Success, despite what some pundits suggest, hardly guarantees Obama’s re-election. But it does choke off one Republican attack. It’s not a good week to publish a story complaining that the President is “Leading from Behind”. ~Alex Massie

I have seen some version of this several times this week. It needs to be emphasized that the “leading from behind” phrase comes from an administration official speaking to Ryan Lizza, and it is a plausible summary of the description of leadership that Obama offered in his March 28 address on Libya. Obama said:

In such cases, we should not be afraid to act, but the burden of action should not be America’s alone. As we have in Libya, our task is instead to mobilize the international community for collective action, because contrary to the claims of some, American leadership is not simply a matter of going it alone and bearing all of the burden ourselves. Real leadership creates the conditions and coalitions for others to step up, as well, to work with allies and partners so that they bear their share of the burden and pay their share of the costs [bold mine-DL], and to see that the principles of justice and human dignity are upheld by all.

Despite the obvious limits of the “allies and partners” in Libya and the problem that the would-be burden-sharers can’t carry the load nearly as well as many Americans might like, Ryan Lizza’s article attempted to put a positive spin on all of this. Bill Kristol naturally wants to attack it, perhaps because he sees an end to non-U.S. dependence on U.S. power as a potential threat to continued hegemonist policies. Once America ceases to be considered “indispensable,” Americans will have a hard time understanding why America still has to act the part of the global hegemon.

Even so, Kristol is doing little more than quibbling over tactics and means and pretending that larger principles are at stake. Kristol pretends that “leading from behind” has something to do with repudiating American exceptionalism, but Obama waxed romantic in the same speech* on the special American vocation to attack other countries for the sake of high idealism:

Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different.

As the raid that killed bin Laden shows, “leading from behind” does not sum up or define all of Obama’s decisions or policies, but refers almost exclusively to the Libyan war. Despite this, the endless (and pointless) pursuit of an identifiable doctrine guiding Obama’s foreign policy continues. The Libyan war was a multilateral affair because the administration saw a political advantage in making it so, and the raid was a unilateral action because there were advantages in taking that kind of action. The multilateral or unilateral nature of an action is at best secondary to whether or not the action makes sense and serves American interests.

The problem with complaining that Obama is “leading from behind” is that the entire argument that hawkish interventionists have been making against Obama on Libya is fundamentally flawed. Hawkish interventionists not only insist on the frequent use of American military power and outside intervention in other nations’ conflicts whenever possible, but they also can’t stand the thought that there is a crisis somewhere that does not involve the U.S. as the main intervening power. Obama can satisfy them on the former, but not on the latter. It’s not enough for them that Obama facilitated the Libyan war both politically and militarily, but he must also be at the forefront of waging it despite its irrelevance to U.S. interests.

The Libyan war wouldn’t be any wiser or more successful if it were a unilateral action or if it lacked U.N. approval, and if the U.S. were more directly involved in all aspects of the war that wouldn’t readily bring the conflict to a conclusion that much sooner, but as ever hawkish interventionists know that whatever action Obama has taken it has been too slow, too limited, and too indecisive. The symbolism of a policy is at least as important to Obama’s hawkish critics as its effectiveness. Hawkish interventionists take delight in a strong executive and the symbolism of decisiveness and “toughness” they associate with this, and for that reason any significant emphasis on cooperation and consensus-building angers them.

What is really ridiculous about attacking Obama for “leading from behind” is that it is basically an intramural squabble between different sets of interventionists about the precise details of how to go about starting wars that have nothing to do with American security interests. It doesn’t really matter who prevails in such a squabble, because the end result will be more or less the same. As long as American leadership is wrongly defined in terms of starting wars, meddling in other nations’ affairs, and dictating outcomes in foreign conflicts, it makes little difference whether that leadership is from “the front” or happens to be coming from “behind.” It will still lead America to the same bad end of frequent foreign entanglements and unnecessary wars.

* A month ago, after Obama had launched the U.S. into yet another unnecessary war, Kristol’s estimation of Obama’s March 28 speech was rather different:

The president was unapologetic, freedom-agenda-embracing, and didn’t shrink from defending the use of force or from appealing to American values and interests.

Now here is Kristol from his most recent editorial:

His administration’s lack of strength and confidence in defense of liberty, its trembling before illiberalism, its failure to lead, is now dressed up and sent out into the world as “leading from behind.”

The world isn’t much fooled. Dictators aren’t fooled. The American people aren’t fooled. Even liberals are getting hard to fool. Lizza’s article gave the Obama adviser the last word. But did even the typical New Yorker reader nod in approbation as he put down his May 2 issue and picked up his glass of Chablis?

P.S. Massie scores a direct hit with this:

Many American pundits, gorged on the moral clarity available to those thousands of miles from the action [bold mine-DL], now seem keen on treating Pakistan as an enemy state. Because three (or two and a half) wars aren’t enough.