I write today about what “leading from behind” looks like:
In the worst days of American inaction during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, French president Jacques Chirac said, “The position of the leader of the free world is vacant.” Pres. Bill Clinton eventually got over his indecision and bombed the Serbs. President Obama seems to want to leave the position of the leader of the free world vacant deliberately, to prove a point about our limits and our deference to others. He’s holding an ongoing world seminar on the dispensability of the formerly indispensable nation.