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Article 4.
The Economist
American foreign policy - Why it's a
theory, not a doctrine
31 march -- IT IS Pavlovian. As soon as a president does something
new in foreign policy, the world wants to know whether he has
invented a new "doctrine". The short answer in the case of Libya is
that Barack Obama has not invented a new doctrine so much as
repudiated an old one. What he is also doing, however, is challenging
an American habit of mind.
The doctrine Mr Obama has repudiated is the one attributed to Colin
Powell, the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and George
W. Bush's transparently miserable secretary of state when America
invaded Iraq in 2003. That held, among other things, that America
ought to go to war only when its vital interests are threatened, when
the exit strategy is clear, and when it can apply overwhelming force
to ensure that its aims are achieved. Nothing could be more different
from the account Mr Obama gave Americans on March 28th of his
reasons for using military force in Libya. He does not believe that
America's vital interests are at stake (though some "important" ones
are); the exit strategy is not entirely clear (Colonel Qaddafi must go,
but who knows when, and not as a direct result of American military
action); and the force America is willing to apply (no boots on the
ground) is strictly limited.
None of this should be a surprise. In "The Audacity of Hope", the
bestseller Mr Obama wrote as a senator in 2006, he set out a theory
of military intervention. Like all sovereign nations, he argued,
America has the unilateral right to defend itself from attack, and to
take unilateral military action to eliminate an imminent threat. But
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