Tweet
THE POWER BEHIND OBAMA'S LIBYAN INTERVENTION
Nicolaus Mills
guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/may/08/libya-middlee
Sunday 8 May 2011 18.00 BST
Critics decry his lack of a coherent 'doctrine', yet the president
proves a careful reader of Samantha Power's book on genocide
Samantha Power, now a senior executive on the National Security
Council, redefined US strategy on genocide in her 2003 Pulitzer
Prize-winning book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of
Genocide. Photograph: Stephanie Mitchell/AP
As the fighting in Libya threatens to settle into a long civil war,
President Obama's decision to intervene on behalf of Libya's rebels
has come under increasing questioning. The death of Osama bin Laden in
a firefight with American forces has bought the president more time,
and so has the call by Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
for Muammar Gaddafi to "immediately step down" as Libya's leader.
But what has not changed in recent weeks is the charge by President
Obama's critics that, in Libya, he is pursuing a feckless foreign
policy with no exit strategy in mind.
Among the president's harshest critics have been such foreign
policy liberals as Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national
security advisor, and Ann-Marie Slaughter, who earlier in the Obama
administration served as director of policy planning in the state
department.
How America's intervention in Libya will turn out is impossible to
know at the moment, but if we want to understand the thinking that
lies at the root of the president's decision, there is a clear source.
It is the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Problem from Hell: America
and the Age of Genocide, that Samantha Power, currently the senior
director of multilateral affairs for the National Security Council
and a close Obama adviser, published in 2002.
At the core of Power's massive, 610-page study is a detailed historical
argument for humanitarian intervention in the face of massacre and
genocide. Power's starting point is what she sees as the failure of
the United States to prevent massacre and genocide, time and time
again. "We have all been bystanders to genocide" she writes as she
traces American inaction back to the 1915 massacre of the Armenians
by Turkey.
What lies behind this inaction, Power argues, is domestic politics.
As long as America's safety is not overtly involved, most politicians
have concluded that when it comes to genocide, sins of omission are
far less risky than costly interventions.
The answer to this historic predicament, Power then goes on to say,
is to recognise that genocide constitutes an affront to "America's
most cherished values and to its interests". It is essential for
America is to respond to genocide with a sense of urgency. When the
dynamic on the ground warrants it, the United States should freeze the
perpetrator nation's assets, impose economic sanctions and, ultimately,
be prepared to use airpower as well as risk the lives of its soldiers,
Power concludes.
How thoroughly President Obama has absorbed the history lessons
of Power's A Problem from Hell may be seen in the justification he
gave for intervening in Libya in his 28 March speech at the National
Defence University in Washington. There, he declared that if America
had waited one more day to act, Benghazi, a city with a population
nearly that of Charlotte, North Carolina, would have suffered "a
massacre" that would have reverberated across the Middle East and
stained the conscience of the world.
"There will be times when our safety is not directly threatened but our
interests and our values are. Sometimes, the course of history poses
challenges that threaten our common humanity and our common security."
In his decision to intervene in Libya, the president has not,
however, contented himself with taking to heart the history lessons
of A Problem from Hell. He has also acknowledged, as our current
restraint with regard to Syria shows, that America cannot always
intervene in terrible situations in which a population is abused by
its leader and his military. At various times, the costs and risks of
intervention may be too great. The key, in the president's judgment,
is to know when restraint is called for - yet to be sure that the
limits of American power are not turned into an argument for never
acting to stop massacre and genocide.
The president may pay a heavy price in the 2012 election for his
Libyan intervention. Especially if unemployment remains high, voters
may not want to cut him any slack. But it is not too early to say
that the gamble he has taken in Libya was done with full knowledge
of the difficulties the United States faces there. He has proved a
careful reader of A Problem from Hell.
From: A. Papazian
Nicolaus Mills
guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/may/08/libya-middlee
Sunday 8 May 2011 18.00 BST
Critics decry his lack of a coherent 'doctrine', yet the president
proves a careful reader of Samantha Power's book on genocide
Samantha Power, now a senior executive on the National Security
Council, redefined US strategy on genocide in her 2003 Pulitzer
Prize-winning book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of
Genocide. Photograph: Stephanie Mitchell/AP
As the fighting in Libya threatens to settle into a long civil war,
President Obama's decision to intervene on behalf of Libya's rebels
has come under increasing questioning. The death of Osama bin Laden in
a firefight with American forces has bought the president more time,
and so has the call by Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
for Muammar Gaddafi to "immediately step down" as Libya's leader.
But what has not changed in recent weeks is the charge by President
Obama's critics that, in Libya, he is pursuing a feckless foreign
policy with no exit strategy in mind.
Among the president's harshest critics have been such foreign
policy liberals as Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national
security advisor, and Ann-Marie Slaughter, who earlier in the Obama
administration served as director of policy planning in the state
department.
How America's intervention in Libya will turn out is impossible to
know at the moment, but if we want to understand the thinking that
lies at the root of the president's decision, there is a clear source.
It is the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Problem from Hell: America
and the Age of Genocide, that Samantha Power, currently the senior
director of multilateral affairs for the National Security Council
and a close Obama adviser, published in 2002.
At the core of Power's massive, 610-page study is a detailed historical
argument for humanitarian intervention in the face of massacre and
genocide. Power's starting point is what she sees as the failure of
the United States to prevent massacre and genocide, time and time
again. "We have all been bystanders to genocide" she writes as she
traces American inaction back to the 1915 massacre of the Armenians
by Turkey.
What lies behind this inaction, Power argues, is domestic politics.
As long as America's safety is not overtly involved, most politicians
have concluded that when it comes to genocide, sins of omission are
far less risky than costly interventions.
The answer to this historic predicament, Power then goes on to say,
is to recognise that genocide constitutes an affront to "America's
most cherished values and to its interests". It is essential for
America is to respond to genocide with a sense of urgency. When the
dynamic on the ground warrants it, the United States should freeze the
perpetrator nation's assets, impose economic sanctions and, ultimately,
be prepared to use airpower as well as risk the lives of its soldiers,
Power concludes.
How thoroughly President Obama has absorbed the history lessons
of Power's A Problem from Hell may be seen in the justification he
gave for intervening in Libya in his 28 March speech at the National
Defence University in Washington. There, he declared that if America
had waited one more day to act, Benghazi, a city with a population
nearly that of Charlotte, North Carolina, would have suffered "a
massacre" that would have reverberated across the Middle East and
stained the conscience of the world.
"There will be times when our safety is not directly threatened but our
interests and our values are. Sometimes, the course of history poses
challenges that threaten our common humanity and our common security."
In his decision to intervene in Libya, the president has not,
however, contented himself with taking to heart the history lessons
of A Problem from Hell. He has also acknowledged, as our current
restraint with regard to Syria shows, that America cannot always
intervene in terrible situations in which a population is abused by
its leader and his military. At various times, the costs and risks of
intervention may be too great. The key, in the president's judgment,
is to know when restraint is called for - yet to be sure that the
limits of American power are not turned into an argument for never
acting to stop massacre and genocide.
The president may pay a heavy price in the 2012 election for his
Libyan intervention. Especially if unemployment remains high, voters
may not want to cut him any slack. But it is not too early to say
that the gamble he has taken in Libya was done with full knowledge
of the difficulties the United States faces there. He has proved a
careful reader of A Problem from Hell.
From: A. Papazian