It is seldom recognized that sometimes it is not right to "do something", but to do nothing.

Earlier I have assumed that GOP would succeed in pressuring Obama into attacking Iran before the next election. I wonder if Libya is enough to establish that Obama too has got bloody hands or if more unproductive slaughter is necessary.

If our president is a realist in FP, I am Elivs Pressey. He a realist from head to tow.

It becomes clear in this article, that the author doesn't understand what IR realism is; or, at best, has a rudimentary conception of it. It's actually most often the case that those who are most keen to criticize realists or realism, both pundits and academics, are those that have the worst grasp on what the term means.

Beyond this, Traub errors by failing to take into his perhaps singularly correct point at the end, that Arabs in the Middle East will for the near future not most concentrate on U.S. policy towards Israeli and COTERROR but instead how it affects them, during his entire previous analysis. Thus, he repeatedly brings up the point that the Arab League approved of a NFZ as a reason why the U.S. had to enact one lest it find itself on "wrong side of history." Yup, I'm sure the Arab masses would have been furious had the United States not heeded their all of their own oppressive dictators call to focus all of US attention on some peripheral dictator while acquiescing as these other dictators racked up the repression.

Perhaps in 2003 it would have helped our image in the Arab world if we were seen as acting with the acceptance or on behalf of the Arab monarchies/dictators. For those of you who have missed the last three months, the Arab street doesn't seem to be a big fan of these regimes right now.

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"Realists like to think that they look out for America's interests while progressives, or whatever you call the other side -- and it badly needs a presentable name -- have a moralistic preoccupation with America's values."

The term you're looking for is "liberal interventionist," which describes the Clinton/Obama doctrine. The progressives are with the realists in this issue.

The basic problem in assessing whether Obama is a realist, progressive, or Martian is the assumption that Obama's thought on matters of foreign policy (or any other kind of policy for that matter) flows from consideration of fundamental principles. The evidence suggests that he is so caught up in his self-image that one can readily predict what he will do in any given case by considering how it will affect it.

In Libya, he wants to be seen as the protector of civilians from an evil dictator. But he doesn't see the protection of civilians from evil dictators as a principle, so screw the Ivoreans, Congolese, Darfurians, Zimbabweans, etc.

By going into Libya, Obama gets to see himself as the leader of a coalition, one that would have sought to deal with Libya with or without him. But he doesn't want to retroactively validate Bush's policy in Iraq, so he starts from the premise that this won't be an Amercan undertaking, and that we'll get out quickly, without his ceasing to be the leader. That's not realism or progressivism; it's nonsense.

A second principle of Obama's policy is that majoritarianism equals moral correctness, because that leads to greater public approval. Thus, the Libya undertaking becomes legitimate when it gets the approval of the UN, Arab League, etc., and would be illegitimate without those approvals. Have those approvals changed anything real?

One serious implication of the "majoritarianism equals moral correctness" concept is that if the UN voted in favor of genocide, Obama would go along with it, because obviously, there can't be a majority that gets something this seriously wrong. We see this misguided notion fully operational in his handling of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Obama ran for office based on the platform of the "blank slate," enabling his supporters to see in him whatever they wanted. What we should have seen is that there really is no there there. In 2008 we bought a pig in a poke. For 2012, the slogan has to be "Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us."

It is a pity that we cannot find better terms to characterize this division of opinion than to call one side "realist" and the other side "idealist." As you point out, neither G.W. Bush nor Obama are by any stretch "idealists." Whatever else may be said of their different foreign policies, both were motivated by their concepts of national interest. The division of views is better described as a difference between those who are thinking strategically and those whose who are more focused on tactics. Over the very long haul, America's interests would be best served in a world in which most countries were like ourselves in having high living standards, a good legal system with honest courts, private property rights, and respect for minorities (well, perhaps we are not so exemplary ourselves in all these areas but you get the drift. Note that I do NOT include democracy as a core American value to be emulated by other countries). It is in our strategic long term interest to promote these values in the world. If we could somehow do this we would not be threatened by wars, terrorism, drug cartels, or nations that undercut American employment by working for starvation wages. The problem is that it is unknown how to do this. For example, when I was young, these violent revolutions such as we are seeing in Libya were generally considered a good thing. People like the late Samuel Huntington thought that these revolutions would create political institutions that would make the people of these countries stakeholders in their government and would start them on the road to modernization. Today it seems that no one has very high hopes for the Arab awakening and, no wonder, considering the outcome of the Iranian revolution 30 years ago. Since no one knows how to promote enlightened social development, it is tempting to define American interests as limited to what in effect are American business interests. Now I do not at all gainsay the importance of protecting American business interests. We will not have a very successful country or a very successful foreign policy if we do not have access to foreign markets or to sources of energy and raw materials. However, these goals should not substitute for a foreign policy that takes into account the longer term goal of promoting the emergence of the sort of world in which we want to live. America cannot promote civilized values everywhere and in every situation. It would cost too much and we would have too many conflicts with important tactical goals were we to do so. However, we can and we should uphold our values where we can do so at a reasonable cost, including the costs of the effects of our policies on our interests elsewhere in the world. This is a truly "realistic" foreign policy and it appears that Pres. Obama understands that.

George W. Bush and Barack Obama are both idealists but proceeding from different points of view. Bush's idealistic view was that the spread of democracy throughout the world would bring peace, harmony and prosperity to all, and that this effort would be spearheaded by a U.S. led coalition. It was his constant theme after no WMD were found in Iraq. Obama's idealistic view is of a world dominated by international institutions that would sublimate national aspirations and specifically diminish the American leadership role. Both approaches, of course, are unattainable, although Obama's is at least possible, given America's declining role in world affairs.

As to the selective morality of both Clinton and Obama in going after easy targets where the outcome might be dictated largely from the air, while ignoring the much more difficult challenges where ground forces would be necessary, both differ markedly from Bush, who believed boots on the ground were necessary not only for clear-cut victory but to establish postwar democratic institutions that could survive after U.S. troops left. It worked in Word War II, why not now?

The problem here is that the Bush policy could not muster popular support even for Iraq, let alone for directly challenging Iran and North Korea, so the idealistic notion had no chance of surviving the opposition of the realists. Americans no longer will accept casualties in war, even though they were at much lower levels in Iraq and Afghanistan than in any other major war in U.S. history. And the hearts and minds battlefield philosophy that has dominated U.S. military thinking since Vietnam is more concerned with protecting civilian populations (hostile or not) than with actual victory.

The incoherence of Obama's moral argument for his actions in Libya while continuing to describe Iraq as a mistake and a failure is stunning. Saddam was always a far more dangerous and bloodthirsty tyrant than Gaddafi, with or without WMD, by orders of magnitude. In addition to the horrific casualties of the Iran Iraq War and the Kurdish massacre, in the aftermath of the Gulf War of 1991, Saddam slaughtered as many as 150,000 Kurds and Shia when they rose up against him. The feeble response was a UN approved no-fly zone in the north and south of Iraq, and a few cruise missiles launched sporadically at suspected WMD targets.

Gaddafi, on the other hand, had abandoned his support of terrorism and disposed of his WMD in fear of suffering the same fate as Saddam. The rebellion and Gaddafi's response are strictly internal matters.

So, Obama finds "moral" necessity for bombing Libya, which represents absolutely no existential (or even future) threat to the United States, while finding no justification whatever for going to war against a regime that was both a moral leper and a sworn enemy of the United States This is moral incoherence of the first order.

Finally, it must be admitted and concluded that Americans, who have for most our history been, except for a few brief periods, isolationist, will no longer countenance fullscale military action against anyone, ever, unless we have actually been attacked on its home soil, by a clearly identifiable enemy. This is the most important lesson we must take from the events of the past ten years: the United States, in spite of being the world's remaining Super Power, is powerless to exert its will. Idealistic or realistic; it matters not.

The term you're looking for is "liberal interventionist," which Parça Kontördescribes the Clinton/Obama doctrine.

CWWJ, your comment:

"So, Obama finds "moral" necessity for bombing Libya, which represents absolutely no existential (or even future) threat to the United States, while finding no justification whatever for going to war against a regime that was both a moral leper and a sworn enemy of the United States This is moral incoherence of the first order."

The way to make a better world is not just through wack-a-moleing threats as they come and go. It is through actively promoting a better world. I find it a very strained idea to suppose that America would have been 'better off' had it not intervened in Libya when it did.