Is Liberal Interventionism Dead?
During the Clinton years, it would have been easy to secure support for intervention in Libya, but now N.A.T.O. appears timid over the issue of humanitarian intervention. What happened?
What good is having a gigantic fighting force if you can’t use it in cases where moral dilemmas seem rather clear? This is the question now facing N.A.T.O. after it displayed such lack of interest in the Libyan conflict. “Iraq essentially broke the idea of a new world order based on an international community united under common basic precepts of minimally decent government. That breakage may not be permanent; the U.N. Security Council passed a strong Libya resolution with remarkable alacrity, and the International Criminal Court moved with unprecedented speed to open an investigation of war crimes in Libya.”
