Obama the steady

By Lexington

FOR some reason, the op-ed in Libya that Barack Obama co-authored with Britain's David Cameron and France's Nicolas Sarkozy is being interpreted by many as a shift in the president's position. I don't think it is. The paragraph causing excitement is this one:

Our duty and our mandate under UN Security Council Resolution 1973 is to protect civilians, and we are doing that. It is not to remove Qaddafi by force. But it is impossible to imagine a future for Libya with Qaddafi in power. The International Criminal Court is rightly investigating the crimes committed against civilians and the grievous violations of international law. It is unthinkable that someone who has tried to massacre his own people can play a part in their future government. The brave citizens of those towns that have held out against forces that have been mercilessly targeting them would face a fearful vengeance if the world accepted such an arrangement. It would be an unconscionable betrayal.

Although commentators are saying that this represents a hardening up of Mr Obama's stance, it simply restates the clear position he has enunciated from the start. Civilians must be protected, Colonel Qaddafi must go, but his departure is to be achieved by means other than the use of force authorised by the UN Security Council in order to protect Libya's civilian population. You can say many things about the president's Libya policy, but one thing you cannot yet accuse him of is inconsistency.

That said, events so far do seem to have evolved in the direction the pessimists feared. Military intervention has not tipped the military balance decisively against the regime, and the regime has not collapsed, as many people, including some in the American administration, hoped it would. A messy and bloody partition of the country has now taken place. A worry that the European air forces might not have sufficent wherewithal was a subtext of the recent NATO meeting.

One lesson from NATO's air campaign in Kosovo in the 1990s is that patience is sometimes rewarded. In Libya, too, if the allies hold their nerve, they may well achieve their aim. In Kosovo, however, Bill Clinton was not preoccupied in the way Mr Obama is now by a desire to take a backseat while the Europeans do the driving. Letting others lead is consistent with his desire to see allies do some burden-sharing, minimise blowback against America in the Arab world and reassure voters at home that, despite appearances to the contrary, he has not launched America into a third hot war in the Muslim world. The danger of this approach is that he may have put America in the position of willing the end without willing the means. As ever, the president himself radiates a serene confidence. But this is nonetheless a nerve-racking time for everyone else.