Opinion You first,Europe

The difference said much about the Obama way when it comes to intervening in armed insurgencies — and his comfort in letting someone else lead the intervention. Caught between two searing experiences in the past two decades — America’s failure to do anything in Rwanda and its insistence,over the objection of key allies,on going into Iraq eight years ago — Obama has spent much of the past month experimenting with a third way.

In Libya,he has committed the United States,but only from the air and only from afar. The Europeans,and some of Obama’s political opponents at home,sense a lack of commitment. Inside the White House,the opposite argument is made — that after a bruising decade of misadventures,the United States is preserving American power for the moments when truly vital interests need to be protected,while teaching the rest of the world that it will have to police its own backyards.

But is this any way to fight a war? That depends in large part on what one considers to be the objective: protecting the population,ousting Col Muammar Gaddafi — whom Obama has said must go — or making a broader point that the US has once again entered a deeply nonideological,measure-the-cost phase in its foreign policy.

European officials,when promised anonymity,wring their hands that this is the first NATO operation since the creation of the alliance a half-century ago in which the United States has declined to take the lead. Yet the question may be not whether the US leads,but whether it puts its credibility on the line by seeming to enter the conflict half-heartedly. “The problem is the gap between US objectives and what we are willing to do to accomplish them,” Richard N. Haass,the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Haass is making the case that President Obama is violating the Powell Doctrine: If you elect to use the US military,you must do so with such overwhelming force that there is no doubt of the outcome. In reality,the rule has been violated often since,but this White House seems intent on creating an Obama Corollary: The Powell Doctrine does not apply when the United States joins a coalition with countries that have a larger stake in the outcome than Washington does. They make no bones about the fact that American power is limited by commitments elsewhere. The message to Europe is: Thanks for the invitation,but it’s your neighbourhood,your worry about refugees,and primarily your problem.

Inside the White House,however,there is more than just a ranking of national interests at play. The caution surrounding Libya grows from a central lesson of America’s decade at war: When the United States is the driving force of a revolution,it owns the outcome,good or bad.

In Libya,the problem is accentuated by the fact that it’s anybody’s guess who will be running the country after Colonel Gaddafi is gone. Thus the huge resistance in the Pentagon to giving any kind of lethal weaponry to the rebels,at least until someone can figure out who they are and teach them how to shoot straight. So far,the US is providing uniforms and canteens to the rebels,Gates said last week,adding with a knowing smile,“I’m not worried about our canteen technology falling into the wrong hands.”