The Long Game (16 page)

Such early progress proved fleeting, but lulled many officials in Europe and the United States into believing that things would be messy but manageable. Reflecting on this period of time during a speech to the UN General Assembly in 2015, Obama said “our coalition could have and should have done more to fill a vacuum left behind.” This reflects Obama's disappointment—which he would privately express in more biting terms—with the Europeans who were the most enthusiastic about getting involved and left many promises unfulfilled.

Perhaps we were also too deferential to Libyan sensitivities about interference in their internal affairs, and should have pressed them much harder across the board, especially to set policies on disarming and demobilizing militias and reincorporating them into a reformed military structure. But our leverage was limited; we could not compel them to act. And being more assertive could have backfired to the point where we lost our influence entirely.

The practical consequence of a “small footprint” approach was that there were too few American personnel there to do the work. We had limited facilities on the ground—our embassy compound had been ransacked and so new offices and housing had to be built. With security as an overriding concern, our diplomatic and development experts competed with security personnel for limited slots. By the time Ambassador Christopher Stevens arrived in Tripoli in the summer of 2012, just a handful of diplomats were working at the Embassy, and they were far outnumbered by security personnel.

With such a precarious security situation, the only way our diplomatic footprint could have been larger is if we had added even more security personnel or assumed more risk. It seemed the main purpose of our efforts had transformed from helping rebuild the country to protecting and sustaining the US presence itself. This made it excessively difficult for diplomats to do their work (the few who were there were barely able to leave the heavily-fortified embassy compound) and to get any additional traction assisting the Libyan government.

Whatever limited willingness there was to accept risks evaporated after Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans were killed by terrorists in Benghazi in September 2012. Then, in 2014, the United States and most other countries closed their embassies in Tripoli as renewed civil war loomed. So with no presence on the ground, the United States effectively picked up its toolbox and went home.

B
ECAUSE OF
L
IBYA
'
S
geography and penchant for exporting instability (as well as, one can still hope, its potential for opportunity), its future still matters to the United States. But the implications of the Libya intervention and its aftermath for the future of American leadership—and the exercise of American power—far outweigh the country's intrinsic importance to our interests.

The Libya intervention does not undermine Obama's Long Game approach, but it does expose its inherent limits. More of a tragedy than a policy failure, Libya shows that while the United States can act to address some problems, it cannot solve all of them, and often the best one can hope for is incremental progress.

Consider again the policy alternatives at the beginning and end of the Libyan War. Even with the benefit of hindsight, it is hard to see how America's position would have been enhanced if Obama had decided to stay away from Libya and let the allies intervene alone by putting up a no-fly zone that no one thought would work. The likely outcome would have been the massacre of thousands and a civil war boiling over. At the same time, it is difficult to conceive how American interests would have been better served if the administration had overridden the objections of the Libyans and the international community and deployed ground troops to try to enforce a peace.

T
HE FEROCIOUS DEBATE
over what happened in Libya has hindered American leadership in at least two ways.

First, in practical terms, it is very difficult to exercise influence if one is unwilling to take some risks on the ground. “The killing of Chris Stevens had the effect of helping the terrorists acquire greater power,” one administration official later explained.
²⁰
Leadership requires presence. Yet the shameless and cynical way that Obama and Clinton's critics used the Benghazi attacks to score political points with their rank and file undermines the ability of the United States to practice the kind of bold, assertive leadership these partisans
purport to uphold. There will always be a difference between calculated risk and recklessness. However, if our political debate conflates the two, then America's approach to the world's problems will be driven by fear, not confidence. If the lesson for future presidents is that the United States should shy away from risk altogether and pull back to avoid tragedies like Benghazi—as it has done in Libya—its global influence will be diminished, and the “foreign policy breakdown” will have won.

Second, the debate about Libya also hinders American leadership in a more subtle, yet pernicious way. Obama's approach towards Libya meant the United States would play a role using its unique assets but would not dominate the operation from beginning to end. This still reflects American “indispensability,” using its special strengths to manage and lead a diverse coalition that gets the most out of its partners. Obama said that Libya represented “precisely how the international community should work, as more nations bear both the responsibility and the cost of enforcing international law.” However, this kind of nuanced leadership is difficult to capture in a phrase and, as the administration learned, too easy for critics to caricature.

“L
EADING FROM BEHIND
.” Unfortunately, those three words came to sum up more than the Libya campaign. They became the bumper sticker critics would use to describe Obama's “weak” way of using American power. It is a simple phrase that once uttered was remembered by everyone, seeming to capture everything critics thought misguided about the president's foreign policy. Other recent presidents had been tagged with similar awkward phrases: think George H.W. Bush and the “vision thing,” Bill Clinton and “foreign policy as social work,” and George W. Bush and “mission accomplished.”

But as stated by an anonymous Obama “adviser” to the
New Yorker
journalist Ryan Lizza, “leading from behind” was just a very sloppy way of making an important, if subtle, point. Inside the White House,
we knew right away that the phrase would instantly become fodder for the critics, and that the larger point would soon be lost. It would have been better—and more accurate—if whoever had uttered the phrase had tacked on two more words: “the scenes.”

For what the United States did in Libya was an example of “leading from behind
the scenes.
” While the US military played an indispensable diplomatic, military, and intelligence role in the Libya campaign, we were willing to let others shoulder more of the out-front burden. In fact, it was not something we were simply willing to do—it was something we believed was in our
interest.
Obama later said that he wanted to act in a way that prevented “free riders” and allies who would just “hold our coat” while we did all the work.
²¹
And importantly, such leadership is something only the US is capable of exercising.

Like a director of a Hollywood movie, it was the United States operating behind the scenes to organize the effort, assign the roles, set the schedule, supply the resources, and orchestrate the action. Other countries could be the actors, but they looked to us for direction. In the Libya War, a US admiral commanded the NATO Alliance, another US admiral commanded the air campaign, and the US secretary of state was the main driver of the diplomatic effort to hold the coalition together.

By letting others share or dominate the spotlight occasionally, this was by definition a more subtle exercise of leadership. And it is arguably the most important aspect of leadership. Success comes not from doing everything alone or hogging the stage, but for bringing the effort together into a coherent whole. After all, at the Academy Awards, actors aren't the ones hoisting the final trophy for best picture; it is the director and producer that do.

Obama's critics claim that this is not leadership, but cowardice and abdication. Yet in many ways Obama is following an overlooked American tradition that has been embraced by some of our
most-admired presidents. For example, Dwight Eisenhower's “hidden hand” leadership displayed a similar style. Ike was wary of the tendency for the United States to try to bully others and do everything. Drawing on his military experience, he believed, “A platoon leader doesn't get his platoon to go that way by getting up and saying ‘I am smarter, I am bigger, I am stronger, I am the leader.' He gets men to go with him because they want to do it for him, because they believe in him.” What's most important, Eisenhower observed, is to get out of the “business of saying we are out in front, [that] we know all the answers.”
²²

In her memoirs, Hillary Clinton dismissed “leading from behind” as a “silly phrase.” Looking back on Libya, she explains, “It took a great deal of leading—from the front, the side, and every other direction, to authorize and accomplish the mission and to prevent what might have been the loss of tens of thousands of lives.”
²³
No other country could have played such a multidimensional role, using the mix of diplomatic, political, military, and intelligence tools that only the United States has. This is the definition of strength: to bring the world together to solve a specific problem, achieving goals that the United States could not—or should not—get done alone.

EGYPT AND THE LIMITS OF LEVERAGE

Libya presented a test of America's leadership through military power, alliance management, and small-footprint postwar reconstruction efforts in a country that had been a sworn enemy just a few years earlier. The response to the turmoil in Egypt is a case study in how the administration struggled to address a different set of challenges—testing America's leverage and influence in how it uses its military and economic assistance in a country that for decades has been a regional ally and a recipient of billions of American taxpayer dollars.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's sudden departure in February 2011 set off an earthquake both in the region and Washington. For decades, the US-Egypt relationship had been a cornerstone of America's Middle East policy, built on years of close diplomatic cooperation and substantial military assistance, undergirded by $1.3 billion per year of guaranteed support for Cairo as a result of the 1978 Camp David Accords and Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. With Mubarak relegated to history's dustbin, the American relationship with Egypt now faced a difficult balancing act: how to continue to encourage and shape Egypt's internal evolution toward greater political freedom and economic opportunity while, at the same time, upholding our core security interests.

Both of these goals were essential to Obama's policy in the region. Yet the tensions between the two proved very difficult to reconcile. In his May 2011 speech Obama had stressed the importance of fundamentally changing the American approach, but what did that mean for a stalwart ally like Egypt?

For a year after Mubarak's fall, circumstances did not force us to confront this tradeoff directly. The US worked to support the interim leadership led by Egypt's powerful Army chief, Field Marshal Mohammed Tantawi, as he led his country toward its first democratic election for president. Then in June 2012, everything changed when Mohammed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader, was elected. For decades the Muslim Brotherhood had been brutally repressed and forced to live in the shadows; it rejected the existing regional security order, especially peace with Israel. Now one of its leaders was Egypt's president. America's key allies in the region, many of whom considered the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, were appalled.

D
URING THIS TIME
the United States tried its best to play it straight and support the new leadership in Cairo. Confronted by massive
economic and security challenges and with no experience governing, Morsi and his team were quickly overwhelmed. As a way to help, we offered advice on everything from economic policy and social reforms to how to structure their system for more effective national security decision-making.

From a military perspective, we saw this moment as an opportunity to reshape US security assistance to achieve mutual interests, focusing on such areas as border security, maritime security, and counter-terrorism. We wanted to work with the Egyptian military to wean it off obsolete weapons systems largely irrelevant to modern-day threats.

Like many of our Arab military partners, the Egyptians prioritized expensive weapons like jet fighters and tanks—even if such capabilities weren't especially helpful against threats like terrorists in the Sinai. Our Egyptian counterparts were not enthusiastic about moving away from such “legacy” capabilities, suspicious that our insistence on such reforms was actually code for downgrading the relationship. They prized their special status from so many years of guaranteed assistance and close cooperation. Moreover, their resistance to change also reflected the entrenched interests of the country's military and security services in the so-called “deep state.”

By mid-2013, the situation in Egypt was on razor's edge, and basic order seemed at risk. Morsi and his team made mistake after mistake, blaming everyone else for their problems. The economy was in tatters and the security situation getting worse. I visited Cairo on several occasions for talks with Egyptian military leaders, and I remember thinking that the country seemed ready to explode.

We were especially worried about terrorist threats from Sinai, as there were regular attacks on Egyptian security personnel, tourists, and the international peacekeeping forces (including several hundred Americans) there to monitor the peace agreement with Israel. Sinai
had always been a kind of Wild West of Bedouin smugglers and bandits, but the situation had become far worse with such instability emanating from Cairo, massive economic dislocation and the influx of weapons from Sudan and postwar Libya, all of which contributed to the rise of jihadi groups there.