So despite the funny phrasing, at the heart of the idea of leading from behind is the empowerment of other actors to do your bidding or, as in the case of Libya, to be used as cover for a policy that would be suspect in the eyes of other nations if it’s branded as a purely American operation. ~Ryan Lizza

Maybe that’s what the administration adviser thought it meant, but if so it is a lousy description of what has been happening. The administration’s handling of the various uprisings has not been one of empowering other actors to do its bidding. The Saudi-led GCC intervention in Bahrain was not something that it wanted. It’s not clear how the administration “empowered” Erdogan to condemn Assad’s crackdown. The U.S. facilitated the Libyan intervention, which wouldn’t have been possible otherwise, but it was Britain and France that pulled the U.S. along.

There was never a chance that the Libyan war would be a “purely American operation,” and had it not been for Anglo-French calls for action there might not have been a policy of intervention in Libya at all. The administration adviser was trying to square the circle of letting other governments take the lead with the claim that the U.S. was still exercising leadership. The mistake that the administration made in Libya wasn’t that it was “leading from behind,” as opposed to leading the charge, but that it was supporting a foolish policy.