Libya vs. Kosovo: the Rationale of War

Doctrines are the province of ideologues and starry-eyed optimists. They’re grand, sweeping statements that inevitably and immediately beg to be broken.  Truman ‘s was “to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation.” And then there’s Kennedy, who was willing to “pay any price, bear any burden… to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Lovely words, great quotes.  But that’s all they are. No president has the resources, the political capital, or the ability to tackle every injustice going on in the world. They all have to pick their battles.  I mean, did Kennedy remove all the dictators from the world? Not exactly. I’m glad he supports liberty. Cool. He’s the President of the United States, after all. But that part about bearing any burden and paying any price just rings false. (Maybe people in the 60s hadn’t developed cynicism yet.)

It seems to me that Obama’s only problem here is that he was too honest. No, he doesn’t have a doctrine, because you can’t create very many useful guidelines for all the possible parameters of war. And making statements like Truman’s and Kennedy’s just makes everyone critical later when you can’t follow through on them. What Obama did instead was take into consideration three things: level of international support for the mission, need for humanitarian assistance, and level of threat to American values/interests. Having looked at all that, he determined that it was imperative we act in Libya. To me, these seem like the major things one would always have to weigh. (other than in the instance of a direct attack on us or a pressing national security thing. Those are more straightforward.)  It’s not a doctrine; it’s a careful examining of the situation and the key factors that make it up.

In addition to a careful examination of the present factors at play, presidential decision-making is also influenced by past foreign policy events. Obama made reference to “avoiding another Iraq,” and Clinton pressed for action to “prevent a situation like the one in Bosnia.” Past failures seem to rest heavily in decision-making, as leaders attempt to avoid the mistakes of the past.

Obama and Clinton, in addition to both being ‘doctrine free’, had a lot of similarities in the speeches they gave. Both noted their international mandates and broad coalitions of support. Both rested the need for action on humanitarian grounds- brutal dictators harming defenseless civilians. Both stressed the effect turmoil in this country would have in surrounding nations. In Obama’s case it was the “peaceful but fragile” transitions going on in Egypt and Tunisia, and in Clinton’s it was the newly independent eastern European democracies.  They did differ slightly on this argument: Clinton took it further, saying that the US needed to act now, so that they wouldn’t have to act to stop a much wider, worse conflict in the future. Clinton framed his argument as “action as a preventative measure.” Obama, on the other hand, admitted that our national security interests were not directly at stake. Rather, in allowing the situation in Libya to continue, it would be our values that were at stake.

So, to conclude. Since there’s no Obama or Clinton doctrine, it’s not easy to tell how they’d react to specific situations. Would the international community support their action? Because not being seen as the world’s sole policeman is important to both of them. Would direct US interests be at stake? I.E. Does this nation pose an imminent threat to the US? Is this nation harming American citizens in some fashion that calls for military action? Can we afford it/ do we have the resources for it? This is the major kicker, here. There may be conflicts in ten middle eastern countries right now, but we’ve still got troops who are pretty busy in Iraq and Afghanistan (and probably in Pakistan.) We don’t simply have the ability to go try and overthrow every world leader that we think is bad for his country. *shrug * Sorry guys, but I’m not really interested in pretending to moral high ground b.s. I don’t want us to sit idly by while tragedy occurs, but I don’t want us to bankrupt our country in a futile attempt to fix the world. (also, I still want our military budget to be MUCH SMALLER. But that’s another argument) And I think Obama agrees with me. He said in his speech that the well-being of the American people needs to be our north star, our guidance in what to do in cases like this. And well, he’s right. That’s how nation states work. They protect their own people, get their own houses in order first, and then they do what they can with the bounty they’ve been given.

Edit: final thought. I do think that obama as a president is willing to be bolder in acting internationally than Clinton was, but I don’t have a good explanation for that. Maybe just all the practice he already got with running two wars in the middle east? But, as he pointed out, it took Clinton over a year to act in Kosovo. The international community came together over Libya in a month.