But although intervening on behalf of regime change in Libya has grabbed the attention of the commentariat, no such calls are heard for America to defend democracy just a bit further to the south and west, in the Ivory Coast, where a democratically elected president, Alassane Ouattara, has been unable to compel his predecessor, Laurent Gbagbo, to transfer power. Gbagbo’s militias are using no less violent methods to hold on to power, but because the dramatic images have yet to saturate our television screens, pundits have not seen fit to gravely warn how Obama’s “failure” to act jeopardizes U.S. global leadership. ~Nikolas Gvosdev

Gvosdev isn’t calling for intervention in Ivory Coast, and neither am I, but he makes a very important argument that the current fixation on Libya is almost entirely a product on what happens to be the latest story that catches the attention of international media. The growing conflict in Ivory Coast isn’t more important, but it’s remarkable that hardly anyone is paying attention to a comparably violent, destabilizing conflict there when it is no less important. The extent of displacement, human suffering, and death in Ivory Coast is no less and may already be greater, and the effects of instability there may prove to be more destructive for the country and its neighbors.

Had a Libyan civil war broken out last year, or had it started a year from now, would it be anywhere near the top of the administration’s agenda? It is doubtful. Western governments and publics would have been focused on another crisis somewhere else, and the relative unimportance to the U.S. of what was happening in Libya would be clear for all to see. Because fighting in Libya broke out in connection with the protests in other Arab countries, there was already built-in interest in covering the story and a ready-made narrative for explaining what was happening. Even though they are both equally violent and destructive, a popular uprising against a dictatorship catches more attention than a post-election struggle to make the defeated incumbent step down. Westerners know and loathe Gaddafi. They might come to loathe Gbagbo if they got to know him, but for right now he is just a name and most people won’t even know that.

Ouattara is widely recognized as the legitimate, elected president of Ivory Coast, Gbagbo and his followers are resisting the outcome with both thuggery and military offensives against opposition centers, and the clash has the potential to cause another civil war less than a decade after the last conflict there. What are the democratists and humanitarian interventionists doing while this is going on? Many of them are busily agitating for war against Libya for the sake of rebel forces that they don’t fully understand and some of whose political goals they probably abhor.

Apparently, disputed elections are no longer our preferred causes celebres. That was last decade’s fad. We have just as much business becoming involved in an internal Ivorian conflict as we have getting involved in an internal Libyan conflict (which is to say none at all), but the total silence from interventionists on the former tells me that humanitarian concerns, claims of moral obligation, and worries about lost U.S. “credibility” are mostly rhetorical maneuvers to push for military action wherever and whenever there is an opening for it.