The Obama Foreign Policy

Lost in all the economic talk is that Obama has been exceptionally successful in the foreign policy arena - something that most Presidents struggle with early on simply because it's a whole new world. Beyond the fact that the exact strategy the GOP criticized - Obama putting people on the ground in Pakistan without Pakistani approval - was what got OBL, Libya now stands as a crowning achievement for him - and possibly the template for the Obama Doctrine:

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/23/a-new-era-in-u-s-foreign-policy/?hpt=hp_c1

A new era in U.S. foreign policy


Back in March, many neoconservatives in Washington were extremely dismissive of the way President Obama was handling the intervention in Libya. They argued that he was doing too little and acting too late – that his approach was too multilateral and lacked cohesiveness. They continuously criticized President Obama for, in the words of an anonymous White House advisor, "leading from behind."

But now that these critics are confronted with the success of the Libya operation, they are changing their tune and claiming paternity of the operation. They are further arguing that if their advice had been heeded, the intervention in Libya would have been swifter and even more successful. But the Libya intervention is so significant precisely because it did not follow the traditional pattern of U.S.-led interventions. Indeed, it launched a new era in U.S. foreign policy.

The United States decided that it was only going to intervene in Libya if it could establish several conditions:

1) A local group that was willing to fight and die for change; in other words, "indigenous capacity".

2) Locally recognized legitimacy in the form of the Arab League's request for intervention.

3) International legitimacy in the form of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973.

4) Genuine burden sharing with the British and French spelling out precisely how many sorties they would be willing to man and precisely what level of commitment they would be willing to provide.

It was only when all those conditions were fulfilled that the Obama Administration agreed to play a pivotal but supporting role in the Libya operation.

It is important to emphasize that even though it was a "supporting role," the U.S. was indispensable to the operation. Nobody else could have eliminated Gadhafi's air defenses – and, effectively, his air force - within three days. Without America, the operation in Libya could not have taken place. But the U.S. was also "supporting" in the sense that after these initial strikes, it moved into the background and asked its NATO partners to do the heavy lifting. Thereafter, the U.S. intervened only when it felt it needed to. All of this suggests a very different model for intervention, which I believe is a vast improvement over the old, expansive and expensive model.

The new model does two things:

First, it ensures that there's genuinely a local alliance committed to the same goals as the external coalition. This way, there is more legitimacy on the ground. And if there is anything Afghanistan and Iraq have taught us, it is that local legitimacy is key.

Second, this model ensures that there is genuine burden sharing so that the United States is not left owning the country as has happened so often in the past.

Compared to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Libya operation was a bargain. It cost the U.S. about $1 billion. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan collectively cost the U.S. $1.3 trillion. In other words, success in Libya could be achieved at less than one-tenth of one percent of the cost of the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's not a bad model for the future.

Now there are critics of this approach on both the right and left. Some on the left – the great liberal internationalists – are horrified by the fact that people in Benghazi cheered for French President Nicolas Sarkozy. They think only President Obama's name should be on the lips of the liberated Libyans.But there is actually nothing wrong with a world in which the Europeans are also associated with the cause of freedom and liberty. It means that they will also be more willing to bear some of the burdens and pay some of the costs of intervention. And it means they are more likely to be involved in the difficult process of reconstruction.

The old model of American leadership - where we took all the decisions, bore all the burdens, paid all the costs and took all the glory – has to change. People in Washington are going to have to realize that when other countries step up to the plate, they too will naturally get some share of credit. It's more important that Libya be saved than that Washington is seen as the sole savior.

In the future, we will again have to follow this limited model of intervention. The United States is not going to have the kind of defense budget nor the national will to engage in a series of major military operations in countries that are, frankly, not vital to our national interests. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was very clear and he was right: Libya is not vital to our national interest. The point, however, was that the Libyan revolution was an important event in the context of the Arab Spring and that if we could be helpful, it would be of great benefit to Libya and to America.

The question before Libya was: Could such interventions be successful while keeping costs under control - both human and financial.

Today's answer is: Yes.

 

Agreed - he seems to have a much better grasp on foreign policy than he does on connecting with people on the economics. He's going to have to change that quickly if he wants to win against a Romney type in 2012.

 

Agreed - but Obama's economy is much worse than Bush's (which was a pretty minor recession). If people view Obama as disconnected from their problems, then the challenger really just has to pass the threshold of "not crazy" more so than "I love him". Clinton got the latter, which made things that much easier and helped against Bush's "war hero" status. I'll be curious to see both if Obama can improve his image and if Romney can present himself as not-crazy. And then the other question, which addresses your point more directly, what happens if both candidates seem disconnected from people's problems?

 

I don't think anyone is saying this will turn out perfectly - no one can know that for years or decades. But it does create a template for how to effectively intervene in a foreign situation: get international support, get local support, support an in-country commitment rather than intervening directly, etc.

The point is that not that everything is perfect. But it's that the west was able to intervene in such a way that created conditions ideal for a country to stand on its own two feet, without the extensive cost in $$ or lives of other interventions. Whether Libya succeeds from here is up to the people of Libya - but that's exactly how it should be. It's not for the US to determine their future; our job was simply to give them the opportunity by helping liberate them from a dictator.

 

They've eliminated a generally unpopular dictator. The rebels seem to have the support of the people. There are no foreign troops on the ground dictating things. The "civil war" last months instead of years like you see in many cases. From what we know, the rebels haven't engaged in reprisals, mass murder, rape, etc that a lot of rebel groups do. There seem to be plenty of advance planning already in place to try to develop a Constitution and governing structure. There doesn't appear to have been looting or widespread chaos throughout the country - basic government seems to still be functioning. The core infrastructure of the country is still intact.

All of these things are GREAT - and often things that are forgotten about in these types of situations. It may not hold - and if so, that will be a failure. But the conditions are about as ideal as you can get in a situation like this. All the pieces are in place.

Iraq's not a perfect example, but compare all these things to what we did there: where we blew up the country's roads, bridges and basic infrastructure; where we didn't secure the support of the people; where it became an outside invasion creating a staunch resistance; where there was no local leadership in place; no planning for a Constitution or local governing body; tons of looting, destruction, etc; no basic security for the population; lots of revenge against Saddam's regime (killings, booting everyone from the army, etc); etc. That's an example of having all the conditions in place for failure.