In the wake of Tripoli's fall, the White House has been quick to characterize the U.S. participation in NATO's Libya intervention as a success, and perhaps even a template for future military interventions.  Nevermind that the administration is engaging in a bit of revisionist history (far from rallying a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the intervention, the U.S., for a time, was among those blocking a resolution, according to British and French diplomats).  Never mind that however full-throatedly the White House touts Libya as a model intervention, it is unlikely to apply that model anywhere else, including Syria.

These things aside, it is hardly surprising that the White House should tout Libya as a success.  This is a political season, and a fractious one at that. Foreign policy successes come few and far between for any president, and White House communications teams are invariably quick to declare victory with a conspicuous lack of subtlety.  Indeed, tactically speaking, the international intervention was a success:  Tripoli has fallen, and while Qadhafi remains elusive, his regime has crumbled.  While significant questions remain about the next phase of Libya's revolution, and while there is much to criticize regarding the timing and execution of American and NATO operations, the decision to intervene has been vindicated. 

Nevertheless, the way in which the Obama administration handled the Libya conflict is no model; it had positive and negative aspects, the full ramifications of which will not be clear for some time.  With the bulk of NATO's involvement likely concluded, it behooves U.S. policymakers to engage in a clear-eyed stock-taking of the Libya intervention to determine what to do, and what not to do, in future crises.

The advantages of the Obama administration's approach to the Libya intervention seem clear.  Not a single American life was lost, as far as we know.  In addition, the operation enjoyed broad international buy-in, which brings with it multiple benefits: the costs and responsibilities of the fighting were shared among coalition partners (though far from equally so); it had credibility globally, regionally, and in Libya itself insofar as NATO was perceived as supporting an indigenous uprising; the Libyan opposition is not strongly associated with any single international power, but has broad-based support (diplomatically, though notably not financially); and the burden of post-conflict reconstruction assistance does not fall on American shoulders alone. Finally, the intervention gave tangible if belated expression to President Obama's avowed support for the Arab Spring.

The disadvantages, however, are equally stark.  Foremost among these was the "leading from behind" mentality which has seemed to guide the Obama administration not only throughout the Libya conflict but also the Arab Spring broadly.  The administration has portrayed this approach as patiently assembling a coalition and allowing local partners such as the Libyan opposition to take the lead.  In the Middle East, however, the U.S. approach is viewed less charitably -- Washington is perceived as hanging back until an outcome seems clear or a decision is forced by events.  It was not necessary that the United States lead the charge against Qadhafi - that was appropriately the role of the Libyan opposition.  But Washington did not even lead the international coalition to support the opposition; instead, we seemed a reluctant partner.

From the U.S. reluctance to engage fully in the intervention flowed a number of problems which will have lingering effects.  First, the administration failed to make a coherent or compelling case to the American people and U.S. troops for the Libya intervention.  U.S. officials made clear that they wanted to see Qadhafi and his regime toppled and behind the scenes were likely keen to demonstrate support for the Arab Spring and firmness in the face of possible advances in the region by Iran and extremists.  However, they made no effort to secure a mandate or conduct military operations toward that end. Instead, international intervention was rhetorically justified on humanitarian grounds, which was hard to square with US and international inaction elsewhere around the globe.  As with Iraq, Afghanistan, and other conflicts past and future, the president owes Americans a clear and coherent explanation as to why and toward what objectives American soldiers are being put in harm's way and American resources expended. 

The American ambivalence toward the Libya intervention has also had reverberations overseas.  First and foremost, the lack of clear leadership in the coalition-building process led not only to a fractured alliance - Germany and Turkey, for example, initially exempted themselves - but also to ongoing poor coordination between the Libyan opposition and NATO, which was also hamstrung by its incongruous mandate.  For many months, NATO's activities appeared designed to enforce a stalemate, preventing regime forces from advancing but doing little to assist opposition forces in doing so.  In addition, Washington's reluctance to become involved in Libya -- despite the strength of international support, the weakness of Qadhafi's forces, and the compelling justification provided by his regime's activities -- sends a negative signal to the Iranian regime and others regarding Washington's stomach for confrontation.  It conveys instead the impression of an America that is increasingly unwilling or unable to exercise influence in the Middle East, a development with deeply troubling implications.

It's incredibly discouraging to see former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney vituperatively reopen disputes from George W. Bush's administration. His scorched-earth excoriation of critics makes little distinction between those who would recklessly endanger America and those who also had the country's -- and the president's -- best interests as their motivation. This cannot assist the conservative cause; in fact, it serves to remind us how much the vice president's actions have impeded acceptance of the very policies he advocates.

By his own testimony, Cheney supported, and continues to support, all the policies that most incensed the administration's critics and even some of its supporters: "enhanced interrogation techniques," the Guantánamo prison, politicization of intelligence, assertion of executive authority, sharp-edged uses of military might, and support for Iraqi expatriates as a government-in-waiting after the 2003 invasion. He denigrated both the policies (diplomatic engagement, working through international institutions) and the people (Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice) that argued his approach was unduly driving up the cost of achieving the president's aims.

Give Cheney his due: Many of these policies were and are essential to protect Americans from terrorist attacks. The proof of which is Barack Obama himself -- a candidate who ran for president on opposition to those policies, but then adopted nearly all of them once in office, including indefinite detention and trial by military tribunal.

But if Cheney deserves credit for staunchly advocating necessary policies, he also deserves considerable blame for crafting and enacting those policies in ways that increased the cost to the president for adopting them, and made them more difficult to sustain.

The most damaging example was Cheney's vociferous support for reclaiming executive authority instead of working with congressional leaders to pass legislation that would demonstrate broad political support and establish the basis for judicial review. It freighted terrorism policies with the added requirement of subordinating the other branches of government. As Ben Wittes (whose blog Lawfare is essential reading on these issues) has often argued, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, there was a bipartisan consensus in Congress -- as the authorizations for the use of military force showed -- and much that needed to be achieved could have been achieved with skillful engagement of the machinery of American democracy.

Executive privilege had consequences beyond setting solid foundations for sustaining the policies, too. As Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor powerfully argued at West Point in 2005, it left the U.S. military in the unfair position of being both "our combatants and our conscience," because the executive and legislative branches of government failed to provide them the proper framework for their actions.

But Cheney displays a contempt for Congress and those who don't agree with him to an extent that is unhealthy in a free society. The former vice president is now a private citizen. Conservatives who are public citizens, engaged in running for office and crafting policies, would do well to remember how much Cheney's approach hurt both the president he served and the causes he sought to advance. Having the right answer isn't good enough. The president and his cabinet must also engage the levers of democracy to build a broad base of support, especially when the policies have few good alternatives. His legacy has made it more difficult for conservatives to support and enact the very policies he advocated. 

With Japan changing prime ministers more often than the Washington Redskins change quarterbacks, it is hard to get too excited about Yoshihiko Noda, who just won the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) presidency and will shortly be selected by the Diet as Japan's sixth prime minister in as many years.

Noda faces huge hurdles: the Japanese economy has been languishing for most of two decades; two years into office, and the DPJ still has not been able to demonstrate the ability to execute on policy; the government is checkmated by opposition control of the Upper House of the Diet; and the Japanese voters have become even more cynical and negative about their ruling class than Americans have. Most political analysts figure things will be like this until a general election (required by 2013) shakes things up. 

But I have a little spring in my step now that Noda will be in charge. For one thing, he is a genuine national security conservative in the tradition of Shinzo Abe or his better known friend, former DPJ foreign minister Seiji Maehara (who lost in the DPJ election to Noda). Noda's father was a military man (Ground Self Defense Forces), which gives him a rare appreciation of the U.S.-Japan alliance and defense issues. Chinese and Korean newspapers are apprehensive because he has challenged the legitimacy of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, as did Abe and others on the right in Japan. But I'm not too worried. Noda is known as a careful pragmatist and will reach out to China and Korea the way Abe did when he became prime minister (the Japanese version of Nixon-goes-to-China).

Moreover, Noda is an outspoken free-trader and supporter of Japan's participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations and he is a fiscal conservative, advocating a prudent increase in the consumption tax as part of overall tax reform. And most encouraging, Noda won the DPJ election because he refused to kowtow to DPJ strongman Ichiro Ozawa, who continues to run interference against the internationalists even after being ejected from the party leadership in the wake of corruption charges.

The DPJ's first prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, was a dreamy populist who ruined almost everything he touched. His successor, the hapless Naoto Kan, moved away from the DPJ's original populist manifesto, but never did so with real conviction or understanding of the policy issues. Noda is a serious policy thinker who has consistently advocated the positions Japan now needs to move forward. The Japanese political system is still a terrible mess, but at least the quality of leadership is improving. 

The Spanish equivalent of chutzpah is "sin vergüenza." It's a phrase that comes to mind reading the transcript of President Obama's recent weekly address on "Getting America Back to Work."

The president once again signaled his support for pending free trade agreements (FTAs) with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea, but then proceeded to blame Congressional Republicans for ostensibly obstructing their final approval by refusing "to put country ahead of party." (Since he doesn't specifically name Republicans, one has to infer he is not speaking about Democrats.)

The audacity is breathtaking. In fact, the charge didn't escape notice by the Washington Post fact-checker, which admonished the President: "[w]e do think it is a highly selective recounting of...history for the president to suggest GOP lawmakers are blocking the deal because they are putting party before country."  

"Moreover," it adds, "Obama leaves the distinct impression that Congress is sitting on the bills, when in fact they have not yet been officially submitted for consideration."

The reason they haven't been submitted is that the White House knows that the deals will be approved on a straight up-and-down vote in both houses, since a significant number of Democrats support the deals as a way to stimulate production and create jobs.

But the White House's slow-roll is due to its deference to Big Labor, which opposes the deals and happens to be a key constituency of the president's party - and just exactly who is putting party ahead of country?

Indeed, since they were first negotiated under the Bush administration, opponents of the FTAs have shifted the goal posts so many times for final approval that it has been difficult to keep up.

The latest hoop the White House expects Republicans to jump through to placate Big Labor is renewing Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), a program designed to assist workers who are dislocated because of increased foreign trade, but which costs taxpayers $1.3 billion this year alone.  

After initially balking at yet another condition - and an additional $1 billion in federal subsidies in these times of budget austerity - Senate Republicans announced in August that they had reached a deal with the Democratic leadership on "a path forward" to vote on the three trade deals along with a renewal of TAA, an agreement that was supported by House leaders as well.

Under the agreement, it likely won't be until October when the deals will be taken up by Congress - which means anything can happen over the next several weeks. It certainly doesn't bode well that, with the outlines of an agreement on Capitol Hill to move forward, including an extension of TAA, the president felt compelled to take a gratuitous swipe at Republicans. It isn't clear what was it intended to accomplish other than to further inflame tensions on the Republican side.

Free trade agreements create jobs and keep the United States competitive in the dynamic and always evolving international economy. There is a strong bipartisan consensus on this on Capitol Hill. The only discordant note continues to be struck by a special interest group trying to hold the national interest hostage to its narrow agenda. It's long past time to move beyond politics as usual on international trade, and, yes, Mr. President, that means folks -- all folks -- in Washington putting country before party.

Amidst the many uncertainties about Libya's future post-Qaddafi, at least two things can be said. First, the Middle East and the world will be better off with the Qaddafi regime out of power. And second, virtually everyone was wrong in some way and at some point about the Libya operation. This includes the early naysayers who warned that Qaddafi would not be defeated, or that the war would result in a stalemate and divided Libya, or would be a folly of prohibitive costs. Yet also wrong were President Barack Obama's promises that the war would take "weeks, not months," or that it was merely a limited humanitarian intervention to protect civilians and not a regime change operation, or that it was not even a "war" at all.

Part of the problem besetting the early Libya debates, as I wrote earlier in this article for the German Marshall Fund, came from a facile use of history in which various analogies -- whether Rwanda and Bosnia, or Iraq and Somalia -- were wielded as polemics in dire warnings that Libya would be the "next [fill in the blank]." In fact, Libya was none of those, but rather its own unique circumstance that soon enough will become an analogy of its own for future foreign policy debates.

This in turn points to the problem with some of the early, breathless pronouncements in the wake of Qaddafi's defeat that Libya amounts to a "new way to wage war" or a vindication of "leading from behind." As my Foreign Policy colleagues such as Dan Drezner, Peter Feaver, and Kori Schake have pointed out from various angles, this amounts to sound-bite triumphalism and overlooks the unique aspects of the Libya operation as well the remaining hard tasks.

The Obama administration still deserves commendation for the role it played in helping topple Qaddafi. Even if dilatory, President Obama made the right call in deciding to intervene, and his team showed fortitude in seeing the operation through to the Qaddafi regime's demise, while managing the complexities of coalition warfare. The administration knows well the challenges that lie ahead in finishing the war, winning the peace, and helping reconstruct a stable and free Libya.

Three challenges in particular stand out:

1. NATO's inadequacies. While the operation eventually succeeded, it does not speak well of NATO's political and operational health. NATO's largest member state not named "America" (Germany), didn't even participate, and the leading members who did -- France and Britain -- found themselves exhausting their munitions and stretching their militaries thin in trying to topple a two-bit North African dictator whose own people were in open revolt. All while announcing even further reductions in their defense budgets. As former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker points out, the operation should prompt hard introspection more than champagne toasts at NATO headquarters.

2. Post-conflict reconstruction. Countless gallons of pundit ink have already been spilled recounting the "lessons" of recent and ongoing episodes such as Iraq and Afghanistan for post-conflict reconstruction. No doubt the Obama administration has taken these into account, and one silver lining to the prolonged Libya conflict may have been the additional time to do post-conflict planning, which I trust the administration has availed itself of. More interesting is the larger strategic question, which is: Does the United States have a national interest in helping build a stable, peaceful, and free Libya? As my Strauss Center colleague Jeremi Suri describes in his excellent new book on the history of American nation-building interventions, the United States has long been committed to maintaining an international system comprised of functioning nation-states. The competence and consequences of our various interventions form a mixed record, but the fact remains that promoting a stable international order of nation-states is a core American interest. Libya offers an opportunity to put the lessons of past efforts into practice.

3. A new regional strategy. Libya's significance lies not only in the removal of a vile dictator and the prospects of a better future for the Libyan people, but also for its regional ramifications, especially the uncertain trajectory of the Arab Spring. A Qaddafi victory would almost certainly have forestalled the Arab Spring; whether a post-Qaddafi Libya heralds enduring region-wide consequences is hopeful but not foreordained. And as I have written previously, the administration still faces challenging questions in its efforts to develop a new American strategy for the region. Such as: What type of regional order will best constrain Iran's hegemonic intentions? How can a free Syria be created, and play a positive regional role? What place will the strategic-yet-neglected Iraq have in the emerging Middle East? How can Saudi Arabia be encouraged to reform while remaining a key American partner? How can the regional tumult induce Turkey to re-align itself with American interests? Will the emerging assertiveness by Gulf states such as Qatar and UAE be channeled in positive directions?

The Arab Spring further hastened the erosion of the old regional order; it will take shrewd, principled, and creative diplomacy to help craft a new one.

When Nicolae Ceaucescu was brutally executed in 1989, then-Syrian leader Hafez el-Assad took note. Determined not to share the Romanian dictator's fate, he tightened his already vise-like grip on Syria, and never relaxed it until the day he died in 2000. His son, Bashar, whose career as a London-based ophthalmologist came to a sudden end when his brother Basil, heir apparent to the Syrian throne, was killed in a car crash in 1994, never sought to match the elder Assad's ruthlessness until the uprising earlier this year. What Qaddafi threatened to do to his opponents, Assad actually has been doing; but it is only in the past few weeks that the West, including the United States, has done anything more than wring its hands over Syrians who have been either killed or kidnapped (or both)  by Assad's troops and secret police.

Qaddafi's imminent fall has no doubt encouraged the Syrian opposition to continue its nationwide protests. It is unlikely to sway Assad to make any real concessions to the protesters. On the contrary, convinced that the Army still supports him, and much as his father did after Ceaucescu's fall, Bashar can be expected to redouble his efforts to retain his hold over Syria. He may not succeed, however, not because of the growing strength of the opposition, but rather because his Alawi supporters may turn on him.

The Alawis know that they can expect no mercy from the majority Sunni population if the Assad regime falls. They are doubly hated, because of their heretical religion, and their abuse of power. They also know time is running out for them, as it has for Qaddafi and his supporters. Their only hope is to remove Bashar and his entire leadership team and replace them with a seemingly more civilized Alawi face who would who would both be acceptable to the West and, even more important, negotiate with the opposition to ensure the survival of the community. The Alawis may not succeed, but they have few alternatives.

Whatever happens, Iran is likely to be the big loser, and with it Hezbollah as well. That would certainly be the case if the Sunnis took power in Damascus. Even were the Alawis somehow to maintain control, their freedom of maneuver is likely to be far more restricted vis a vis Iran than it has been for the past few decades: a weakened Alawi regime would be more susceptible to Turkish and Arab League pressure.

Washington's policy regarding Syria has toughened in recent days with President Obama's call for Assad's departure and the extension of sanctions to include petroleum purchases. The Europeans, more heavily dependent on Syrian oil, may at last be ready to tighten sanctions as well. Even Russia's opposition to any pressure on Assad is beginning to soften. All of these developments will affect Alawi calculations, much as they are encouraging the Syrian opposition. Ultimately, however, it will be the day of Qaddafi's actual fall that forces the Alawis' hand to dispense with Bashar while they still can. That day surely is not very far off.

Like my colleague Peter Feaver, I found Deputy National Security Advisor for Communications Ben Rhodes' interview with FP's Josh Rogin troubling. I share Peter's concern that the Obama Administration is early to the party of claiming credit and is disrespectful to the commitments and sacrifices our allies have made in other wars. But even beyond the unseemliness of claiming credit where others have fought and died, the Obama Administration's strategy of regime change neither encourages regime change nor addresses the hard cases where American national interests are threatened.

It is absolutely true that if local forces rebel and receive sufficient external support, they can change their countries, and that change has the greatest domestic legitimacy and can be achieved at a very low price to the United States. But it also means that we will not actually change regimes; we will advocate insurgencies against governments and assist at the margins. That is a legitimate strategy. It is not, however, one in which we should be claiming credit for the outcome. We have been marginal players in Libya, and our efforts do not merit the accolades the Administration is giving itself.

President Barack Obama's model of regime change is letting others do the work while we take credit for what they achieve. It's a cost-effective way to shape the international order, provided that local forces and other countries are willing to undertake the hard work. But do we think the experience Britain and France have had with the United States in Libya operations is likely to inspire them to the forefront of other regime changes? Do we think rebel forces in Syria or North Korea believe this model of regime change assists their cause? It is a strategy that depends fundamentally on others to create change, and accepts that we will not force a change of government -- no matter how evil or threatening to our interests that government is -- unless the conditions of domestic insurgency and multinational effort are in place.

Rhodes' approach remains innocent of consideration that it solves the easy problems, not the hard ones. Would Afghanistan have overthrown the Taliban or Iraqis overthrown Saddam Hussein on that model? Would the "growing international chorus of condemnation" that Secretary Clinton applauds for getting us "where we need to be" on Syria coalesce to undertake missions that demanding? In fact, we know the answer: it is not changing the regime in Syria, because that's too hard.

Which is to say that the Obama Administration's regime change strategy is actually not comparable to the Bush Administration's, because it isn't dealing with the hard cases. Before they can claim the laurel of a superior approach, the Obama Administration ought to have to answer how they would have dealt with Saddam Hussein remaining in violation of 17 U.N. Security Council resolutions, whose behavior toward U.N. weapons inspectors strongly suggested progress on nuclear weapons, who not only had chemical weapons and had used them on an enemy in war but had also used them on its own population, and all in the frightening aftermath of attacks on the United States. Nor is it clear from Ben Rhodes' self-congratulatory complacency how they would have dealt with the government of Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when there wasn't a rebel force or the capacity in other countries to undertake the necessary military operations.

The Obama Administration's regime change strategy suggests highly unsatisfactory outcomes for cases in which the United States has actual national security interests in the conflict.

Josh Rogin has a fascinating interview with White House national security communicator Ben Rhodes elsewhere on this site. To my eyes, it reads like the Obama Administration is continuing its unseemly end-zone dance of celebration over the toppling of Qaddafi. I understand their desire to get maximum credit while avoiding a "mission accomplished" photo-op that will come back to haunt them, and so far sympathetic reporters are obliging by reporting the braggadocio without editorializing about it much. But this interview dances close to the line of generating some "audio ops" that they may regret.

First, I am not sure that Rhodes has threaded the needle in terms of both taking credit for the things the administration did, without which this regime change would not have happened, and convincingly eschewing responsibility for whatever bad things happen from this point out. Rhodes tries to persuade the interviewer that there are only upsides to Obama's approach when in reality there are pros and cons. One of the cons is that the administration bears more responsibility for what happens next than it is willing to admit, while having less leverage over what happens next than it is willing to admit. In the long run, it may be the case that the pros will outweigh the cons in Libya, but there is a substantial amount of territory to cover between now and then and it is premature to declare this the model for all future operations. (By the way, I wish Rogin had asked Rhodes the obvious follow-up question: does this mean that the Obama Administration endorses the Doug Feith plan of light-footprint regime change in Iraq using Iraqi expats and rejects the conventional critique which holds that the Iraq operation unraveled because there were insufficient troops in the coalition invasion force and they did not establish sufficient order in the aftermath?)

Second, Rhodes continues a longstanding Democrat slur against the several dozen allies who fought, bled, and died at the American side in Afghanistan and Iraq:

Secondly, we put an emphasis on burden sharing, so that the U.S. wasn't bearing the brunt of the burden and so that you had not just international support for the effort, but also meaningful international contributions.

If I were a parent or loved one of any of the hundreds of allied soldiers who died -- according to iCasualties.org, some 179 UK troops alone in Iraq and 379 UK troops in Afghanistan -- the crack about "meaningful international contributions" would greatly anger me. In any case, it seems in exceptionally bad taste. I have never understood why Bush critics have gotten away with denigrating the contributions of allies in those two wars. Now that the critics are in office and directly responsible for maintaining good relations with our allies, I wish they would find more opportunities to praise the sacrifices that the allies made and make fewer derogatory comments about those coalition efforts.