Stephen M. Walt, professor of international affairs at Harvard University and co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, discusses the liberal interventionists and neoconservatives uniting in support of war in Libya; how the mission to protect Libyan civilians almost immediately became a mandate for regime change – despite claims to the contrary; fighting a preventative war based on anticipated massacres and imagined regional repercussions; the risk of moral hazard, where any and all “rebel” groups can demand help and protection – a bailout, so to speak; and how the US government somehow got on the right side of history by sort-of backing the Egyptian protesters at the last minute, after decades of stabbing them in the back.
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