Should America lead the world on foreign policy, follow or just sit on the sidelines? The Republican presidential candidates seem to want to make that a central issue in the 2016 election. And they have staked out an unambiguous position: America must reassert its leadership role after eight years of Obama weakness.

The Republican mantra of U.S. leadership, though, is highly selective. On Iran, the capacity of the United States to get a better nuclear deal seemingly knows no bounds. We can simply decide what we want and then dictate to others. What about the fact that our allies support the Iranian nuclear deal? No problem. We simply tear the agreement up, impose stronger sanctions on Iran and insist that other countries do the same. And if the rest of the world balks? Simple. We use our economic muscle to make them come around.

But when it comes to climate change, American muscle suddenly turns to flab. Our hands are tied, since "America is not a planet," as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a 2016 hopeful, memorably said. We are simply one country, with apparently no influence on the rest of the globe.



With this mindset, what good would it do to take out an insurance policy against climate change, as President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State, George Shultz has suggested? "We're not even the largest carbon producer in the world anymore," Rubio observed. "China is. And they're drilling a hole and digging anywhere in the world that they can get a hold of."

Carly Fiorina, another 2016 candidate, sings the same tune. In an interview with MSNBC last spring, she said, "a single nation acting alone can make no difference." She went on to ask, "Do we really think the Chinese are going to follow our lead on this? No, because they're focused on their own economic self interest."

Leaving aside the accuracy of these claims that U.S. action, by itself, will "do absolutely nothing to change our climate," as Rubio put it, the Republican approach betrays a surprising lack of confidence in America's capacity to lead. The American colossus that bestrides the Iran issue, able to bend other countries to our will, is nowhere to be seen. In its place is a feckless bystander. The Republicans apparently need a lesson in leadership from Pope Francis, whose powerful encyclical on climate change tried to influence the global community, rather than hiding behind it.

