The Crisis Leadership of No-Drama Obama [View all]

Jonathan Alter

Why re-drawing Iraq, not withdrawing from it, may be his legacy.

When President Obama strode to the microphones on the South Lawn at midday Friday, Americans were primed for an important announcement about the crisis in Iraq. After all, the tectonic plates of history are shifting beneath our feet, as a major Sunni-Shiite rumble threatens to rip apart the Middle East.

Instead, the public heard the kind of thoughtful, nuanced, contingency-based analysis that Obama is known for behind closed doors, as if we had all been invited into the Situation Room.

Unfortunately for the president, our muscle memory expected something, anything, that might convey strong leadership in a crisis. Obama is now a victim of the paradox embedded in public attitudes on foreign policy and identified recently by the author Robert Kagan—that Americans may prefer a lesser role in the world, but they aren’t proud of it.

The president’s challenge for the next couple of years is to convince the public that he doesn’t actually want a reduced American role in global affairs, just a reduced military role. Indeed, Obama will likely need to dramatically increase the American diplomatic presence in the region, especially when it comes time—as it likely will—to carve up Iraq.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/15/the-crisis-leadership-of-no-drama-obama.html