During the presidential campaign of 2008, vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, in typical fashion, raised eyebrows among Democrats — and endorphin levels among Republicans — when he claimed:
“Remember I said it standing here … we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”
Biden was referring to his running mate, presidential candidate Barack Obama, the politically young senator from Illinois. Biden claimed said “crises” would arise within “six months” of Obama’s inauguration. Republicans pounced at the opportunity to raise questions about Obama’s experience, doubting whether the 47-year-old had the relevant knowledge to deal with such a scenario.
Despite Biden’s loose words, he and Obama won the election.
Biden turned out to be correct about crises occurring, although his timeline was off by about eighteen months. Still, a margin of error of a year and a half when prophesying a global crises isn’t bad; maybe somewhere between Nostradamus and Jeane Dixon.
What remains to be seen is the effectiveness of Obama with regards to the events unfolding in the Middle East.
With Egypt, President Obama and his staff lucked out. Had Mubarak decided to attempt to hold onto his power against the democratic pressures of his people, President Obama would have faced a dilemma. On the one hand, the United States claims to be an ally and promoter of democratic movements abroad. On the other hand, Hosni Mubarak had been one of the United States’ biggest supporters in the Middle East and turning against him could have had negative strategic implications around the world.
Mubarak made the decision for the White House by resigning, rescuing President Obama from the relatively unclear and divided message emanating from the Oval Office. Not only did Mubarak’s resignation allow the White House to breathe a collective sigh of relief, but in doing so Mubarak averted a possibly bloody crisis in Egypt. His resignation also gave hope to thousands of protesters in other Middle Eastern countries that they could dispose their overlords as well.
Libya, and Moammar Gadhafi, is the crisis.
Granted, the situation is much more black and white for the Obama administration than a conflict in Egypt would have been. Moammar Gadhafi is no friend of the United States. In 1986, the U.S. carried out surgical strikes against Libya in the hopes of killing Gadhafi, which obviously failed. Gadhafi subsequently renamed the country the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, a clear ideological break from the U.S. during the Cold War. Gadhafi is a dictator of the worst sort, a third-world bogeyman whose tools of oppression include executions, imprisonment and assassinations. Gadhafi has sought nuclear weapons since the ’70s and has sponsored terrorist groups both at home and abroad.
One might wonder why we chose say, Iraq, over Libya.
In any event, Obama’s response to the events unfolding in Libya has been, as one might expect, a clear shift in foreign policy from the way President George W. Bush operated. Bush Doctrine emphasized preventative war, or self-defense by removing a perceived future threat. Such a policy is not generally favored internationally (it turns out to be fairly difficult to judge how much of a danger a country will be in the future; i.e. those darn WMDs), and as a result the United States under President Bush was forced to act unilaterally in Iraq.
It is this split between unilateral and multilateral policy that represents the real schism between President Obama and President Bush.
First, President Obama waited for the United Nations. Resolution 1973 implemented a no-fly zone over Libya, increased sanctions and empowered UN member states “to take all necessary measures to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas under threat of attack (in Libya).”
What has come from the resolution is a U.S.-led coalition strategically attacking Gadhafi’s forces and enforcing the no-fly zone and sanctions. The goal is to prevent Gadhafi from massacring his people, not to necessarily oust him. That is currently being left up to the Libyan people.
Obama, however, has made it clear that the White House’s policy is to see Gadhafi ousted. Whether this means committing more U.S. military personnel to Libya remains to be seen. As Iraq has shown us, removing tyrants from power is a long and arduous affair, requiring enormous amounts of manpower, resources and time, particularly if a nation is going at it alone. What President Obama seems to view as a necessary precursor to U.S. involvement is not only international approval, but also international assistance. This makes the possibility of U.S. intervention, along with other countries, much more feasible, justifiable and appropriate. The fact that citizens of Libya revolted against Gadhafi on their own also adds credence.
The crisis that Vice President Biden predicted has finally arrived. With its relatively close proximity to an election year, Obama’s course of action will have huge repercussions for whether or not he is re-elected. Regardless of the outcomes, the U.S. will finally get to see what Obama Doctrine truly is.
And we will observe his mettle.
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