A Vacuum of Global Leadership

The Bush Administration incompetence has unbalenced the global power distribution. The US is all but bogged down in Iraq just when two enemies are flexing their nuclear muscles. The consequences for the world is staggering. While Iran and North Korea don't hold more than a catalytic role in the short term future. North Korea's military might is it's only importance. Iran however sits on 1/3 of the known oil supplies. It's potential power in influencing the events is significant likely throughout the 21st century. All the more reasons to consolidate, build concensus and demonstrate leadership. I have little hope that Bush is up for the job.
Newsweek's Michael Hirsh has similar views.

The world faces more than a security vacuum. What we are suffering is a vacuum of global leadership. That is why the "international community"—always a tenuous concept at best—seems to be coming apart at the seams, why China and Russia are going their own way, why the Europeans are clucking around like headless chickens, why the moderates in the Mideast have fallen silent. Bush must recognize that the world is not following his lead, if it ever did, and that he needs to change his tack. He needs to jump in with both feet.


Despite his "stay the course" reputation, this president has shown he can adapt. For the first year or so of his second term there was a sense that Bush understood how much his first-term unilateralism had cost him. Still, even as he eagerly joined multilateral talks on Iran and North Korea, he remained determinedly disengaged on a personal level. His attitude was: let China take the lead (Korea); let the "EU-3" take the lead (Iran).


Now Bush has a little over two more years left to take the lead himself, to recognize his place in a long U.S. tradition of American presidents who have understood that their global responsibility is to solve the knottiest international problems no one else can master. But to do so Bush must change his whole approach. As he heads off to Kennebunkport, there's reason to doubt that he will.