Obama on regime change: Better than Bush?

Like my colleague Peter Feaver, I found Deputy National Security Advisor for Communications Ben Rhodes’ interview with FP‘s Josh Rogin troubling. I share Peter’s concern that the Obama Administration is early to the party of claiming credit and is disrespectful to the commitments and sacrifices our allies have made in other wars. But even beyond the unseemliness of claiming credit where others have fought and died, the Obama Administration’s strategy of regime change neither encourages regime change nor addresses the hard cases where American national interests are threatened.

It is absolutely true that if local forces rebel and receive sufficient external support, they can change their countries, and that change has the greatest domestic legitimacy and can be achieved at a very low price to the United States. But it also means that we will not actually change regimes; we will advocate insurgencies against governments and assist at the margins. That is a legitimate strategy. It is not, however, one in which we should be claiming credit for the outcome. We have been marginal players in Libya, and our efforts do not merit the accolades the Administration is giving itself.

President Barack Obama’s model of regime change is letting others do the work while we take credit for what they achieve. It’s a cost-effective way to shape the international order, provided that local forces and other countries are willing to undertake the hard work. But do we think the experience Britain and France have had with the United States in Libya operations is likely to inspire them to the forefront of other regime changes? Do we think rebel forces in Syria or North Korea believe this model of regime change assists their cause? It is a strategy that depends fundamentally on others to create change, and accepts that we will not force a change of government — no matter how evil or threatening to our interests that government is — unless the conditions of domestic insurgency and multinational effort are in place.

Rhodes’ approach remains innocent of consideration that it solves the easy problems, not the hard ones. Would Afghanistan have overthrown the Taliban or Iraqis overthrown Saddam Hussein on that model? Would the "growing international chorus of condemnation" that Secretary Clinton applauds for getting us "where we need to be" on Syria coalesce to undertake missions that demanding? In fact, we know the answer: it is not changing the regime in Syria, because that’s too hard.

Which is to say that the Obama Administration’s regime change strategy is actually not comparable to the Bush Administration’s, because it isn’t dealing with the hard cases. Before they can claim the laurel of a superior approach, the Obama Administration ought to have to answer how they would have dealt with Saddam Hussein remaining in violation of 17 U.N. Security Council resolutions, whose behavior toward U.N. weapons inspectors strongly suggested progress on nuclear weapons, who not only had chemical weapons and had used them on an enemy in war but had also used them on its own population, and all in the frightening aftermath of attacks on the United States. Nor is it clear from Ben Rhodes’ self-congratulatory complacency how they would have dealt with the government of Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when there wasn’t a rebel force or the capacity in other countries to undertake the necessary military operations.

The Obama Administration’s regime change strategy suggests highly unsatisfactory outcomes for cases in which the United States has actual national security interests in the conflict.