President Obama's decision to join in allied military strikes against Libya has received significant criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. These individuals maintain that the use of American military force should be restricted to cases where the United States is under direct threat from a foreign group or nation. This isolationist perspective, apparent throughout American history, has gained further strength since the flaws and failures of the Bush doctrine of preemption became clear. Obama's rationale that military action prevented an impending genocide has not, however, received fair consideration. Situations with the potential for catastrophic mass death, such as the turmoil we are witnessing in Libya, are among the few cases where the use of arms can truly be justified. The time has come for American policymakers to establish a new norm of humanitarian intervention.
The only president to ever institute a foreign policy calling for the use of force based on purely humanitarian considerations was the fictional character Jed Bartlett in The West Wing. Opponents of such a military doctrine have a simple and compelling argument the primary responsibility of the president is to ensure the safety and prosperity of his people, and no leader can justify sacrificing blood and treasure for the good of another nation. On the surface, this reasoning may appear sound. However, in a world that is moving irrevocably towards greater globalization and interdependency, our notions of justice and humanity can no longer be limited to our national borders. It is not reasonable or possible for us to take action against all instances of human rights abuse. However, in the most obviously egregious circumstances, we have a responsibility to provide a measure of security to innocent civilians.
The crucial question then becomes, when should we pull the trigger? Unfortunately, such decisions are rarely black and white. In instances when one ethnic group is systematically exterminating another, intervention would have an immediate and momentous effect. In less clear-cut cases of civil unrest and violence, such as agitation over electoral results in Cote D'Ivoire, American action might well increase instability and undermine peace. It is true that a doctrine of humanitarian intervention would require nuanced judgments on the part of future presidents, but it remains important that the possibility of intervention is at least seriously contemplated.
It is par for the course for nations such as China and Russia to invoke the principle of national sovereignty in the process of blocking international action on genocide in foreign nations. Such opposition has successfully rendered the United Nations incapable of dealing with horrific tragedies in places such as the Balkans and Sudan. In an era when the moral legitimacy of the United States is increasingly called into question, it would be a grave error to maintain a position on human rights that, by placing national self-interest above all other considerations, perpetuates the inaction fostered by these deplorable regimes. While we do incur an expense for intervention, the Libyan example demonstrates that these costs do not necessarily need to be heavy. Relatively small-scale operations can have an outsized impact on the regions we are attempting to impact a crisis in Libya has been potentially mitigated without the loss of a single American life.
A new policy aimed at averting mass killing would fundamentally reshape the realities of the international arena. Dictators and warlords who aim to ignite civil conflict and genocide would have to factor the considerable destructive power of American tomahawk missiles into their plans. It is virtually guaranteed that, given the choice between abandoning their megalomaniacal aims and being obliterated by the firepower of a coalition of modern nations, the Idi Amins and Slobodan Milosevics of our world would choose the former. A norm of intervention would thus create a self-perpetuating bulwark against further humanitarian crises.
It has been reported that within the Obama White House, the impetus for military strikes came from advisors who agonized over the failure of the Clinton administration to act in the first two years of the Bosnian genocide. These people recognize that, as the world's superpower, the United States has a moral responsibility to put our significant military capacity towards ending the mass murder of our fellow human beings. No single act could do more to reverse the millennia of human apathy towards the senseless slaughter of other people. No nation has ever had a doctrine for the use of force in situations such as this the United States should be the first.
