You can't lead from the back

With the U.S. government deciding its best to just stop doing development cooperation and humanitarian aid, I've been curiously watching the ways that other high-income countries react. Have they stepped into the gap, courageously doing what they can to make sure that life-saving aid arrives where it's needed? Absolutely not!

I don't see a lot of leaders forging an agenda that looks forward, that leads from the front. There was Mark Carney's speech at Davos, and the prime minister of Spain, Pedro Sanchez, pushing a positive position on immigration. By and large though, big countries like Germany are doing what I call 'leading from the back'. In order to get the reaping stage of what Carney's speech and Sanchez's immigration policy are sowing, far more politicians need to lead from the front.

"No way! Is that all it takes?" I can hear you saying. "Way!" I reply ignoring your sarcastic tone. What do I mean though when I say 'lead from the front'? First we start with something the science is increasingly telling us we must demand from politicians: God honest Leadership.

Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbach writing in the Boston Review give us the numbers behind the benefits of politicians acting like leaders. They show why centrism used to work for Democrats in U.S. politics but no longer does now (and I think their points apply to Europe too). For me what stood out though is that they make an empirically grounded argument for politicians to not simply follow public opinion polls. Public opinion polls are not carved in stone; politicians should also try to shape opinion.

This requires political skill, but it also requires genuine commitment to a political vision. Reading Grumbach's and Bonica's article made me think of Zohran Mamdani's mayoral campaign this past year. Mamdani listened - he figured out what three big issues were for voters and focused on those issues. BUT! He went further than listening - these are issues he genuinely cares about, and his policy solutions back it up. He's not saying "Free busses" then instructing the NYC department of transportation to sell half the bus fleet. The lesson here is: You can't lead from the front unless you genuinely care about the movement you're leading, and you back that up with commensurate action.

Now I want to pivot back to the questions earlier about whether the EU and other high-income countries would take the mantle of global leadership and fill in the voids left by the U.S. The EU 100% hasn't done this, despite a lot of blustery talk in Berlin and Brussels. Why not? Take the example of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. He makes a lot of the right noises when he talks about global cooperation and security. Indeed, I argued last year that Germany was in a position to take a leading role in global security if it invested seriously in its development cooperation capacity. Merz is leading from the back, since his actions make it clear that he has no genuine interest in these things and that he's responding purely to snapshot public sentiment.

A German leader with a genuine interest in leading from the front on the global stage would have looked at German capacity, recognized that Germany's biggest global footprint is its development cooperation infrastructure, and put that at the center of a new security policy. Essentially, maximize the impact of existing reach while investing in other parts of German foreign policy that need to be built up. This hypothetical chancellor would have done this knowing the decision runs against current public sentiment and done the leadership work to help the public understand the decision. Instead we get Merz carrying on about global security threats while his government cuts funding to humanitarian response, development cooperation, and stabilization operations - the exact things that desperately need to be funded.

This is leading from the back, and puts the onus on France, the UK, Australia, Canada, the Nordics, literally anyone else, to lead from the front (to be fair, all those other countries are doing the same thing). What the way out of this doom loop? A few quick thoughts:

• Actual political nerve. In the case of Germany, this could be Lars Klingbeil, the Deputy Chancellor and leader of the SPD playing the role of loyal opposition. This takes nerve as well as moral imagination, since Klingbeil or any politicial playing this card has to make clear to the public that their efforts are genuine. Hard stuff, but sometimes necessary.
• For voters, don't be scared when a politician says we have to go big to solve a problem. We've gone big before, in recent history even! The U.S. climbed out of the Great Depression, Bretton Woods created stable global financial systems, the Montreal Protocol literally saved the Ozone Layer! Don't succumb to hopelessness, and don't let yourself demand less from your political representatives.

The political science says this can work - it's in the data and we can do it. Also it's fun to take action and feel less doomed, so let's put the data to use.