Leading From the Front Again
By Abe Greenwald for Commentary
For all the increasing strangeness and absurdity of our politics, we’ve also witnessed the resurgence of something familiar and even comforting. Over the course of the past year, the United States has reclaimed its place as the most powerful country in the world. Saturday’s bold, flawless capture of Nicolás Maduro has made the point indisputable.
It’s not that we ever ceded our leadership role to another power. But after the dispiriting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. leaders adopted the default position that unapologetically embracing America as the post–Cold War hyperpower was gauche at best and dangerous at worst. So we stopped acting as if we were in charge or even had the reserve power to take the reins should circumstances demand it.
As I said on the podcast today, what we continued to call the American-led liberal order (or sometimes even the global order) had not felt particularly American-led for some time. Barack Obama’s election was partly a rebuke to the idea of American power-projection. As president, he emphasized the importance of “listening” to other countries and noted that every nation was exceptional in its own way. Addressing the United Nations General Assembly in 2009, he dispensed with the idea of international alliances and hierarchies altogether. “No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed,” he declared. During the Obama years, the U.S. would infamously “lead from behind.”
During Donald Trump’s first term as president, his administration coordinated the signing of the Abraham Accords, and he didn’t shy away from using deadly force against Iran, ISIS, or Russian fighters in Syria. But his promise of a return to American greatness was largely focused on domestic affairs. And, not unlike Obama, he talked about America in unflattering terms relative to her enemies (such as Russia), and could be egregiously deferential to implacable bad actors (such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un).
Joe Biden’s presidency picked up where Obama’s left off. Only this time, the American retreat from the global stage was turbocharged by a more radicalized Democratic Party that sought to appease a newly woke left. Biden pursued a fresh nuclear deal with Iran and wasted the possibility of expanding the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia. In August of 2021, he ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. And the world, as many of us had predicted, finally spun out of control.
Russia invaded Ukraine with China’s blessing, and Hamas invaded Israel with Iran’s material and monetary support. The Biden administration’s responses to these crises were at turns somewhat helpful, overly cautious, and ultimately feckless. The U.S. had lost the will to shape events beyond (and on) its borders.
Until now. Although the second Trump administration talks ceaselessly about the folly of foreign intervention, the president has reestablished the U.S. as the prime mover of world events. He’s roused NATO to take on a larger role in defending member nations, even as he backed Israel in its multifront war, destroyed Iran’s main nuclear facility, drew up a plan for a postwar Middle East, and now decapitated the outlaw regime in Venezuela.
The administration can say whatever it wants about foreign adventurism, but the world police are back in business.
There’s a lot, of course, that we don’t know. Will Trump finally become as frustrated with Vladimir Putin as he became with Iran and Maduro? If so, will he be as forceful in ending Russia’s assault on Ukraine? What will become of Venezuela over the course of the year? What happens if and when Trump becomes convinced that Hamas simply won’t disarm? How will the Trump administration respond to what seems to be a slowly crumbling Iranian state? And, finally, what happens if—God forbid—China moves on Taiwan? No clue.
But here’s what we do know: The world has once again seen the American will to act. And everyone has been reminded of the U.S. military’s unparalleled ability to change facts on the ground. A year ago, America’s enemies had reason to believe the U.S. had become a paper tiger. Today, they wouldn’t dare make that miscalculation.
