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The Politics of the Libyan War

If politicians were judged on the quality of their record, Libya would be a major problem for Clinton.

Walter Russell Mead responds to Miliband’s Libya criticism:

Expect echoes of such convenient recriminations to reach the United States as well; Hillary Clinton owns the Libya campaign, as her Republican opponents will be sure to crow.

In the meantime, how much of a boost will these accusations give Milliband, who consistently polls behind his own party in popularity?

If the polling from Britain on the Libyan war is any indication, the answer to Mead’s question is “none at all.” Slightly more British voters think the 2011 intervention in Libya was the wrong thing to do than believe it was right. The war is viewed much less favorably in Britain than it was in late 2011. Miliband is faulting Cameron for not being enough of an interventionist in Libya, and that isn’t going to appeal to very many voters. The position that Miliband is defending–that Britain should have done more after the regime fell to stabilize and rebuild Libya–is supported by just 30%.

Conservative voters are most likely to think that the Libyan intervention was the right thing to do (39%) and Labour voters are much less likely to hold the same view (29%). It is extremely unlikely that Miliband is going to be winning any Conservative voters over with this line, and it is more likely that Miliband’s reminder of his own enthusiasm for “humanitarian” intervention could give disaffected Labour voters another reason to look elsewhere. If there are Labour voters considering voting for UKIP or the SNP, this gives them no compelling reason to stick with their party. That’s why it’s such an odd argument for him to make.

As for the Libyan war’s impact on American presidential politics, Mead is engaging in some wishful thinking. If there were some real accountability in electoral politics, the Libyan war and its aftermath would be a huge liability for Clinton. It would utterly discredit her “smart power” rhetoric, and it would confirm that her judgment on questions of war and peace is terrible. Her foreign policy experience, one of her supposed advantages, would be exposed as worthless. If politicians were actually judged on the quality of their record, Libya would be a major problem for Clinton.

In practice, however, we know that the Libyan war wasn’t a liability for Obama, and he was the president who ordered the intervention. Obama owned the war and its aftermath even more than Clinton, and it had no measurable effect on the election. One reason for this was that his opponent couldn’t credibly criticize him on the intervention because he, like Miliband, was all for it when it happened. Romney’s campaign tried to make an argument similar to Miliband’s that there ought to have been a stabilization force, but that was a non-starter for obvious reasons. If there is an opening to attack Clinton over Libya in the next election, it could be exploited only by candidates that opposed the intervention from the beginning and warned about its destabilizing effects, and even then I’m not sure it would do any good.

Another reason that the Libyan war has not had any discernible impact on our domestic politics is that there were no American casualties, which means that for most Americans it’s as if the intervention never even happened. Unfortunately, if the U.S. wages or supports a war whose losses are suffered only by people in the other country, the evil effects of that war go largely unnoticed and the politicians that backed the war suffer no political backlash. That is how interventionists frequently get away with backing ruinous, unnecessary wars without ever having to pay a political price for their terrible record. It would be outstanding if Clinton were held accountable for her role in helping to wreck Libya, but I wouldn’t expect that to happen. Miliband’s hapless attack on Cameron on this issue helps to remind us why.

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