by Zack Beauchamp
Fareed Zakaria heralds it:
The new model does two things: First, it ensures that there's genuinely a local alliance committed to the same goals as the external coalition. This way, there is more legitimacy on the ground. And if there is anything Afghanistan and Iraq have taught us, it is that local legitimacy is key. Second, this model ensures that there is genuine burden sharing so that the United States is not left owning the country as has happened so often in the past.
Jack Goldstone counters, partially:
The real test of whether we are in a new era of US policy will be, first, will the actions of the US and other allies help Libyans build a stable democratic state, or will Libya fall into sectarian violence, civil war, and terrorism, as did Iraq and Afghanistan? And second, will the same kinds of actions Zakaria points to — burden sharing with our allies, reliance on indigenous leadership, and a more modest supporting role — be effective in the task of state construction in the wake of Gadhafi’s fall? There are reasons to be hopeful.
Both posts are more than worth your time. I do think Goldstone in the above excerpt is running together two issues that should be treated separately. The first is the best model for conducting the immediate intervention, and the second is how best to keep the peace and rebuild the state after the first (and hopefully last) stage of the conflict is over. The approach to both need not necessarily be the same – a multilateral NATO intervention using airpower could be followed up by a unilateral American post-war stabilization force, a U.N. peacekeeping operation, a number of non-military development models, or simply no external involvement at all. The best way to take action in the second stage doesn't necessarily follow from how the first was structured (and vice versa).
As such, I think it's wrong to extrapolate a whole new approach to the entirety of an intervention, let alone the entirety of U.S. foreign policy, from the success of the Libyan operation in toppling Qaddafi. Plus, as I've argued, the model we used in Libya isn't all that new – it draws heavily on a well-known American foreign policy tradition, liberal internationalism.
The Dish 