The Absolutely Crazy Notion That the US Should Intervene Militarily in Libya Posted by Michael Cohen

I was just saying to a friend yesterday that it seems like American politicians have never truly learned the lessons of the Iraq war - one of which clearly is that when the US intervenes militarily it breeds often dangerous and unexpected consequences. Remember how we were going to be greeted as liberators in Baghdad and would have troops home in six months?

Yet, right on cue there are, according to the Times, growing calls in Washington for US military intervention to stop the civil war in Libya; and shockingly it's coming from two of the same people who led us down the primrose path in Iraq - John McCain and Joe Lieberman.

I for one am shocked, shocked to see that John McCain and Joe Lieberman think we should be military intervening in Libya, but how about John Kerry who apparently is pushing the White House to do more including “cratering Libya’s airfields so the planes cannot take off." According to the Times, Kerry is "openly siding with officials who want the president to take a stronger public stance, said he was pushing the administration to 'prepare for all eventualities' and warned that 'showing reticence in a huge public way is not the best option.'"

Forgive me for saying this because I actually like John Kerry and think he's been an excellent Foreign Relations Committee Chair . . . but this is sheer insanity. If the past ten years should have taught us anything it is that "showing reticence" should be considered an positive attribute - and preferable to attacking, invading and occupying yet another Muslim country. As Greg Scoblete smartly notes nowhere in Kerry's statement (or McCain and Lieberman's for that matter) are US national interests even actually mentioned. 

And to Kerry's suggestion or to those who are calling for a no-fly zone over Libya, let's say that somehow after the US or NATO takes out all of the Libyan air defenses (and suffers no downed planes in the process) and as a result the Libyan's stop using their aircraft to attack the rebels - then what? If Gadaffi is not cowed and the civil war continues do we then have to send in ground troops so in the words of Kerry we don't look "defensive" or "feckless?" Does it really need be mentioned again that once the US gets involved in these type of interventions it can be awfully difficult and expensive to get out of them. 

This is not to say that the US should never intervene militarily in times of humanitarian crisis (after all we have treaty obligations that force us to do so in some cases); and it's not to say that the US should fail to give its blessing to an Arab League coalition or even an ad hoc coalition that wanted to get involved. 

But what is most problematic here is that anyone, particularly John Kerry, is focusing on how the US will "look" if we don't intervene militarily. Whenever there is an international crisis, be it Egypt, Iran or a few years ago Burma it seems voices are raised in Washington demanding that we "do something." It doesn't matter if US interests are tangential to the crisis or that doing "something" is not much of an option - the US is a global leader, we have global interests and thus we must respond (or so the argument goes).

But imagine having a political debate around foreign policy where restraint and modesty in the use of military force are traits not to be disparaged, but admired. Imagine a foreign policy where the first consideration of US policymakers is protecting US interests rather than signalling "strength" in our foreign policy decision-making. Imagine a foreign policy where we exhaust all diplomatic and political solutions to security issues before even contemplating the use of force.

I know, I know it's a crazy notion . . . but a boy can dream.

Comments

[Gulliver]

I agree with the thrust of your argument, but I think you're off track in suggesting that proponents of intervention fail to consider U.S. national interests -- they simply perceive them in a different way than you do. There's an argument that can be made about the centrality of credibility to our interests, though in this case I don't find it compelling (and I think the bar ought to be high on the credibility argument in all cases).

[Greg Sanders]

I wonder if constraints are actually both a bug and a feature of multilateral coalitions. They might prevent effective action, but they also make it less likely that a country will escalate if a lower level of intervention fails to succeed.

[Taylor Wray]

"Whenever there is an international crisis, be it Egypt, Iran or a few years ago Burma it seems voices are raised in Washington demanding that we "do something." It doesn't matter if US interests are tangential to the crisis or that doing "something" is not much of an option - the US is a global leader, we have global interests and thus we must respond (or so the argument goes)."

Excellent encapsulation of one of our most basic (and wrongheaded) foreign policy assumptions in this country. As usual, you perfectly express my gut reaction to the increasing volume of saber-rattling happening in D.C. and other western capitals. When did our government become the United States of Libya? If the Libyans want a new government, they can damn well revolt and install one.

IT IS NOT OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO MAKE THE REST OF THE WORLD FREE AND HAPPY LIKE US.

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