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unhappycamper

(60,364 posts)
Wed Sep 3, 2014, 08:29 AM Sep 2014

Barack Obama’s Strategic Dilemma

http://watchingamerica.com/WA/2014/09/02/barack-obamas-strategic-dilemma/

Barack Obama’s Strategic Dilemma
Published in Le Monde (France) on 19 August 2014 by Frédéric Charillon
Translated from French by Jessica Loizou .
Edited by Nicholas Eckart.
Posted on September 2, 2014.

From Syria to Gaza, through Ukraine or Iraq, two classic dilemmas are shaking up the international community and causing foreign politicians to hesitate. The first is about the compatibility between interests and principles: Is it necessary to act in a situation when required by morality, but in which the foreseeable cost of action risks being too high for the national interest? The second focuses on means of implementation so that interests prevail: Is the use of force always the best way of imposing upon others, or has it become, in a world increasingly globalized since 2010, extremely counterproductive?

Faced with these two questions, the conservative approach, which maintains its belief in hard power serving state interests in a world governed by confrontation, responds through military interventionism as a demonstration of power and credibility toward allies as enemies. A more modern and liberal approach places a disadvantage on the restrictive effect of a global system, where cooperation and common interests, shared by the global society, form a normative constraint to which all actors must yield.

"Adding War to War"

From an initial perspective, intervention is almost always the solution. From a second perspective, it only “adds war to war,” to use Mitterrandian rhetoric. It is an old question about the theory of international relations, except that the most audacious defender of the second approach is now the president of the United States, the position is worth public ridicule and the results of his gamble could be full of surprises.

Was it necessary to intervene in Syria in 2013, or even earlier, against the Bashar Assad regime? Is a massive retaliation against Russian policy in Ukraine needed, including a military component, if necessary? Is there a need for an extensive military re-engagement in Iraq in order to stop the caliph, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi? In response to these three questions, Barack Obama says no, in the name of a belief expressed on numerous occasions in which such military action is no longer the solution to the crises of the modern world.
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