new doctrine, it no doubt benefited military commanders and military planners to hear Mr. Obamas detailed discussion of when, how and for what interests he would invest the lives of their troops. It was a reasonable speech expressing clear direction and guidance to the Department of Defense and to the various commands involved, but it was not an over-arching recalibration of national military strategy, said Adm. Timothy J. Keating, who retired after serving as the senior officer overseeing two of the militarys combatant headquarters, Pacific Command and Northern Command. Gary Hart, the former Democratic senator from Colorado, described Libya as the face of 21st century conflict, and argued that the violence there proved it was time for Mr. Obama to enunciate a set of strategic principles. In the wake of Libya, now would be a very good time for President Obama to announce an Obama doctrine, similar to the Truman Doctrine of 1947, that lays out the terms and conditions under which the U.S. will use its military power, Mr. Hart said in an e-mail. We cannot simply respond in ad hoc fashion to these local and regional crises. A set of principles for intervention would give the American people and our allies a sense of purpose and context for our actions."
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