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Tag: multilateral

Obama’s Much-Mocked “Lead From Behind” Approach to Libya Worked

Obama’s decision to intervene in Libya without launching a full-scale attack perplexed Republicans, who first accused him of being too willing to involve the U.S. in an unnecessary war and then accused him of being too willing to let other countries take the lead in supporting the Libyan rebels. Obama dismissed the criticism, confident that his plan to “lead from behind” by quietly contributing American air support to a NATO coalition could succeed. The Libyan rebels’ recent success shows that his strategy worked, and the Republicans’ baseless criticism missed the point.

The Republicans viewed the United States’ participation in a coalition led by NATO troops as disrespectful to American exceptionalism — the idea that America is the greatest and most powerful nation in the world, and as such has a duty to make the world more like it. Republicans quickly stereotyped him as being at best naive and at worst anti-American, for allowing other countries — especially European countries — to lead the NATO operation supporting Libyan rebels.

“In the past,” Romney explained to a conservative radio host, “America has been feared sometimes, has been respected, but today, that America is seen as being weak.” The sign of America’s weakness? “We’re following the French into Libya.” Romney goes on to say that while he French involvement, “but I think we look to America to be the leader of the world.”

Romney’s fellow Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann expressed a similar view. Like Romney, she seemed almost offended that the United States worked with other countries instead of just telling them what to do. “We are the head,” she argued in a New Hampshire presidential debate, “we are not the tail. The president was wrong. All we have to know is the president deferred leadership to France.”

The fact that France was leading the coalition while the United States was a mere member embarrassed conservatives. They do not want true international cooperation, but a “coalition of the willing” in which the U.S. does whatever it wants and orders countries follow. Romney, for one, could not understand how Obama could both want Gadhafi gone and be willing to defer to international institutions. The president, he said, “calls for the removal of Moammar Gadhafi but then conditions our action on the directions we get from the Arab League and United Nations.” He saw no reason to take direction from international institutions unless they would rubber stamp everything the U.S. did.

The chief concern of Republicans was that the United States, by refusing to directly intervene in Libya or take control of the NATO coalition, would inevitably face defeat. Of course, that’s not what happened. Even though the U.S. stuck to its limited support role, Libyan rebels successfully drove Gadhafi from power. But that has not stopped Republican critics from attacking the president. Presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently released a statement arguing that “ridding the world of the likes of Gadhafi is a good thing, but this indecisive President had little to do with this triumph.”

Now that Republicans’ fears that Obama’s approach to Libya will result have defeat have been disproven, they’ve begun arguing that the war could have been over much faster if Obama had intervened more aggressively in Libya. But this misses a key advantage of Obama’s “lead from behind” strategy: legitimacy, Because the intervention was supported by the Arab League and the U.N., and the U.S. did not insist on leading the rebels, the rebels’ cause seems genuine. Had the U.S. insisted on leading the rebels, Gadhafi and his allies could easily have characterized them as American pawns who did not care about Libya. As Anne Applebaum explains:

The rebels who just marched into Tripoli and waved at Al-Jazeera’s cameras looked like a Libyan force, not a Western one — because they were. The images of them stomping on Gaddafi’s photograph looked a lot more authentic, and will play better in Libya and across the Arab world, than did the images of Marines pulling down a statue of Saddam Hussein in 2003, an American flag draped over his head.

Republicans might believe that the Arab dictators can only be deposed through excessive American military force, but Obama has demonstrated in Libya that there is a better way. The United States can support freedom-minded rebels without turning their struggle into an American war. Republicans who think “leading from behind” is weak don’t appreciate its real power.

The Continuing Success Of The Obama Doctrine

As Moammar Gadhafi’s regime takes its last gasps in Libya, the Obama Administration is close to celebrating its third major foreign policy victory this year. In February, the United States’ refusal to support Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak greatly contributed to his downfall. In May, Navy SEALs crossed the Pakistani border on direct orders from the President and killed Osama bin Laden. In August, Gadhafi is finally being removed from power thanks to the efforts of a multilateral coalition in which the United States played a pivotal role. The Obama Administration’s foreign policy doctrine, which has linked these three successes together, is a radical and successful diversion from that of George W. Bush, even if some vestiges of that era — like the prison at Guantanamo Bay — remain.

According to Deputy National Security Advisor for Communications Ben Rhodes, the mission in Libya reflects the Obama Administration’s preference for a “multilateral and light-footed approach to regime change.” In an interview with Foreign Policy, Rhodes stated that the Administration believes that “it’s far more legitimate and effective for regime change to be pursued by an indigenous political movement than by the United States or foreign powers.” Rhodes also highlighted the importance of multilateralism, which ensured that “the U.S. wasn’t bearing the brunt of the burden” in Libya.

Foreign policy expert Joe Cirincione expanded on these comments, coming up with this explanation for Obama’s foreign policy:

“The Obama Doctrine is one guided by universal compliance with democratic norms and the rule of law; policies driven by the convergence of shared interests and responsibilities; and a statecraft that does not shirk from the application of military force when necessary but promotes America’s interests, with respect for other nations and the strength of joint enterprise.”

This doctrine was well reflected by the successful missions in Libya, Egypt, and Pakistan. The United States’ actions in Libya were legitimized internationally by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 and the support of the Arab League, and the Americans relied on burden-sharing within the NATO coalition. In Egypt, the U.S. refused to intervene directly, leaving the revolution in the hands of Egypt’s indigenous political movement. In Pakistan, when the use of military force was necessary to promote America’s interests, President Obama did not hesitate to deploy Navy SEALs to kill bin Laden.

The end result has been a great success. Moammar Gadhafi, who has brutally repressed his own people while supporting terrorist groups around the world, has finally been deposed after 40 years. Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship is in the process of being replaced by a government that reflects the will of the Egyptian people — or at least we hope so. America’s public enemy No. 1 has finally been killed, dealing a crippling blow to Al-Qaeda. Not a single American soldier has been killed in these missions. The effort in Libya cost the United States around $1 billion (compared to trillions in initial spending and long-term obligations from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars) and our involvement in Egypt and Pakistan cost significantly less. The only question left is, can the United States do it again?

Fareed Zakaria argues that they can, and that the liberation of Libya represents the dawn of a new era in U.S. foreign policy.

“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.”

Rhodes largely agrees with Zakaria; although he doesn’t believe that the United States can apply the exact same approach that it took in Libya to intervention in other countries, he stressed that the two principles of burden-sharing and relying on local forces would be “characteristics of how the President approaches foreign policy and military intervention” in the future.

As the United States begins to ramp up pressure on Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to step down, it will be interesting to see whether it again tries to “lead from behind,” convincing its allies to join in supporting the revolutionaries. No matter what happens there, however, President Obama has had a wildly successful 2011 in the international sphere. It is a bright spot in a presidency so dominated by bad economic news.