No, Libya’s Not a Core National Security Interest. But So What?
For those with memories that exceed the half-life of a midyear election cycle, there was a tinny ring to gripes from lawmakers and pundits about how President Obama was dragging the nation into a war with no vital interests at stake. Foreign policy specialists like former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and Sen. Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have insisted there is nothing in Libya worth a major U.S.-led military operation. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, meanwhile, has written that Libya’s proximity to core U.S. interests is “tangential at best.”
Spot on, but so what?