I've gotten a little push-back from folks for arguing that Obama's transition from a kind of liberalish realism to liberal internationalism resembles George W. Bush, because so many of the substantive tools are different.Obama's use of international institutions, allowing regional factions to take responsibility, lack of rhetorical grandstanding/bullying are all nontrivial distinctions between Bush's neoconservatism and Obama's liberal internationalism. I actually don't disagree with that.
The point is that, in 2007*, Obama spoke with near-disdain about humanitarian intervention, and I suspect many Americans thought he was right. Remember this?
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.
“Well, look, if that's the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife — which we haven't done,” Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.
“We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven't done. Those of us who care about Darfur don't think it would be a good idea,” he said.
Now we're participating in an intervention to prevent a slaughter in Libya. The substantive differences between Obama's multilateralism and Bush's unilateralism, and the fundamental dynamics of the conflict -- regional players requesting Western aid on behalf of an indigenous revolution -- may be decisive in how this all turns out. But this seems like a big change in the way Obama used to think.
On the other hand, there is also this, from 2008 as well:
“When you have civil conflict like this, military efforts and protective forces can play an important role, especially if they're under an international mandate as opposed to simply a U.S. mandate. But you can't solve the underlying problem at the end of a barrel of a gun,” he said. “There's got to be a deliberate and constant diplomatic effort to get the various factions to recognize that they are better off arriving at a peaceful resolution of their conflicts.”
In Libya, there's an international mandate, and the president has promised American ground troops won't be involved. So we'll see how it goes.
*fixed
