There’s no such thing as imperialism-lite, Obama. Libya has shown that once again

So Barack Obama thinks Britain in 2011 left Libya in chaos – and besides it does not pull its weight in the world. Britain thinks that a bit rich, given the shambles America left in Iraq. Then both sides say sorry. They did not mean to be rude.

Thus do we wander across the ethical wasteland of the west’s wars of intervention. We blame and we name-call. We turn deaf ears to the cries of those whose lives we have destroyed. Then we kiss and make up – to each other. Obama was right first time round about Libya’s civil war. He wanted to keep out. As he recalls to the Atlantic magazine, Libya was “not so at the core of US interests that it makes sense for us to unilaterally strike against the Gaddafi regime”. He cooperated with Britain and France, but on the assumption that David Cameron would clear up the resulting mess. That did not happen because Cameron had won his Falklands war and could go home crowing.

Obama is here describing all the recent “wars of choice”.

America had no “core interest” in Afghanistan or Iraq, any more than Britain had in Libya. When a state attacks another state and destroys its law and order, morally it owns the mess. There is no such thing as imperialism-lite. Remove one fount of authority and you must replace and sustain another, as Europe has done at vast expense in Bosnia and Kosovo.

America and Britain both attacked countries in the Middle East largely to satisfy the machismo and domestic standing of two men, George Bush and Tony Blair. The result has been mass killing, destruction and migration on a scale not seen, at least outside Africa, since the second world war. In this despicable saga, Cameron’s Libyan venture was a sideshow, though one that has destabilised northAfrica and may yet turn it into another Islamic State caliphate. It is his Iraq.