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March 29, 2011
The UN intervention into Libya has has moved beyond a purely humanitarian mission under the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine as the intervening forces are more-or-less openly seeking to topple Qaddafi's regime.
The threat of some sort of massacre in Benghazi by Qaddafi's military has now been removed. Mission creep has emerged as NATO air strikes against Qaddafi's forces are making it possible for the rebels to advance east towards Sirt, the town of Muammar Qaddafi’s birth. Germany, which broke with its European allies and voted to abstain from resolution 1973, has argued that mission creep could force the coalition to get involved in a drawn-out war.
Whilst the emboldened neocons are now talking about Syria, the Arab support for an intervention against Qaddafi to protect the Libyan people is beginning to fray as the action increasingly includes Western bombing of an Arab country.
I support the UN's liberal interventionist military intervention into Libya because of the events in Bosnia and Rwanda. At the moment, I don't see it as legitimating American dominance in the region, which is the rationale of the neocons. My main reservation about the UN's military intervention is that it may degenerate into an extended civil war which that l require troops on the ground regardless of promises being made today.
Stephen M. Walt argues differently. He says:
The only important intellectual difference between neoconservatives and liberal interventionists is that the former have disdain for international institutions (which they see as constraints on U.S. power), and the latter see them as a useful way to legitimate American dominance. Both groups extol the virtues of democracy, both groups believe that U.S. power -- and especially its military power -- can be a highly effective tool of statecraft. Both groups are deeply alarmed at the prospect that WMD might be in the hands of anybody but the United States and its closest allies, and both groups think it is America's right and responsibility to fix lots of problems all over the world. Both groups consistently over-estimate how easy it will be to do this, however, which is why each has a propensity to get us involved in conflicts where our vital interests are not engaged and that end up costing a lot more than they initially expect.
It is true that most of the U.S. foreign policy establishment has become addicted to empire and it doesn't really matter which party happens to be occupying Pennsylvania Avenue.
However, the key question is what if Qaddafi hangs tough, and moves forces back into the cities he controls, blends them in with the local population, and the rebels cannot dislodge him? Libya could become a "giant Somalia". What then of the limited, principled nature of the humanitarian mission?
Libya's opposition is a poorly defined group of mutually hostile factions that have not formed a meaningful military force thus far, and are even less likely to form a functioning government.
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Barack Obama gave a good speech in his address to the nation