What "Obama Doctrine?"

The author of “The Audacity of Hope” would probably be very disappointed in the president of the United States today.

“Close to five years after 9/11 and 15 years after the break-up of the Soviet Union, the United States still lacks a coherent national security policy,” Barack Obama wrote in his 2006 book. “Instead of guiding principles, we have what appear to be a series of ad hoc decisions, with dubious results. Why invade Iraq and not North Korea or Burma? Why intervene in Bosnia and not Darfur?”

On Monday evening the president had the opportunity to define the “guiding principles” of American interventionism during his speech on the operation in Libya. In the hours and days that followed, journalists, experts and politicians searched his comments for a “doctrine” that could be applied to other conflicts, such as those by Presidents Harry Truman, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, among others, that are named after the presidents.

They all drew a blank — well, almost.

“The first time that an administration initiates military or quasi-military force … the news networks go into paroxysms of speculation about whether such action signals a new doctrine. Based on Obama’s speech last night, it seems pretty clear that the answer to that question on Libya is a clear ‘no,’” concluded Daniel Drezner, professor of international politics at Tufts University.

Pragmatism

Despite the writings of Senator Obama, the refusal of President Obama to get locked into a “doctrine” shouldn’t be such a big surprise. By focusing his speech on Monday evening on the reasons for intervention in Libya, the head of the White House confirmed his pragmatism, which seems to dictate most of his policies.

“It is true that America cannot use our military wherever repression occurs,” he declared, careful to avoid mentioning the names of others countries in the Middle East, such as Yemen and Bahrain, where demonstrators were recently beaten. “But that cannot be an argument for never acting on behalf of what’s right. In this particular country — Libya — at this particular moment, we had a unique ability to stop that violence.”

And added: “And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”

Several commentators interpreted this last phrase as a veiled critique of Bill Clinton, whose administration found itself paralyzed when faced with the Rwandan genocide. In addition, the 44th president has distanced himself from his immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, by rejecting unilateralism and refusing to send troops onto Libyan soil and precipitate a regime change in another Arab country.

Multilateralism

His multilateralism was denounced by several conservatives, including Sarah Palin, potential candidate for the presidency.

“And U.S. interests can’t just mean validating some kind of post-American theory of intervention wherein we wait for the Arab League and the United Nations to tell us ‘thumbs up America, you can go now, you can act,’” declared the former governor of Alaska on Fox News.

At the other end of the political spectrum, Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic representative from Ohio, thought he was hearing George W. Bush when Barack Obama outlined the threats posed by Moammar Gadhafi in order to justify the United States’ intervention in Libya.

“Remember, that’s what George Bush did. He said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction,” he said on MSNBC.

But Barack Obama hasn’t only attracted criticism following his speech on Libya. Stephen Grand, Middle East expert at the Brookings Institute, sympathizes with the president and thinks that it will take Obama more than a speech to define a doctrine for a region that is in upheaval.

“It’s still a work in progress. Obama is clearly trying to work out an approach that puts him on the right side of history,” he said.