Leading From Behind

The phrase “leading from behind,” which an Obama adviser recently used in an interview with me to describe the Administration’s approach to Libya, has sparked a lively debate, especially among conservatives. (See John Podhoretz, Michael Rubin, Erick Erickson, Danielle Pletka, and former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.)

I think the meaning of leading from behind has become slightly muddled because it’s so easy to poke fun at the slogan itself. As Ben Armbruster at the liberal Think Progress points out, Nelson Mandela popularized the concept of leading from behind. Armbruster dug up the following quote from Mandela:

It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.

In his 1994 autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom,” Mandela also described it this way:

I always remember the regent’s axiom: a leader, he said, is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.

So despite the funny phrasing, at the heart of the idea of leading from behind is the empowerment of other actors to do your bidding or, as in the case of Libya, to be used as cover for a policy that would be suspect in the eyes of other nations if it’s branded as a purely American operation. Here’s an extended excerpt from my interview with Secretary Hillary Clinton on the morning of the Security Council vote which may shed more light on how the Administration approached this:

If you really parse all the messages that were being sent over the last several weeks on Libya, they were all over the place: “Somebody needs to do something, but the United States shouldn’t do it unilaterally.” “The United States should do something, but don’t bomb anybody.”

It was just a total cacophony of contradiction. And part of my goal is to move people toward having to take responsibility, to begin to match words and actions. And I give the Arab League an enormous amount of credit for stepping up and taking that action….

So now we’re gonna see whether the Security Council will support the Arab League. Not support the United States! Support the Arab League. That is a significant difference.

As some conservatives argue, this leading from behind business could certainly be used as a beard to cover up a lack of any leadership at all. But the real test is whether Obama accomplished the U.S. goal of getting the United Nations to authorize war in Libya, and on that score he was successful. It’s no small thing. Bill Clinton could not get U.N. approval for the war in Kosovo and George W. Bush could not get U.N. approval for the war in Iraq.

Frankly, what Obama did was a massive bait and switch. He used the Arab League’s support for a no-fly zone to win United Nations support for a far larger military intervention. The debate about the merits of this style of leadership should also take into account what was accomplished.

Join Lizza for a live chat about the Obama Administration’s foreign policy, today at 3 P.M. E.T.

Photograph by Martin Schoeller/August.