A couple of quick additional thoughts to my last post. First, I wonder if Libya turns out to be the moment that the liberal intelligentsia on both sides of the Atlantic become disillusioned with Obama. If Gadaffi regains power, as looks likely, the West will have suffered a major strategic defeat. It will face a newly empowered dictator in the Middle East, who is newly embittered towards Britain and America. There's every chance Gadaffi will revert to his previous habits of encouraging and financing terrorism and allying with the West's enemies. That's the strategic cost; the moral cost may be greater, if Gadaffi embarks on a massacre of the rebels. Andrew Neil (not exactly a liberal but anyway) has coined a stinging phrase in relation to the president's policy on Libya:
Obama campaigned in prose, and governs in silence.
Second, on domestic US politics - I wonder if the Republicans will regret allowing the Tea Party to, if you will, define their definition of this president as an extremist zealot bent on transforming America. The trouble is, it's just too far from reality. Political caricatures only work when there's some truth to them - John Kerry was a bit of an ivory-tower stiff; McCain was a bit erratic and impulsive. That's why it was difficult for them to throw these labels off. By contrast, it's easy for Obama to 'tack to the centre' because the centre is where he's most comfortable - and in demeanour, he's so evidently reasonable and calm that the caricature has no purchase. It seems clear now that the Republicans ought to be framing Obama in the same way Clinton framed George Bush Sr: as somebody who is weak and passive at a time when urgent actions are needed. There may be a grain of truth in that.
o you think it will only be a strategic defeat because the West have mishandled the situation so badly?
Gadaffi is of course a revolting individual but in recent years he hasn't been (has he?) a strategic threat to the West. The U.S. & allies could have put out some suitably outraged press releases and gone no further;I realise that's a brutally cold realpolitik option.
Instead you've got Cameron and the French charging around and the U.S. being indecisive, and Gadaffi will slaughter the rebels and hate the West again. Worst of all worlds?
I wonder what Blair would have done.
Posted by: ejoch | March 16, 2011 at 02:14 PM
He hasn't been a strategic threat because he's been made to feel part of the international community again. Not any more. Now he owes his survival to nobody but himself, and he will have sufficiently weakened his internal opposition (mostly by killing) them to feel newly confident and empowered to do what the hell he likes.
Cameron, to his credit, has been the only Western leader to sound slightly alarmed at the prospect of Gadaffi hanging on.
Posted by: Marbury | March 16, 2011 at 02:24 PM
Sarkozy too surely?
I meant to say, Gadaffi will react against the West because of the bellicosity of the no fly zone etc proponents- and that possibly if they'd followed Robert Gates' lead, things might have returned to normal after a suitable period.
Gadaffi's internal opposition never had an effect on his relations with the West anyway, did it?
I don't think Obama's handling this well, but he's entitled to feel annoyed about other countries demanding a no-fly zone that he'd be responsible for, I think.
Posted by: ejoch | March 16, 2011 at 02:58 PM