For the last 16 years- under Bill Clinton & George W. Bush - America has been in a diplomatic dry patch ..."

In FP/ here

"... America never ran the world (an illusion the left, right, and much of the third and fourth worlds believe); but there were moments (1945-1950, the early 1970s, 1988-1991) when the United States marshaled its military, political, and economic power toward impressive ends.....

For most of the last 16 years, however -- under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush -- America has been in a diplomatic dry patch. In the face of terrorism, nuclear proliferation, wars of choice, and nasty regional conflicts, conventional diplomacy has either not been tried or not been very successful. The image of the shuttling secretary of state pre-empting crises or exploiting them to broker agreements, doggedly pursuing Middle East peace, achieving dramatic breakthroughs with spectacular secret diplomacy seems a world away.

The Obama administration wants to do this kind of stuff. And it has done pretty well in managing the big relationships with Russia and Europe, though it has had its share of problems with China. But frankly, these are the easy ones. It's not from the big that the president's problems come; it's from the small.

In garden spots like Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia, the problems are four parts military, five parts nation-building, and maybe one part diplomacy. And America is unlikely to prevail in any meaningful sense of the word where corrupt, extractive regimes are unable to control their own territory and cut deals with anti-American elements and place their security and political concerns first.

Even in areas where diplomacy might seem to work on paper -- Kashmir, Arab-Israeli peacemaking -- the United States is hampered by conflicts driven by deep ethnic and religious hostility and by internal politics in which its own allies (Israel, Pakistan, and India) can't be of much help. And in one of the cruelest ironies of all, the U.S. president who has gone further to engage Iran than any of his predecessors is watching any hope for diplomacy being ground up by a regime under siege in Tehran...."

(more/ here)