Daniel Larison clears up some of my earlier confusion regarding why the Obama administration was courting a UN vote against Libya:
Perhaps one reason that there is some confusion about the administrationâ??s position is that no previous administration has successfully moved other states to take up these sorts of collective security responsibilities without major U.S. participation. We donâ??t quite know what weâ??re watching, because previous administrations havenâ??t seriously tried to encourage burden-sharing. Itâ??s possible Obama isnâ??t doing this, but it would help make sense of what he has been doing.If the U.S. stayed out of a conflict in the past, other states for the most part werenâ??t clamoring to enter it, but if the U.S. were intent on entering a conflict it was able to bring along other states in support. Regardless of more public reluctance on the part of the U.S., there is much more clamoring for action from some European and Arab states where Libya is concerned, so it may be that the U.S. is trying to facilitate action by others, or it may be that the U.S. is willing to give the clamoring governments enough diplomatic rope with which to hang themselves.
I do admit that this crossed my mind - that this was a clever diplomatic strategy to effectively pass the burden of action onto other states, with the U.S. in a supporting role. If that is indeed the case - if the administration's tacit support galvanizes others states to do the majority of the heavy lifting (i.e. the bombing and the paying for) with the U.S. quietly offering intelligence, then it does indeed make more sense. In a more ideal world, these kinds of regional coalitions are what the U.S. should be supporting. I guess we'll have to see whether that is indeed their true intention and if so, if the gambit actually works.
