Libya, the End of United States Unilateralism?

Last Monday, March 28, the White House released a statement in which President Barack Obama explained the United States’ participation in the Libyan conflict. It is not about a doctrine — the commentators point out — because the president is a pragmatist who makes his decisions based on a carefully considered evaluation of each case. However, the statement about Libya contains expositions that can be read as guidelines for a long-term foreign policy. The most important of these seems to be the recognition that although the 21st century began as a unilateral world, in which only one superpower existed, it cannot assume the responsibility of world police that some insist on attributing to it. At this moment, the United States has more military commitments than it can deal with and more international responsibilities than it is ready to assume, given the urgency of some of domestic problems, such as the excessive debt. That is to say, today, the White House admits it relies on limited resources; chances are, their actions in the foreign arena will also be limited.

Obama’s stance is radically distinct from that supported by his predecessor, George W. Bush, who defended unilateralism in foreign policy, indifferent to whatever limitation, be it financial or of public opinion. President Obama supports the intervention in Libya as a humanitarian action, but underscores that the United States shares the responsibility of the coalition operations with European allies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), members of the Arab League, the king of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Moreover, the coalition operations support a United Nation resolution and can be seen as a response to the urgent request of the Libyan rebels.

It seems to me that the topic of shared responsibility in maintaining peace or in the defense of human rights marks a profound discontinuity in the United States foreign policy of the past. It is certain that shared responsibility underpins the principle of collective security that has been one of the cornerstones of the international order in the second half of the 20th century. However, it is also certain that since President Truman, in 1947, set forth his doctrine to defend democracy anywhere it was threatened, the United States assumed that objective as an exclusive responsibility, which in reality served to hide its interest in defense. Now, however, after the bitter lessons of Vietnam, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. government has taken more seriously the commitment to share international responsibilities with other governments, the topic that has undermined the traditional concept of sovereignty.

Humanitarian intervention presents dilemmas with difficult solutions: At what point is it legitimate? Is it a vehicle for foreign interests? If we recall the massacres of Kosovo and Rwanda, where millions of people died, the question that comes up is, why didn’t the international community stop those crimes against humanity? According to the U.S. president, support of the Libyan rebels’ coalition has prevented a blood bath, given the ferocity of the repression that Gadhafi’s loyal forces have undertaken and taking into account the superiority of their resources. Obama claims that the United States has a moral responsibility as a country leader that cannot close its eyes to atrocities against people.

The second major theme in Obama’s document about Libya refers to the objective of intervention, which limits military support for the rebels to their fight against the dictatorship, but considers that it would be an error to extend these operations to policy. That is to say, neither the United States nor the coalition should participate in regime change in Libya; it considers that a matter for the Libyans and that it would be bad to repeat errors committed in Iraq, where participation in the construction of the new regime has lasted eight years and cost thousands of American and Iraqi lives and millions of dollars. For the U.S. president, this is something that we do not have the luxury of repeating in Libya. If, in fact, we are at the beginning of the end of unilateralism, a great international reordering is just around the corner, guided by cooperation and, above all, by recognition of the limits imposed on the actions of the powerful.