Leading From Behind

By ROGER COHEN
NYT

LONDON — When I tweeted a sincere “Bravo Obama” message the other day, congratulating the president on “leading from behind” in Libya, it took only minutes for the U.S. ambassador to NATO to tweet back a sharp retort.

“That’s not leading from behind,” Ivo Daalder wrote. “When you set the course, provide critical enablers and succeed, it’s plain leading.”

Leading from behind — a phrase first used by a White House adviser in a New Yorker article by Ryan Lizza — was smart policy in Libya. The United States, short on cash, bruised by Iraq and Afghanistan, did not want to head the charge into a third Muslim country, even if the Arab League had backed intervention. Discreet U.S. military assistance with France and Britain doing the trumpeting was sensible.

Discreet does not mean desultory. The United States took out Libya’s air defense system. It provided more than 70 percent of the surveillance, intelligence and reconnaissance capabilities. It flew 70 percent of refueling missions. What it did not do was wade into Libya with the army it had in the vanguard of a motley coalition of the willing.

(More here.)