It’s hard now to recapture just how “leading from behind” became a catchphrase for Barack Obama’s approach to foreign policy. Attribution for the phrase, at least in the Obama context, is all over the place. Did he ever say it? Finding a direct on the record statement to that effect has become remarkably difficult, perhaps because it became a source of embarrassment, something to be attributed to lesser administration officials rather than to a president desirous at every turn of burnishing his reputation for wisdom and originality.
Let’s be honest with ourselves. We have no right to complain when no one else in the world wants to do our bidding.
Still, if we take the phrase as summarizing a loudly proclaimed Obama policy of eschewing unilateral action while allowing our allies to take the lead — as exemplified, for example, by the Libya intervention, so loudly touted in the beginning, so disastrously wrong in the end — then we should have no trouble attaching “leading from behind” to the Obama legacy. Of course, a very similar approach characterized the Jimmy Carter years and also the Bill Clinton era. One might quite fairly conclude that “leading from behind” has been a feature of Democrat foreign policy since the meltdown of the Johnson administration in 1968. (READ MORE from James H. McGee: The Trump-Biden Debate Changed Everything, or Did It?)
Joe Biden, of course, has made this policy his own, even if his handlers avoid the phrase. And “leading from behind” has been the formula for the ongoing Biden train wreck that has utterly destroyed the U.S. position on the world stage. The reason is simple. “Leading from behind” is inherently nonsensical, no matter how it’s proponents try to dress it up as clever. It is the abdication of leadership, and it has set the stage for a world in which our enemies no longer fear us and our friends no longer trust us.
We could still be leaders if we choose to be. Our military, although long neglected, remains the most powerful in the world. Our economy, although burdened by a complete lack of fiscal responsibility, remains stronger than any potential rivals, stronger than China, stronger than the European Union, stronger than, well, anyone who might think to challenge us. Although our industrial base has been allowed to wither, and important business sectors farmed out to the rest of the world, we still have immense industrial capabilities, and massive energy and other resources, despite the best efforts of the green fanatics to hobble us. Unsurprisingly, our standard of living remains the envy of most every nation.
So how then is it that nothing seems to be going our way in the world? How is it that our best interests seem thwarted at every turn, sometimes by genuine great power rivals such as the Chinese, sometimes by international pygmies such as the Houthis. The answer is quite simple. Our place in the world is falling apart because we insist on “leading from behind,” which is another way of saying that we refuse to lead. Biden and his foreign policy minions sometimes seem simply not to care, other times to be frustrated when no one seems to pay attention to our wants or needs. These supposed “adults in the room” instead seem to bumble about the world with the air of petulant children.
I suspect that there are several reasons for this. First, there’s the persistent embarrassment within our “progressive elites” — by which one might say the entire Democrat party foreign policy establishment — for being American. The “ugly American” of the 1950s book and movie took the silliness of some American diplomats — never a hard target — and reified it into vision of glib incompetence, a vision encouraged by relentless Soviet propaganda and hardened by European condescension. The Europeans, after all, have taken endless comfort in contrasting the bumbling Americans with their own sleek sophistication, and our own left-wing intellectuals, in and out of government, have always been susceptible to seeking European approval.
Second, sadly, the Democrats have consistently made a hash of things. P.J. O’Rourke famously said of Republicans that they are “the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.” But when it comes to foreign policy, and particularly national security policy, it’s the Democrats who’ve consistently proven their incompetence. Lyndon Johnson made his Vietnam policy the handmaiden of his domestic agenda, and, in the end, he made a dog’s breakfast of both. Jimmy Carter? Even his signature foreign policy success, the Camp David Accords, were really about the courage of Begin and Sadat, particularly the latter, who ultimately paid for his share of the Nobel Peace Prize with his life.
Ronald Reagan gifted Bill Clinton the fruits of victory in the Cold War and he spent them, foolishly, on a “peace dividend” that left our military ill-prepared for the challenges of the 21st Century. It was under Clinton and his Secretary of Defense, Les Aspin, that the U.S. began “kicking the can” in terms of maintaining an adequate nuclear deterrent and a robust defense industrial base. In presiding over the infamous “Black Hawk Down” disaster in Somalia, Clinton also signaled U.S. fecklessness to the world, a signal that Osama bin Laden, for one, read loud and clear.
It’s in this connection, in particular, that our complaints about the defense spending of our NATO allies are embarrassingly hypocritical. At the height of the Cold War, for example, the German Bundeswehr was a large, well-trained, and supremely well-equipped fighting force. Now it is the butt of bad jokes, even within Germany itself. The Germans, sadly, needed no encouragement to spend their own peace dividend after “The Wall” came down.
But the Germans also needed look no further than to their American NATO allies to find justification for further cuts. The U.S. forces that won both the first and second Gulf wars were legacy forces, trading on the materials strengths and innovative strategies evolved during the 1980s. The massive U.S. military expenditures of the 21st Century were largely driven by the needs of counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. During this same period, our nuclear deterrent atrophied and our naval forces dwindled precipitously.
Moreover, we spent hugely on the defense version of “luxury goods,” wasting precious training time and resources on an increasingly aggressive “social justice” agenda. Obama’s “Pacific pivot” was essentially all talk and no action when it came to strengthening our ability to match the burgeoning Chinese military threat; much the same might be said of Biden’s sad lack of urgency when it comes to enhancing our naval presence in the Pacific. No wonder then, that we find ourselves playing catch up as we now face not one, but multiple threats.
Beyond Military Policy
Still, the failure to lead was not just about military expenditure. Even more so, the Democrats sent signals to the entire world that we were fundamentally unserious when it came to persistent or emerging threats. When Angela Merkel set her heart on Nord Stream 2, Joe Biden gave his blessing, even though it fundamentally undermined his administration’s messaging to Putin regarding threats to Ukraine. In the midst of increasingly aggressive Chinese naval threats to our Philippine allies, John Kerry waltzes off to Beijing, kowtowing to Xi Jinping in his continued pursuit of an increasingly unhinged climate change agenda.
In the final analysis, the Democrats inability to implement a coherent foreign policy comes down to a slavish subordination of foreign to domestic affairs and a whiny, childish approach to the burdens of international leadership. Allowing “the Squad” to dictate Middle Eastern policy demonstrates an infuriating lack of moral clarity. Proposing to spend a half trillion dollars on student loan forgiveness while failing to adequately fund our defense needs tells the world that we are fundamentally unserious.
Hamstringing our domestic energy production capabilities undercuts both our own independence and our ability to support our allies. And not one of the source countries lifts a finger to help us cut off the flood of migrants pouring across our southern border. Why should they? Why should anyone respect us when, internationally, we demonstrate every day our total lack of self-respect.
Let’s be honest with ourselves. We have no right to complain when no one else in the world wants to do our bidding. We set an example of selfish domestic preoccupation and then wonder why other nations do likewise. We want others to sign up to our solutions to the world’s ills without making any effort to persuade them to come aboard.
We want to hobnob with the gilded denizens of the World Economic Forum while hiding behind the shibboleths of multilateralism when it comes to facing the world’s ills. We want to slipstream behind the EU and the UN when it comes to climate policy, or, God help us, allow the WHO to dictate how we deal with public health emergencies. This is what happens when Greta Thunberg or Amal Clooney become avatars for our State Department. (READ MORE: The US May Become the Strong Man Whose House Was Plundered)
A New Foreign Policy
Which brings us once more to the meaning of “leading from behind.” If the Obama folks no longer want to claim it, indeed seemingly hide from it, we might take our lead from someone who did claim the phrase, namely Nelson Mandela, who said, “It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.”
This is altogether different from hiding among like-minded others at the G-7 or the UN, and it’s the very opposite of the Obama era formulation. Instead, it’s Dick Winters in “Band of Brothers” pulling soldiers from the shelter of ditches on the road to Carentan, standing upright under fire, setting an example, making clear the needs of the dire moment. It’s leadership, pure and simple.
If we want a world in which American interests are properly served, then “leading from behind” isn’t the way to do it. We may lack the power to dictate solutions to the world, and that’s a good thing — we don’t need to be the “world’s policeman,” nor, emphatically, should we ever want to be the world’s dictator. That may be the fantasy of a Putin or a Xi or a mullah bent on creating a caliphate, but it’s not our way.
But if we want a world that is congruent with our interests, then we have to identify those interests, articulate them clearly, show them to be interests beneficial to others, and then demonstrate through our actions how we mean to bring good things to fruition. We have to both talk the talk and walk the walk. We have to lead.
James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His recent novel, Letter of Reprisal, tells the tale of a desperate mission to destroy a Chinese bioweapon facility hidden in the heart of the central African conflict region. You can find it on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions, and on Kindle Unlimited.
