Come On, People! Foreign Affairs Isn't Me.

If President Obama, the Nice Young Man From Chicago, fell prey to honesty he would make that sort of candid self-assessment to We the People. Every since LBJ the Democratic Party has a fine record of tossing up successful presidential candidates who are both uninterested and untutored in the Great Game of Nations.

Presidents Carter, Clinton, and now Obama have all been remarkably disengaged in the making and executing of foreign and national security policy. In all these cases the lack of interest was, at least initially, supported by a vast majority of We the People. Activism overseas is not an attractive option to Americans, particularly if the activism results--as it usually does--with involvement in some sort of distant war being waged for hazy reasons.

For Americans of and over a (to use the delicate French expression) "a certain age," Vietnam surpassed even Korea as the shorthand for "distant, bloody, unvictorious war fought for uncertain reasons and for hazy goals." Thus it is small wonder that Carter was just jake in the foreign policy department. That is until 1979, the year of the Iranian Revolution and concomitant hostage "crisis."

The Republicans mastered the art of seeming to be tough on foreign adversaries without doing much. Reagan's response to the Beirut barracks and embassy bombings could have been taken from the Carter or Clinton playbook. Even George H.W. Bush's adventure in repelling Iraqi aggression was waged less with a policy end in mind and not anything approximating victory.

Despite his evident attempt to properly calibrate the American view of foreign affairs with the domestic needs of economy and re-election, G.H.W. was replaced by a foreign policy nullity, the ever-so-nimble Bill Clinton. Mr Clinton was a policy wonk--a domestic policy wonk. His taste for, interest in, knowledge of, or moral authority over both foreign and military policy was so close to zilch that it would take the intellectual equivalent of trace DNA analysis to discover the man's brain marks on anything useful in these areas.

It was, after all is said, the irresolute, hesitant and overall wrong as a soup sandwich responses of the Clinton administration to events in Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen that convinced the Islamist jihadists of al-Qaeda that the US could be terrorized out of the Mideast with impunity. We know what that finally morphed into.

No one can accuse George W. Bush of being irresolute, hesitant, or weak in response to the attacks of 9/11. His responses, however, fell into the wrong-as-baked-watermelon category. His "punitive expedition" into Taliban's Afghanistan was too fast, executed by too few, focused on the wrong goals, and morphed at warp speed into the plague state of "nation building." His follow on in Iraq not only assured Afghanistan would become a close approximation of the one that got away, but was wasteful, unnecessary, counterproductive, and flatly wrongheaded in concept and execution. No matter how unpleasant a character Saddam Hussein might have been, the US had neither strategic nor national interests at play there no matter how fervently the neocon ninnies of the day might have wished.

Once again We the People wanted a president with less of a foreign policy orientation. The Nice Young Man From Chicago was--and is--just that. The only sad part of this reality is that the rest of the world wants an American president who understands both the global dynamic and the American role in it--and is willing to use all the instruments of national power to pursue a clear policy as to what sort of world order the US can survive and thrive in.

The reason for this is not that the world wants an American imperium. It most assuredly does not. (Nor does the US.) What is wanted is a clear, systematic, realistic policy from the world's still pre-eminent Great Power so that individual nations' policies might be formulated either for or against those of the US.

The US has not formulated a consistent policy for either the global political order or for its policies with respect to either regions of the world or threats presented by groups inherently and violently hostile to the US and what it stands for. Instead the Obama administration has lurched from ad hoc to ad hoc, from one smiling statement to the next or, worse, from smiling offer of "engagement" to snarl and growl of "hold accountable."

It is no wonder that in chancelleries great and small, hostile, neutral, or friendly there is much eyebrow lifting, head shaking, and rolling of eyes. Just what country with what policy is the US today, anyhow? Great Believer in the "International Community" or go-it-alone paradigm?

Is Iran the enemy? The "friend we haven't met, yet?" A threat? If a threat, actual or potential? If potential, when will it become actual?

Is Israel an ally? An adversary? An intractable client? A client at all?

Are the Palestinians justified in their most extreme demands? Sort of justified? Not at all justified?

The list can and does go on. We change colors and cloaks on policy regarding Russia, China, the totality of Latin America. With the possible exception of Antarctica, the Obama administration has shifted its stance more than once on every landmass around the world. Just as it has on climate change, the international financial system, and a host of other topics.

Then there is terrorism or, to err on the side of accuracy, Islamist jihadism. The administration is adrift at the policy level as to the most basic issue presented by this armed, violent, and very well motivated threat: Is it a matter of law enforcement or national defense? Do we send a cop or land the Marines as a response?

Or do we hope to smile and simper our way out of the killing zone?

Or do we duck behind some local excuse for a government hoping that if we provide the means, the intelligence, the logistic and communications support, the expendable locals can do the killing and dying?

Or do we hope to stumble on some mixture of smiles, threats, local forces, and specialist American forces including UAVs to somehow counter the threat? If this is the least-worst way to conduct the "war" on Islamist jihadists, it is long past time for the Obama people to lay out a coherent strategy.

A coherent strategy must be part and parcel of a larger equally coherent theory of international politics. If it isn't, the result will be that which inevitably accrues to ad hoc, jury rigged national security policies--failure.

The blame game of pinning the tail of the foreign affairs donkey on the W. Bush administration is no longer to be allowed. The clock on that gambit has run out. The Great Game of Nations (and non-national actors) now belongs solely to the Nice Young Man From Chicago and those who he has chosen to run the germane departments and agencies of his administration.

Mr Obama (and We the People) had best remember that the last time a president was both inept and unrealistic in foreign and national security affairs the end result was 9/11. He might also ruminate on the proposition that Osama bin Laden will still have his job after Mr Obama has lost his.