A supreme emphasis on multilateralism, a deliberate movement through international institutions and a limited war with murky aims — this is the Obama Doctrine.

Several weeks into Moammar al Gadhafi’s slaughter of thousands of his own people, President Barack Obama’s willingness to employ military might has come into focus. The United States is playing a supporting role in Operation Odyssey Dawn — led by Britain and France, endorsed by the United Nations and welcomed by Libya’s rebels.

Throughout the past several weeks, the president has felt pressure from both sides of the political spectrum. Hawkish Republicans teamed up with liberal Democrats fixated on human rights, urging Obama to take decisive action.

Hesitant to spearhead a third major military operation and opposed to sending ground forces to Libya, Obama authorized American airstrikes against Gadhafi’s forces on Saturday — his first military action aside from inherited wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama’s management of the Libyan crisis presents a stark contrast to President George W. Bush, who was prone to unilateral action — be it initiating the Iraq War, rejecting the Kyoto Protocol or withdrawing from an antiballistic missile treaty with Russia.

Throughout the 2008 campaign and even into the early stages of his administration, Obama perfected the art of anti-Bush. Harshly criticizing his predecessor for recklessly starting wars without sufficient international support, Obama promised a radically different approach. And he has followed through. But merely assembling a broad coalition of support should not be seen as an assurance of military success or moral righteousness.

Rejected by many conservatives as a means to restrain the top international superpower, Obama views multilateralism in a different light. He is more than willing to follow the French into war.

Although Obama failed to consult his own legislative branch before moving ahead with the airstrikes, his administration was certain to pursue the appropriate channels within the United Nations. Unsurprisingly, this has not gone over well with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in Congress who question the legality of being passed over in favor of an international body.

Putting aside constitutional and legal concerns, there are several practical problems with this approach. If Obama’s foreign policy objective was to infuse coldhearted realism in place of Bush’s naïve idealism about freedom and democracy, the respectable choice could have been made to avoid any sort of intervention in Libya — a country without much effect on the United States.

But it makes no sense to twiddle your thumbs for weeks, allow the Libyan death count to skyrocket and wait for the international community to take the lead before finally engaging in an act of war. This offers the worst elements of both intervention and isolation.

The aims of this war are questionable at best. Clear objectives and benchmarks for success are absent. Sound familiar? Obama’s confusing public statements have waffled back and forth, sometimes urging Gadhafi to step down and other times signaling he may be able to retain control.

If the fighting is protracted, what is the appropriate response? What happens if the ‘broad coalition of allies’ fails to accomplish its goals? Will Obama be able to refrain from unilaterally escalating American involvement? This is hardly an exhaustive list of the problems with such a multilateral excursion in North Africa.

It would be foolish to argue against the benefits of an international consensus. But the multilateral obsession certainly has its drawbacks. And there is rich irony in leftist desperation for support from the likes of China and Russia when it comes to removing a dictator.

Now that Obama is entering his third year in office, the Obama Doctrine is beginning to crystallize. A pacifist, he is not — we’ve known that since the troop surge in Afghanistan. Obama is a committed multilateralist, and this may actually be worse.

Jimmy Paul is a senior political science major. His column appears every Tuesday, and he can be reached at jdpaul01@syr.edu.

Published on March 20, 2011 at 12:00 pm