fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Another Unconstitutional War Begins

The U.S. prepared to a launch a missile attack on Libyan air defenses, but American ships and aircraft stationed in and around the Mediterranean Sea did not participate in initial French air missions Saturday, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the unfolding intervention. One official said the U.S. intends to limit its involvement — […]

The U.S. prepared to a launch a missile attack on Libyan air defenses, but American ships and aircraft stationed in and around the Mediterranean Sea did not participate in initial French air missions Saturday, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the unfolding intervention.

One official said the U.S. intends to limit its involvement — at least in the initial stages — to helping protect French and other air missions by taking out Libyan air defenses.

An attack against those defenses with Navy sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles was planned for later Saturday, one official said. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of military operations. ~Houston Chronicle (AP)

If all goes as planned, this is how the U.S. will enter yet another arbitrary, unnecessary, unjust, and unconstitutional war. This war breaks every rule of the Powell Doctrine. This is a war fought neither as a last resort, nor is the U.S. prepared to use overwhelming force. Based on the mismatch between what the U.S. and our allies are authorized to do and what we have set out to do, mission creep is as inevitable as it is undesirable.

Lexington notes that there has been no meaningful public debate prior to the U.S. and allied commitment to intervene in Libya:

But there is no escaping the fact that this new entanglement was decided upon behind closed doors at the UN and with very little public debate here in the United States. None of this will matter if the end comes quickly. But if things go wrong and America is drawn deeper in, the domestic consequences for the president could be far-reaching.

Unfortunately, there is very little accountability from the public for terrible foreign policy decisions. This may be one reason why all administrations can make as many bad decisions as they do without suffering immediate political backlash, and why there is no political incentive for showing restraint in the exercise of American power. One reason for this is that U.S. foreign policy is remarkably independent of public opinion. There are overwhelming majorities that not only don’t support U.S. military action in Libya, but don’t believe that the U.S. has any responsibility to respond to what happens in Libya, but this makes no difference to the people setting policy.

Another reason for this is timing. Foreign policy blunders and disasters don’t always appear so to the majority of the public right away. It takes considerable time for the full consequences of horrible policy decisions to be realized, and by then the people responsible for making those decisions may already be out of office. Intervention in Kosovo in 1999 was a horrible decision, and it has had unfortunate consequences for Kosovo and other nations beyond the Balkans, but the people responsible were on their way out the door, and most of these consequences didn’t happen until years later. It took three years, thousands of American dead, tens of thousands of American wounded, and mass slaughter taking place in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities before the majority of the public was moved to punish the party of the President responsible for the Iraq debacle, and to this day there is still no evidence that the party understands why it actually lost.

Other times, horrible foreign policy decisions may greatly harm other nations, but they may have only a minimal, temporary effect on the U.S., in which case the public shrugs off the mistake, forgets about it, and never even notices it. While recognizing Kosovo’s independence and pledging eventual Georgian membership in NATO set the stage for the tensions that erupted in August 2008 with Georgia’s escalation, hardly anyone in the U.S. knew or cared that administration decisions had contributed to that disaster, and because it was mainly a disaster for Georgia and South Ossetia there was no public reaction. Likewise, the Kosovo war itself was disastrous for Serbia, and the political aftermath has proved to be very bad for the inhabitants of Kosovo, but even though the public was divided over Kosovo, and even though Congress only debated it after it had been going on for weeks, it had no major effect on Clinton’s popularity or the election prospects of his Vice President.

The greatest political danger to Obama doesn’t come from what happens in Libya, but from the perception that he is unduly concerned with foreign affairs. Even Presidents widely considered to be successful in their foreign policy efforts don’t enjoy sustained political benefits from that at home. As long as the economic recovery remains slow, Obama’s attention to foreign affairs, whether it is unavoidable or not, may start to be seen as coming at the expense of focusing on domestic concerns. Unfortunately, Obama will probably not be punished politically for the terrible decision to intervene in Libya. For that to happen, the U.S. and our allies would have to make such a hash of things that they end up presiding over a completely failed mission, and no one in the U.S. and allied countries wants to see this happen.

Update: U.S. missile strikes have begun.

Second Update: Michael Lind also objects to the unconstitutional Libyan war, and has some choice words for the nature of the multilateral support for UNSCR 1973.

Advertisement

Comments

The American Conservative Memberships
Become a Member today for a growing stake in the conservative movement.
Join here!
Join here