This coming year may well be a significant one - the year that world leaders fell asleep just as the world cried out for more leadership.
They will not literally fall asleep. Instead, they will remain active and engaged with domestic concerns - especially the challenges of surviving in office – while ignoring the many global challenges that demand their urgent attention.
Barack Obama will focus on only one issue in 2012: winning re-election. Like his predecessors, he will not allow external challenges to distract him from the campaign, unless, of course, a potential collapse of the euro threatens to derail it. This is the main reason he finally sent Tim Geithner to give the Europeans a helping hand in December 2011.