One Year Later: America Retreats From Global Leadership Under Obama

Ted Bromund / January 16, 2010

The world needs American leadership. In the interwar years, we saw that the enemies of freedom advance when the great liberal and democratic powers of the day failed to lead. We saw it again in the dark years of the Cold War under President Carter. The alternative to an America willing and able to lead is not a paradise of peace through engagement. It is a world where the undemocratic, the unsatisfied, and the illiberal powers of the world advance at the expense of American ideals, American interests, and America’s allies.

During President Obama’s first year in office, he failed almost completely to exercise meaningful leadership in the world. His Nobel Peace Prize was proof enough of this: it was awarded not for any substantive achievement, but because the Committee hoped he might do something in the future. The President generously gave himself a B+ rating on Oprah Winfrey’s Christmas Special, but even his most fervent supporters among Sweden’s socialists could not bring themselves to give him more than an incomplete. (more…)