Is Obama a "Weak" President or is America a Weaker Country? Posted by Michael Cohen

Over at World Politics Review I offer a preview of Obama's Oslo speech - and confront the growing political meme that Obama's diplomatic efforts to date show evidence of political weakness. As I try to argue in the piece it's not that Obama is a weak leader, but instead he helms a country that is seeing its political influence and leverage decline:

Even as it remains the most powerful nation in the world, the United States is becoming, as the Bush-era National Intelligence Council suggested last year, just one of several important actors on the global stage. In such a crowded landscape, the United States no longer has the leverage to shape international affairs to its liking.

The Bush years' obsessive focus on the threat of jihadist terror masked these changes. As globalization continued its uninterrupted march, new power centers were created, along with an emerging crop of transnational and non-state actors, all vying for global influence and leadership. Now that the U.S. is emerging from the diplomatic wreckage of the past eight years, it is discovering that things are not simply returning to "normal." While Obama's election has undoubtedly opened up more opportunities for U.S. diplomacy, there remains a frustrating gap between America's capabilities and the broad manner in which it defines its national interests.

Read the whole thing here

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

I would like to suggest a third option: that Obama has sufficient leadership capability and personal virtues, but is tied down by so many heavy and rusty domestic chains that even a Roosevelt would have difficulty in this environment finding the political space in which to pursue the enlightened long term interest of the United States.

America's power has declined, but it still has power in abundance to make important impact on the world; and its President has all the personal tools necessary as well. But the American people, and the social infrastructure of existing institutions that they animate, are on the whole are too unenlightened, uninformed, fearful and backward-looking to take advantage of the country's still estimable power, and to empower its leader to do bold and visionary things.

Number one on the list of dysfunctional institutions is a mass media that does little to elevate understanding and promote constructive and informed discourse, but mainly serves as a fun house mirror that reflects back the most depraved and barbarous features of American life, and by doing so reinforces and promotes them.

[billy37]

Ok so Obama won the Nobel, well that’s very Nobel of him. Look I don’t think we could expect Him to go around in Norway like he’s on show at a carnival, He is the President after all, but hey not respecting an invite from a King that is serious… I found this informative though…
http://ketiva.com/Politics_and_Government/obama_accepts_the_nobel_prize_and_spoils_the_peace_with_norway.html

[valentines day presents]

I think that he thinks that if he is such a -- he is a nice man, with a magnetic personality, and if he can reason with these people and not try to throw his weight around, that they will respond to him. That's exactly backward. The United States has some weight to throw around and still with the Chinese. They need our market as much as we need their money to borrow. And he's not in as weak a position as he behaves. And I don't think it helps for him to do what he did on this trip and the results bear that out.