Liberal interventionism: still on balance a Good Thing

It is a bit early to see Libya as a “triumph” for David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy or the Blair Doctrine. We have not got to the hard part yet.

Faisal Islam’s is therefore number 698 in my series of Questions to Which the Answer is No:

Is this Dave’s Falklands?

But the imminent collapse of Gaddafi’s regime is a vindication of sorts of Cameron’s decision to join in the leadership of Nato’s aerial intervention, and his policy of support for the Benghazi-based alternative government.

It is also a vindication of Tony Blair’s foreign policy, despite the tiresome partisans of the Tory right, who are unable to grasp how a policy of engagement plus demonstration of power – in Iraq – was right when there was no prospect of a popular uprising, and that a policy of limited military intervention to support it was right in the Arab spring.

Enjoyable as it is to see the naysaying isolationists confounded, however, we liberal interventionists should eschew triumphalism. As we know from Iraq and Afghanistan particularly, it is the bit after the dictatorship falls that is the hardest. And Gaddafi hasn’t even gone yet.

However, a measured view might be that, on balance, the falls of Milosevic, Sankoh (Sierra Leone), the Taliban, Saddam and Gaddafi are a hopeful thread in British and wider foreign policy; one which might yet lead to Assad and Ahmedinejad.

Thanks to James Plunkett and Matt Hoffman.

Photograph from Washington Post.

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