In a remarkable statement of foreign policy myopia and domestic political pandering, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney announced last week that the United States should largely subordinate its Middle East policy-making to Israel. In response to a reporter's question about moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, Romney said (my emphasis):

The actions that I will take will be actions recommended and supported by Israeli leaders. I don't seek to take actions independent of what our allies think is best, and if Israel's leaders thought that a move of that nature would be helpful to their efforts, then that's something I'll be inclined to do. But again, that's a decision which I would look to the Israeli leadership to help guide. I don't think America should play the role of the leader of the peace process, instead we should stand by our ally. Again, my inclination is to follow the guidance of our ally Israel, as to where our facilities and embassies would exist.

This statement is especially remarkable in light of Romney's earlier statements emphasizing the importance of U.S. leadership in world affairs. In his speech at The Citadel in early October, he said:

God did not create this country to be a nation of followers. America is not destined to be one of several equally balanced global powers. America must lead the world, or someone else will. Without American leadership, without clarity of American purpose and resolve, the world becomes a far more dangerous place, and liberty and prosperity would surely be among the first casualties.

Yet when it comes to the Middle East, Romney seems to think the United States should not exercise leadership, but instead do pretty much whatever Israel's leaders want.

As I've noted repeatedly, politicians who say things like this are actually false friends of Israel, because they are helping keep that country on its present self-destructive course.

Of course, the idea that you would simply do whatever one's allies wanted is at odds with the basic notion that a president's primary commitment is advancing America's national interest. Because no two states have identical interests, there are going to be moments when even close allies disagree and when the stronger of the two should either use its leverage to alter the weaker ally's behavior or at a minimum decline to support actions it thinks are unwise. What you don't do is simply blindly follow any ally's advice or preferences, no matter how much you might like them. Among other things, that's why formal alliances often include "escape clauses" of various sorts, so that allies don't get "entrapped" by prior commitments.

Read on

The UN Security Council has authorized the use of force to prevent the loyalist forces backing Muammar al-Qaddafi from moving on the rebel stronghold of Benghazi. Given some of the statements Qaddafi has made in recent days -- in effect threatening some sort of bloodbath against anyone who does not surrender to his troops -- this reaction isn't all that surprising. It is one thing to decide that an authoritarian crackdown is ultimately not worth the risk of war, but rather different to turn a blind eye when a dictator with a very checkered past starts threatening mass killings. Nonetheless, I have three comments to make about this latest turn of events.

First, as I wrote a few days ago, this really ought to be a European operation, because Europe has far more significant strategic interests at stake than we do. The United States could provide both diplomatic and logistical back-up, but this is an ideal opportunity for Europeans to learn that they should stop adopting lofty moral positions and then expect Uncle Sucker to do the heavy lifting. U.S. insistence that Arab forces participate in any future operation strikes me as exactly right; the last thing that either Europe or America wants is to be seen as replaying past colonial interventions in some new guise.

Second, the best hope here is that the onset of airstrikes quickly demoralizes the loyalist forces, tips the balance of resolve back toward the rebels, and maybe even convinces Qaddafi to blow town. This might happen, of course, but there are some reasons to be skeptical. Back in 1999, Madeleine Albright thought a few days of airstrikes would convince Slobodan Milosevic to capitulate in the Kosovo War, but the war actually dragged on weeks and he surrendered only after his Russian patrons withdrew their support and convinced him to cut a deal. The problem is that Qaddafi doesn't have a lot of attractive options besides fighting on, which is precisely why he's chosen to act as he has.

Furthermore, using airpower against Qaddafi's army isn't a simple matter, particularly if they taken some elementary precautions, like dispersing or camouflaging equipment. We can bomb airfields and ground air assets, and probably do a number on his command-and-control system, but it's not clear how much that would affect his ability to conduct ground operations against the lightly armed and poorly trained rebel forces. The U.S. Air Force had a lot of trouble finding and destroying Serb military targets during the Kosovo war, and most of the damage it did came from attacks on fixed targets like bridges and power grids.

Let's also remember that we are going to miss some targets and inflict some collateral damage too (remember that Chinese embassy in Belgrade?). As far as I know, we don't have spotters on the ground to do laser target designation, and sending special forces to perform that task has obvious risks of its own. If Qaddafi's forces move into populated areas than even precision guided weapons could kill a lot of innocent bystanders. In fact, going after his ground forces is likely to require attack helicopters and other short-range aircraft (not strategic bombers), and that means using carrier aviation. Which in turn means Uncle Sam. My point is that this situation doesn't seem well-suited to the kind of devastating air assault that we conducted with heavy bombers against the Iraqi army at the start of Desert Storm, or even the adroit and successful air and special forces campaign that ousted the Taliban in 2001-2002.

Third, this whole debate on Libya underscores the importance of something that enthusiastic war hawks always forget: opportunity costs. Just imagine how different this discussion might be if the United States hadn't already fought a long, costly, and unsuccessful war in Iraq, and if we weren't now bogged down in another quagmire in Afghanistan. For that matter, it would look different if Barack Obama had wisely chosen to get out of Afghanistan back in 2009, so that the U.S. military could start rebuilding itself after a decade or war. If we do go into Libya, and it ends up being harder than we think, and then something serious happens somewhere else (North Korea, the South China Sea, Sudan, the Horn of Africa, Mexico, etc.), what do we do then?

It is obviously excruciating to watch a tyrant like Qaddafi defy a popular uprising, and kill his own countrymen solely for the purpose of defending his egomaniacal rule. Let us therefore hope that this politico-military equivalent of a Hail Mary pass will work. Let us also give some credit to Obama's diplomacy: instead of making this yet another impulsive American crusade, he has insisted that the United States be part of a genuine, diverse international coalition. He's not dragging the country to war; he's waited until others have been positively begging us to do something. If it succeeds, we can all be pleased. If it goes badly, or proves more difficult than we think, at least the United States won't be bearing all of the responsibility or all of the costs. That's something. But we will be bearing some of the burden, and it's by no means obvious that it will be worth it.

UPDATE:  In an encouraging sign, the Qaddafi regime has reacted to the UN resolution by declaring an immediate cease-fire, which suggests that prospect of outside intervention has induced some second thoughts about his campaign to crush the rebellion by force.  The offer has been rejected by the Western powers, who are reportedly demaind concrete steps (such as a withdrawal off his forces from Benghazi) and not just words.  This diplomatic dance shows just how uncertain and open-ended this whole business could be: Qaddafi may be unable to retake the whole country now, but the rebels may not be able to force him out either in the absence of direct outside involvement (possibly including troops on the ground).  And if that happens, we could be back in the business of occupying a Muslim country that is internally divided and has been severely damaged by decades of misrule and economic sanctions. For a good analysis, see FP's Marc Lynch here.

Last Friday the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council Resolution condemning Israel's continued expansion of settlements in the occupied territory of the West Bank. The resolution didn't question Israel's legitimacy, didn't declare that "Zionism is racism," and didn't call for a boycott or sanctions. It just said that the settlements were illegal and that Israel should stop building them, and called for a peaceful, two-state solution with "secure and recognized borders. The measure was backed by over 120 countries, and 14 members of the security council voted in favor. True to form, only the United States voted no.

There was no strategic justification for this foolish step, because the resolution was in fact consistent with the official policy of every president since Lyndon Johnson. All of those presidents has understood that the settlements were illegal and an obstacle to peace, and each has tried (albeit with widely varying degrees of enthusiasm) to get Israel to stop building them.

Yet even now, with the peace process and the two-state solution flat-lining, the Obama administration couldn't bring itself to vote for a U.N. resolution that reflected the U.S. government's own position on settlements. The transparently lame explanation given by U.S. officials was that the security council isn't the right forum to address this issue. Instead, they claimed that the settlements issue ought to be dealt with in direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians, and that the security council should have nothing to say on the issue.

This position is absurd on at least two grounds. First, the expansion of settlements is clearly an appropriate issue for the security council to consider, given that it is authorized to address  obvious threats to international peace and security. Second, confining this issue to "direct talks" doesn't make much sense when those talks are going nowhere. Surely the Obama administration recognizes that its prolonged and prodigious effort to get meaningful discussions going have been a complete bust? It is hard to believe that they didn't recognize that voting "yes" on the resolution might be a much-needed wake-up call for the Israeli government, and thus be a good way to get the peace process moving again? Thus far, all that Obama's Middle East team has managed to do in two years is to further undermine U.S. credibility as a potential mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, and to dash the early hopes that the United States was serious about "two states for two peoples." And while Obama, Mitchell, Clinton, Ross, and the rest of the team have floundered, the Netanyahu government has continued to evict Palestinian residents from their homes, its bulldozers and construction crews continuing to seize more and more of the land on which the Palestinians hoped to create a state.

Needless to say, the United States is all by its lonesome on this issue. Our fellow democracies -- France, Germany, Great Britain, Brazil, South Africa, India, and Colombia -- all voted in favor of the resolution, but not the government of the Land of the Free. And it's not as if Netanyahu deserved to be rewarded at this point, given how consistently he has stiffed Obama and his Middle East team.

Read on