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Like archeologists
with an exciting discovery, or clerics considering a new commandment,
some Americans spent this week analysing what they called ‘The Obama
Doctrine,’ closely enough to annoy President Barack Obama himself.

“I think it’s
important not to take this particular situation and then try to project
some sort of Obama Doctrine,” he told an interviewer on NBC TV.

This ‘particular
situation’ is Libya, where the president has committed American
airpower to protect civilians in the rebellion against Moammar Gadhafi.

Under pressure to
explain his apparently sudden decision, Obama gave a nationally
televised address, arguing that the international effort to protect
innocent people from slaughter was a moral imperative, even without
narrowly defined U.S. interests or security at stake.

American scholars
and pundits have long adorned presidents’ biggest decisions and
broadest instincts about the use of force with the title of ‘doctrine,’
as if they were articles of faith.

Whatever you want
to call them, presidential doctrines do tend to have an enduring impact
on American policy and, as a result, on the entire world.

The first one many
historians cite was the Monroe Doctrine, President James Monroe’s 19th
century decision to establish and ensure Washington’s unrivalled
influence in the entire western hemisphere.

The most recent was
President George Bush’s determination after the 9/11 attacks of 2001 to
fight all terrorism worldwide, famous as the “Bush Doctrine.”

So has Libya
revealed an Obama Doctrine? Some observers say that the decision to
intervene militarily in a country that poses no direct danger to the
U.S. or its interests, suggests it has.

The president’s own
speech said he would not attempt unilateral regime change, but is
willing to contemplate quick military action, with limited means and
goals, in cooperation with America’s allies, for purely humanitarian
reasons.

“There will be
times,” he said, “when our safety is not directly threatened, but our
interests and our values are. Sometimes, the course of history poses
challenges that threaten our common humanity and our common security –
responding to natural disasters, for example; or preventing genocide
and keeping the peace.”

Obama says that
Libya isn’t an example of his plans for other places. But we may have
heard the clear expression of the Obama Doctrine from the president
himself. Historians are no doubt taking note.

Jonathan Mann
presents Political Mann on CNN International each Friday at 18:30
(CAT), Saturday at 3pm and 9pm (CAT), and Sunday at 10am (CAT).