| The United States foreign policy has gradually shifted from isolationism to international intervention since its founding in 1776. It has performed hundreds of international interventions in the past 200 years. “Bush Doctrine” had a profound impact on the US’s domestic and foreign policy. Due to Two long-lasting wars and the financial crisis in 2008, American national power declined and the United States has been trapped into a quagmire in the grand strategy. In 2009, the Obama administration adjusted the US foreign intervention mode, raising the threshold for foreign intervention, using the responsibility to protect in practice, pursuing the neo-interventionism of "humanitarian protection", and leading military activities from behind. What behind this shift was the slow decline of US’s overall national power along with the difficulty of economic recovery and the domestic political rivalry among different parties. The relative decline of the United States national power directly resulted in its decreased sense of international responsibility and increased prudence on its foreign intervention policy.During the Libya war in 2011, the United States allied with other states implemented military intervention in Libya to support the opposition and eventually overthrew the Qaddafi regime. In this war, the United States implemented a new intervention policy with new, leading the military activities from behind. At the same time, the senior officials of US National Security Council had a heated debate on whether the US should conduct the intervention in Libya and how to intervene the crisis in Libya. Both the advocates and the opponents had put forward their own ideas and the President Barack Obama made the final decision of exerting military intervention on Libya. However, this intervention is "behind the scenes leadership" intervention, which reflects the US’s new change of foreign intervention mode when the US was experiencing the decline of national power. |
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