leading from behind

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9:12 AM, Mar 20, 2013 • By DANIEL HALPER

Eliot Cohen, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

Since the days of the Monroe Doctrine, American foreign policy has rested on a global system of explicit or implicit commitments to use military power to guarantee the interests of the U.S. and its allies. The current administration has chosen to reduce, limit or underfund those commitments, and the results—which we may begin to see before President Obama's term ends—will be dangerous.

Some of America's commitments are enshrined in treaties, such as Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty, which says of NATO's 28 member countries that "an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all." Other commitments are less formal. The U.S. has no defense treaty with Israel, but repeated presidential declarations, including those Mr. Obama will make during his trip this week, amount to nearly the same thing.

Some commitments are moral and humanitarian, such as the "responsibility to protect" that led American decision makers racked with guilt over the Rwanda massacres of 1994 to intervene in the Yugoslav civil war in 1998. All amount to a web of obligations that have been central to the American role in the world since World War II.

Over the past four years, the U.S. has scaled down its presence, ambitions and promises overseas. Mr. Obama has announced the end of the early-21st-century wars, though in truth the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere are merely shifting to new, not necessarily less-vicious phases. He has refrained from issuing unambiguous threats to hostile states, such as Iran, that engage in bellicose behavior toward the U.S., and he has let his staff speak of "leading from behind" as a desirable approach to foreign policy.

Whole thing here.

The U.S. will follow the international community in responding to NKorea nuke test.

8:28 AM, Feb 12, 2013 • By DANIEL HALPER

On CBS this morning, Valerie Jarrett, a close advisor to President Obama, reacted to the news that North Korea had conducted a nuclear test last night by saying, "We're heartened to see the U.N. Security Council will be meeting" this morning to discuss the issue.

9:14 AM, Jan 15, 2013 • By THOMAS DONNELLY

Periodically, and almost from the day he became a serious presidential candidate, editorialists, pundits, academics, and reporters have described Barack Obama’s foreign policy as a return to “realism.” Essayist and self-described realist Robert Kaplan, to take just one example, argues that this is something like a natural recalibration, a return to geographic and historical inevitabilities.

11:46 AM, Oct 27, 2012 • By WILLIAM KRISTOL

On September 11, 2012, Rasmussen Reports had President Obama's job approval at 52 percent approve, 47 percent disapprove.

6:31 PM, Oct 13, 2012 • By DANIEL HALPER

At a campaign fundraiser in Connecticut today, Vice President Joe Biden talked up the Obama administration's foreign policy of "leading from behind."

Biden " suggested that Ryan and Romney's comments that the U.S. was 'leading from behind' present considerable risks for the nation's interests," according to the pool reporter's write-up of Biden's comments.

Barack Obama speaks about national security 2009-05-21

10:24 AM, Oct 2, 2012 • By WILLIAM KRISTOL

In late March 2011, the United States intervened in Libya to save Benghazi. A year and a half later, we've withdrawn:

Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama

There’s a reason we get no respect in the Middle East.

Sep 24, 2012, Vol. 18, No. 02 • By STEPHEN F. HAYES

On the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, radical Islamists breached the walls of the U.S. embassy compound in Cairo, tore the American flag to shreds, and replaced it with the black flag preferred by al Qaeda, which reads, “There is No God but God, and Muhammad is his messenger.”

10:31 AM, Jun 27, 2012 • By DANIEL HALPER

Bill Kristol, with Charles Lane and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News:

Image of a Middle Eastern man with a sign that says "Freedom"

May 28, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 35 • By LEE SMITH

To the rear, march!

Jan 30, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 19 • By THOMAS DONNELLY

11:01 AM, Aug 17, 2011 • By DANIEL HALPER

New Jersey governor Chris Christie slammed President Obama at a recent press conference for not demonstrating competent leadership and not providing the American people what they want in a president. "You can't lead from behind," Christie said. "Leading is not a political strategy. It's a moral strategy."

3:03 PM, Jul 19, 2011 • By DANIEL HALPER

In response to a question about whether now would be a good time for the president to present his own debt ceiling budget plan, White House spokesman Jay Carney had this to say: "Leadership is not proposing a plan for the sake of having it voted up or down and likely voted down..."