“Without a well-articulated strategy that the public support and the world understands, America will lack the legitimacy – and ultimately the power – it needs to make the world safer than it is today.” So declared then senator Barack Obama in 2006. But this wise prescription went undelivered. According to Gallup, approval of President Obama's foreign affairs management never again reached the bare 50 percent achieved in May 2011 when Navy SEALs eliminated Osama bin Laden. By fall 2014, most Americans regarded Obama as “not tough enough” while almost half believed their nation was less important and powerful than a decade previously. Washington's diminishing influence contributed to a less secure international environment. Much of the Western world appeared to neither understand nor approve US strategy; the non-Western to exploit it. As Hillary Clinton reflected on the grand strategy of the administration she served as secretary of state, “Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don't do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.”

Developing a “unified theory” of the Obama administration's approach to international affairs poses a formidable intellectual challenge. Its “team of rivals” changed regularly, with prominent figures such as Clinton, Robert Gates, David Petraeus and Chuck Hagel entering and exiting while the president relied more closely on an inner “echo chamber” of political advisors. Obama's concern for foreign policy appeared inconstant. And although some notable successes occurred – Osama bin Laden's assassination, partial normalization of relations with Cuba, the 2014 climate change accord with China, agreement of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – these were strongly outweighed by a lengthy compendium of more consequential failures. Indeed, rarely has an administration been so widely criticized, not only by its partisan political opponents but also its own foreign policy principals.

The verdict of Leon Panetta, who served as CIA director and defense secretary, was that, “Too often in my view the president relies on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader.” But, though true enough, the Obama leadership deficit was the result of more than lawyerly excess and insufficient passion. The president combined a complete lack of executive experience with total certitude in his worldview and the most centralized decision-making process since Richard Nixon.