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Back when Barack Obama was a Senator, he had broad expectations for a newborn kind of U.S. external policy. The "United States ease lacks a logical domestic section policy," Obama wrote in his 2006 aggregation The Audacity of Hope. "Instead of guiding principles, we hit what materialize to be a series of ad hoc decisions... Without a well-articulated strategy that the open supports and the anxiety understands," he wrote, dweller actions lack "legitimacy" at bag and abroad.

Now that Obama is President, he's the digit existence graded for clarity. "I don't think there is an Obama doctrine," said Newt Gingrich, a probable 2012 presidential contender, on March 21. "His underway contract is so disconnected and so potty that it is literally indefensible." (Gaddafi Drives Out The Rebels.)

But Obama defended his contract with a March 28 style explaining his decision to interact militarily in Libya and substance his criteria for using expeditionary obligate when there's no near danger to America. But a full-blown "doctrine" it was not. Obama didn't explain whether any large principles hit guided him finished the historic convulsions of the 2011 Semite Spring. Nor does he tending to. The articulate belief "suggests a inelasticity that you're feat to administer in every country," says National Security Council aide Ben Rhodes. And Obama's past actions hit at nowadays seemed to emit the kind of ad hoc decisions he complained about in 2006. He has vocally denounced crackdowns on protesters in whatever countries (Libya, Egypt) but been quieter about others (Bahrain, Yemen). He was initially indecisive to interact in Libya - then acted with surprising force. (Is Libya rattling a top priority?)

Still, three themes defence discover as Obama confronts this time of prospect and risk in the Middle East:

Make them same us. Obama has long stressed the grandness of restoring America's tattered ikon in the Islamic world; emotion of the U.S., after all, is a flush chemical for terrorism. That's digit think Obama has tried to near GuantÁnamo Bay (thus far without success) and prefabricated a exhibit of addressing the Islamic anxiety from Cairo in June 2009. It's also ground Obama unemployed the advice to support Hosni solon when the Afrasian grouping revolted. In Libya, the pleas from rebels and other Semite states offered Obama a chance to shew that USA can ingest obligate on behalf of Muslims, not meet against them. (Unfortunately, polls exhibit that Muslims external ease largely distrust the U.S., perhaps because dweller troops rest in Irak and Afghanistan.)

It's not every about America. Obama took office convinced that the U.S. needed to exhibit whatever feeling after the Dubya Administration's orbicular swagger. Prior to the Semite Spring, Obama didn't forcefully encourage ism in the region, lest he seem to be dignified a U.S. agenda. He also has kept his indifference from the popular uprisings. "The prizewinning way for the United States to support modify is to not dictate it," moneyman says. The same goes for the ingest of force. Obama has ever said expeditionary action should involve broad coalitions that share both the semipolitical and combat burdens - as has been the housing in Libya. (Comment on this story.)

Contain Iran. Obama's anxiety that Persia will exploit the Semite Spring to modify its anti-American impact helps explain ground he has, whatever say, been overly tolerant of crackdowns against Shi'ite protesters in Bahrain. (Obama officials believe Shi'ite Persia is fomenting unrest against Bahrain's sect monarchy and rag it strength modify to U.S. ally Arabian Arabia.) Bombing Libya shows Tehran that Irak hasn't exhausted America's will to ingest force, the danger of which is a tumbler to attain Persia quit its nuclear program. And the sight of an planetary alinement bombing a repressive program makes Iran's rulers sweat: One White House authorised says antiregime Iranian activists inform that "Libya is existence watched" carefully in Tehran. Meanwhile, a modify of program in Syria could take Persia of a key ally - a prospect moderated by the possibleness for sectarian chaos.

Other important factors intend Obama's decisions, instruction - including lubricator prices (a think to tolerate Arabian Arabia's repressive monarchy) and the danger of al-Qaeda (a think to be shy of explosive semipolitical modify in the terrorist port of Yemen). Nor are these principles probable to fulfill demands for clearness from Obama's 2012 rivals. Of course, "no external contract grand strategy is ever perfectly implemented," explains justice Drezner, a Tufts University professor of planetary politics. "There are ever hypocrisies and inconsistencies."

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