Leading from behind has an exciting new name.
Last year, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin claimed that a new strategy called “integrated deterrence” would be at the heart of Biden’s new defense strategy. Last month, he was talking up a new National Defense Strategy driven by integrated deterrence while claiming that it would prove effective against Russia in the war in Ukraine. Instead the war showed “ID” doesn’t work.
What is “integrated deterrence”? It sounds better than leading from behind, which was Obama’s version of it, but it’s not too different from the failed approach of the Obama administration.
Like a lot of organizational jargon, “integrated deterrence” is a collection of meaningless buzzwords that no one understands concealing the same old thing that dresses up failure as success because under the exciting new approach, no one was even trying to succeed.
