A World Without a Leader

One might argue that 2013 was not such a bad year. The stock market soared and the economy improved. Republicans received a gift that keeps on giving, Obamacare. Luckily for them, they didn’t even have to do anything to profit from it.

While most people are celebrating, a handful of seeming malcontents are looking beyond our borders. They do not like what they see.

This morning we read three converging views of the state of the world. None of them sees very much good happening across the glove. They see significant and gathering dangers. They all believe that the fault lies with  the Obama administration.

Like it or not, the American president has been the world’s captain since the end of World War II. Until Barack Obama, that is. Unfortunately, a ship without a captain can only advance for so long on autopilot.

Politically speaking, it is easier for the general public to see a leader going wrong when he is doing something. It is far more difficult to see him as derelict when he is sitting on the sidelines not doing anything.

First, Lech Walesa, a man who made history, was asked his views of President Obama in a CNN interview. The network reported his answer:

"When he was elected... there was great hope," Walesa said. ".... we were hoping Obama would reclaim moral leadership for America," adding: "That failed."

".... in terms of politics and morality, America no longer leads the world," he said. "...America did not regain its leadership status. We were just lucky there were no big conflicts in the world," saying the world has relied on a strong America to maintain the balance of power around the globe.

Second, Dan Henninger wrote this in the Wall Street Journal this morning:

As the year turns, the subject becoming impossible to duck is growing global disorder. The days before the New Year brought two suicide bombings in Russia and a major political assassination in Lebanon. Throw a dart randomly at a map of the Middle East or Southeast Asia and it will hit trouble….

Whether the world in 2014 will tip from containment to chaos or war is not the subject here. The subject is rediscovering the antidote to war, which is strong global leadership. The world we inhabit now doesn't have enough of it. Or any of it for that matter.

It’s not just President Obama who is failing to lead. To Henninger, other Western leaders are not doing any better:

The West's leaders are distracted or disinterested. President François Hollande has the lowest approval rating of any French head of state in 50 years. Angela Merkel can't extend her leadership beyond Germany's borders.

Only one thing really matters in an unsettled world: the quality of U.S. leadership. And so amid global unease came the disturbingly smug selfie photo of Barack Obama, David Cameron and the prime minister of Denmark at the Mandela funeral.

Of the three or four phrases from this presidency that will live past 2016 … is that in the affairs of the world, Mr. Obama was leading from behind. What this often means is that the American president goes with the flow of opinion polls.

Whether it is “leading from behind” or the smug “selfie” that Obama sent during the Nelson Mandela funeral, the American presidency is currently occupied by a self-important man who has no interest in exercising world leadership.

Third, Michael Ledeen takes it one step further and writes that President Obama has abrogated his authority because he believes that America as the world’s problem not its solution.

Ledeen paints a grim picture:

At the end of last year, President Obama was in Hawaii. French President Hollande was in Saudi Arabia, whose leaders openly declare their contempt for American leaders. Obama is basically having fun. Hollande and the royal family are basically doing strategy. They are designing actions to advance their interests in the new world;  not, as is often said, a world without America, but a world in which American leaders have turned against America.

The world is painfully coming to grips with something that no one could begin to imagine before 2009: a world in which America’s leaders are opposed to the America of the past, and opposed to traditional American values. Leaders who think America has been a force for evil, and consequently must be restrained, weakened, and disarmed if possible.  Leaders who embrace our enemies, and ditch our old friends.  Leaders who support Iranian tyrants when the Iranian people take to the streets, risking everything for democracy.  Leaders who release men who murdered American soldiers, and who demand the Israelis do the same.  Leaders who enable Syria’s Assad to prevail, and who favor the likes of Turkey’s Erdogan as our privileged interlocutor. Leaders who embrace Venezuela’s Chavez, and who support an anti-democratic coup in Honduras, and who do all they can to empower the Muslim Brotherhood, who hate us and want us dead or dominated.