We seem to have entered into a new era of the U.S. role in the world in which we take it upon ourselves to determine which world leaders are fit to serve and invite those unworthy to step down from power. We did this recently with our formerly good friend Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and with never-that-great-a-friend Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. In this latest example, President Obama announced today that the leader of Syria has lost his legitimacy and needs to step down. As The Washington Post reports:
President Obama on Thursday for the first time explicitly called on Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad to step down, a symbolically significant step intended to ratchet up pressure on the government five months after the start of the uprising in that country. Obama also issued an executive order immediately freezing all assets of the Syrian government subject to U.S. jurisdiction and prohibiting Americans from engaging in any transaction involving the government.
This comes after the Syrian leader’s bloody campaign to put down a rebellion inspired by the “Arab Spring” (in which he turned the Syrian military against his own people), prompted worldwide condemnation. In this video posted by the State Department, Secretary Clinton explains the reasons for the latest U.S. move:
I want to make it clear that I’m not siding with tyrants, merely pointing out this new development in the way that the U.S. deals with other countries. For much of our history we used the standard tools of diplomacy (sanctions, embargoes, recalling ambassadors) to register our dissatisfaction with foreign leaders and influence change. When diplomacy failed, we engaged in war to achieve our goals. Both, in their own way, respect the fundamental idea of sovereignty on which our present international system is based. We’ve dealt with tyrants before, as enemies, as allies, as trade partners, always stopping short of presuming to dictate the conditions of their tenure in power.
Perhaps some historical examples would better make my point. Imagine, for a moment, if FDR had announced that Stalin had lost legitimacy in Soviet Russia because of the millions of his countrymen killed in purges, pogroms, and forced relocations and that he should step down from power. Or if LBJ had announced that Mao Zedong had lost legitimacy in China because of the carnage of the Cultural Revolution and he should step down. In the context of those times such an announcement would have been absurd, and yet clearly something has changed because we have crossed that line. Now, we simply announce that a leader needs to step down as if it is our right to determine who rules. Is it our right?
Given the recent (and many) examples of American mismanagement of the global economic system, how long it will be before a world leader announces that President Obama has lost legitimacy and needs to step down? How, I wonder, would the American people react to that?
