The Moral Case for OOD

Jerome Slater, a research scholar at the University at Buffalo, argues the moral justification for intervening in Libya:

A common fallacy among those who regard themselves as hardheaded “realists” is to dismiss the role of morality in foreign policy decisions and claim it is all about narrow interests, especially economic interests, and most especially, oil interests. Such cynicism, however, is itself a kind of naivete, a reductionism unequal to the complexity of war-and-peace issues.

In the Libyan case, the argument that it’s all about oil is particularly unpersuasive. First, only a very small amount of our imported oil comes from Libya, and in any case for many years Gadhafi has been a reliable supplier, both to us and to our NATO allies. Moreover, in recent years, he has played a valuable intelligence-gathering role in the war against terrorism, especially al-Qaida. So if narrow self-interests really explained the U. S. intervention, we should be fighting to save Gadhafi, not to overthrow him.

In short, there is every reason to believe that genuine moral concerns were an important component — probably the most important component — in explaining the administration’s decision to intervene in Libya.

Read the column in the Buffalo New here.