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The War of Caprice

David Bosco doesn’t like Walt’s “war of whim” definition: The deeper problem with Walt’s standard for intervention is that it all but prohibits any rapid military response to an evolving crisis–strategic or humanitarian. Of course everyone would like as much time as possible to consider the pros and cons of an intervention. But policymakers watching […]

David Bosco doesn’t like Walt’s “war of whim” definition:

The deeper problem with Walt’s standard for intervention is that it all but prohibits any rapid military response to an evolving crisis–strategic or humanitarian. Of course everyone would like as much time as possible to consider the pros and cons of an intervention. But policymakers watching events unfold in Libya faced a brutal choice: intervene quickly or acquiesce to the defeat of Libya’s rebels. Walt is skeptical that a massacre was imminent. He clearly doubts that intervention had an effect on the course of the Arab spring. Fair enough. But policymakers faced a difficult choice under the intense pressure of events. Characterizing their decision as whimsical is beyond glib.

Walt’s definition might be better-served if he emphasized the capriciousness, which is to say the arbitrariness, of certain interventions. As I argued several times in the spring, the Libyan war was by pretty much every standard an arbitrary intervention. I suppose that doesn’t distinguish it very much from a war of choice, but it does guard against Bosco’s complaint a little better. The Libyan intervention was undoubtedly rushed and ill-considered because the final decision didn’t come until virtually the last possible moment. The Libyan civil war didn’t really qualify as an exceptional emergency situation, but it was treated as if it were one. This was done impulsively.

Having spent weeks laying out the arguments why the U.S. didn’t really have any business in Libya, the administration turned around “on a dime” (Josh Rogin’s words) after having (correctly!) resisted appeals to intervene. The administration spent three and a half weeks acting as if it didn’t need to make any choice at all in the hopes that the rebels would manage on their own, and in the space of three days capitulated to the interventionist argument. There was actually ample time for weighing pros and cons, presenting the interventionist case to the public and Congress, and organizing an international coalition to support the action at the U.N. The first two never really happened, but that didn’t stop the administration from committing the U.S. to war anyway. That the administration did so in an illegal fashion as far as U.S. law is concerned supports the charge that it is a war of caprice.

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