The small cuts to U.S. clout

How did Obama lose his clout? His supporters portray him as the mostly innocent victim of mistakes by his predecessor and a disorderly period in global affairs. But many foreign diplomats and officials I’ve spoken to see it differently. They point to a series of steps by Obama that accelerated the collapse of U.S. influence. First among them is the imprudent military withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, tied by Obama to arbitrary (or political) timetables rather than conditions on the ground.

Next comes Obama’s decision not to go forward with air strikes against Syria after its use of chemical weapons last year. It’s true that the president managed to leverage his stand down into a mostly successful operation to eliminate Damascus’s declared chemical weapons stockpile. Yet many senior foreign officials, especially in Asia, see in the administration’s Syria decision an augur of likely unwillingness to follow through on other red lines — whether in the South China Sea or on Iran’s nuclear program.

Then there were Obama’s speeches.