Obama: Leadership at All Costs

Listening to the opinions and counsels of their allies, Americans will occasionally end up thinking: This is not good, or this seems uncomfortable. This is what I noticed during a discussion with Leo Michel, a former civil servant at the Pentagon and now connected to the National Defense University in Washington.

Has the United States not remained too long in a waiting position regarding the Libya situation? Has there been a lack of American leadership? they asked him, with an undertone of disappointment. Michel sighed and insisted on some respect from his Dutch interviewer for the fact that the Obama administration spent a lot of energy garnering wider support for a military operation, after all the criticisms of the selfishly empowered American interventions in the Bush period.

Diplomacy

There are grounds for such appreciation. American diplomacy, after all, also succeeded in manipulating Russia and China in the Security Council in such a way that both countries moved away from a veto against the resolution regarding the no-fly zone over Libya, which created room for a military intervention to protect the civil population.

But it remains painful that this step is taken at a time where its effect does not even carry half the weight it could have had 10 days ago. At that time, a no-fly zone could have been that little deciding push that could have tipped the Gadhafi regime. Now, it is more likely to produce a stalemate that could make Libya a source of instability and international concern for a long time to come.

Circumspect

Can President Obama be blamed for not directing toward a military insurgence sooner and in a more powerful way? It is clear that he prefers to work in a time-consuming way. The decision-making that led to the Afghan surge actually took three full months. When the civil uprising ignited in Egypt, he tacked through the middle — providing moral support to demonstrators, calling for a transition to a democracy, but no open warning to the address of President Mubarak or his military staff.

Teddy Roosevelt said that a president needs to “kindle the people with the fire from their own burning soul.” That is not Barack Obama’s style. Despite all his oratorical skills, he is rather pragmatic and a man that likes to wait to see what happens. For a politician with his responsibility, these are more like virtues. It is better to have a president who constantly weighs the odds than a president who constantly storms forward. But from time to time, you wish he would bring some more vigor. On rare occasions, you would want him to be a bit more like his predecessor, George Bush, who constantly rowed upstream until he decided upon the surge in Iraq what seemed the best option in an awful situation.

Division

Maybe Obama sincerely hoped Europe would take primary responsibility this time for what in classical terms is known as Europe’s back yard. That hope was quickly gone; within no time Europe showed a hopeless division.

Or could more banal considerations have played a role? Obama is enough of a politician to figure out what things mean for his personal standing and his electoral chances in 2012. Originally, there was not a lot of excitement within or outside the Beltway to take on another foreign adventure, especially not in an area that has no strategic value for the U.S. whatsoever. Most Democrats are reluctant at first for interventions. On the Republican side, a neo-isolationist sentiment would be all the rage because of the tea party. Only when a monster alliance unfolded with Republican realists in the style of John McCain and the Democratic “Human Rights Wing” was serious pressure put on the White House in favor of a military intervention in Libya.

Even then, Obama could have decided: I will not burn my hands on this. This was unmistakably the consideration for Angela Merkel, who sees the important elections in Baden-Württemberg approaching rapidly. Since the controversial Afghanistan mission, a military role in Libya could upset too many voters. Therefore, the German ambassador to the United Nations was told to denounce his vote.

Merkel’s electoral worries are not so incomprehensible. But Germany’s decision to turn its back on its European partners and the U.S. and take a similar position to Russia and China is proof of a sad political narrow-mindedness.