A foreign policy of leading from behind

Obama may be moving toward something resembling a doctrine. One of his advisers described the president's actions in Libya as “leading from behind.” #8212; Ryan Lizza, The New Yorker, May 2

Lizza's painstaking two-year chronicle of the Obama foreign policy provides an accurate description, from the president's shocking passivity during Iran's 2009 Green Revolution to his dithering on Libya, acting at the very last moment, then handing off to a bickering coalition, yielding the current bloody stalemate. It's been a policy of hesitation, delay and indecision, marked by plaintive appeals to the (fictional) #8220;international community#8221; to do what only America can.

But underlying that style, assures this Obama adviser, there really are ideas. Indeed, #8220;two unspoken beliefs,#8221; explains Lizza. #8220;That the relative power of the U.S. is declining, as rivals like China rise, and that the U.S. is reviled in many parts of the world.#8221;

Amazing. This is why Obama is deliberately diminishing American presence, standing and leadership in the world?

Take proposition one: We must #8220;lead from behind#8221; because U.S. relative power is declining. Even if you accept the premise, it's a complete non sequitur. What does China's rising GDP have to do with American buck-passing on Libya, misjudging Iran, appeasing Syria?

True, China is rising. But first, it is the only power of any significance rising militarily relative to us. Russia is recovering from levels of military strength so low that it barely registers globally. And European power is in true decline (see their performance #8212; except for the British #8212; in Afghanistan and their current misadventures in Libya).

And second, the challenge of a rising Chinese military is still exclusively regional. It has zero effect significantly beyond China's coast. It cannot project power globally. It might in the future #8212; but by what logic should that paralyze us today?

Proposition two: We must lead from behind because we are reviled. Pray tell, when were we not? During Vietnam? Or earlier, under Eisenhower? When his vice president was sent on a good will trip to Latin America, he was spat upon and so threatened by the crowds that he had to cut short his trip. Or maybe later, under the blessed Reagan? The Reagan years were marked by vast demonstrations in the capitals of our closest allies denouncing America as a warmongering menace taking the world into nuclear winter.

It is the fate of any assertive superpower to be envied, denounced and blamed for everything under the sun. Nothing has changed. Moreover, for a country so deeply reviled, why during the massive Middle East unrest have anti-American demonstrations been such a rarity?

Who truly reviles America the hegemon? The world that Obama lived in and shaped him intellectually: the elite universities; his Hyde Park milieu; the church he attended for two decades, ringing with sermons more virulently anti-American than anything heard in today's full-throated uprising of the Arab Street.

Other presidents take anti-Americanism as a given, rather than evidence of American malignancy, believing #8212; as do most Americans #8212; in the rightness of our cause and the nobility of our intentions. Obama thinks anti-Americanism is a verdict on America's fitness for leadership. I would suggest that #8220;leading from behind#8221; is a verdict on Obama's fitness for leadership.

Leading from behind is not leading. It is abdicating. It is also an oxymoron. Yet a sympathetic journalist, channeling an Obama adviser, elevates it to a doctrine. The president is no doubt flattered. The rest of us are merely stunned.

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