Picture Barack Obama in the White House. The US president is closeted with advisers, examining and re-examining every dimension and detail of the administration’s foreign policy. Now take a short walk to the State department. You will not find John Kerry at home. The secretary of state has jetted off somewhere in search of a crisis to be defused or a diplomatic deal to be struck.
The analyst president and the activist secretary. Such are the two faces of US foreign policy as it plays out around the world. There are circumstances in which this synergy of opposites could work. This has not been the case so far. The chatter in other national capitals is about a US punching far below its weight. Mind you, Europeans should be careful about stones and glasshouses.
There is much to be said for Mr Obama’s deliberative approach. The shoot-from-the-hip style of George W Bush was hardly a roaring success. Nothing has done so much to deplete American power as the costly and failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The unipolar moment has passed. There are limits on Washington’s ability to set the world to rights.