Part of the process may be framing the Republican "I call it leadership when I bully and failure to follow when you object to consent to being bullies" as "lazy leadership" ... and framing "collaborating as an effective member of a group" as "principled leadership".

One advantage is y'all in Europe do not actually have to do it with wink and nods ... since American media largely ignores what most of y'all do and say, you can be quite open about "we'll let the Americans say they are leading on this as long as they behave in a reasonable manner behind closed doors".

But over the long term, it does require some more standing up to American politicians who think they can show "leadership" by bossing other countries around, and handing them enough foreign policy failures that the appeal of that line of grandstanding begins to fade.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

I'd like to get some people in office who didn't come up during the Cold War (she was only 20 or 21 when the Wall came down), and who aren't damaged goods in that way.

I don't see experience of the cold war as necessarily negative.  Bush's cold war warriers never learned from the experience.  Others developed a deeper and more balanced perspective from the experience.