Part of his mission as president, Obama explained, is to spur other countries to take action for themselves, rather than wait for the U.S. to lead.
If the U.S. is indispensable, if we are indispensable even in the limited sense of "setting the agenda," if "the United States has clearly been a force for good in the world,” if we have the strongest military the world has ever known, which the president says frequently, the strongest economy, then why would he resent other countries looking to the U.S. to lead and deprecate them as "free-riders."
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"The irony is that it was precisely in order to prevent the Europeans and the Arab states from holding our coats while we did all the fighting that we, by design, insisted” that they lead during the mission to remove Muammar Qaddafi from power in Libya. “It was part of the anti–free rider campaign.”
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"The irony is that it was precisely in order to prevent the Europeans and the Arab states from holding our coats while we did all the fighting that we, by design, insisted” that they lead during the mission to remove Muammar Qaddafi from power in Libya. “It was part of the anti–free rider campaign.”
