Bloggingheads: Shadi Hamid vs. Gregory Gause on Libya

When Libyan rebels seized the capital of Tripoli last month, many commentators saw the fall of Muammar al-Qaddafi’s regime as validation of the Western military intervention that had been authorized by the U.N. Security Council on humanitarian grounds. University of Vermont Professor F. Gregory Gause, however, emphatically does not. In a Bloggingheads.tv diavlog, Gause debates ...

When Libyan rebels seized the capital of Tripoli last month, many commentators saw the fall of Muammar al-Qaddafi's regime as validation of the Western military intervention that had been authorized by the U.N. Security Council on humanitarian grounds. University of Vermont Professor F. Gregory Gause, however, emphatically does not. In a Bloggingheads.tv diavlog, Gause debates the intervention with Brookings Institution fellow Shadi Hamid. This exchange crystallizes their disagreement:

When Libyan rebels seized the capital of Tripoli last month, many commentators saw the fall of Muammar al-Qaddafi’s regime as validation of the Western military intervention that had been authorized by the U.N. Security Council on humanitarian grounds. University of Vermont Professor F. Gregory Gause, however, emphatically does not. In a Bloggingheads.tv diavlog, Gause debates the intervention with Brookings Institution fellow Shadi Hamid. This exchange crystallizes their disagreement:

In this excerpt, Hamid and Gause debate whether it matters if the United States is on "the right side of history" in the eyes of Arabs:

And here Gause contends that the logic of Hamid’s argument could get the United States entangled in conflicts not just in Libya, but beyond the Middle East:

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