The Economist has a new issue with President Barack Obama in an airman's uniform and details how the president defined by reluctance to engage abroad is now back in a Middle East war that will define America for years to come.

"A president who has always seen his main mission as nation-building at home is now using military force in six countries — Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia," The Economist writes.

The article notes that while George W. Bush's rash intervention brought the US into Iraq, Obama's "studious inaction" indirectly facilitated the challenge now facing the world's lone superpower.