As published for Shadow Government on foreignpolicy.com on March 8th, 2010:

In today’s Washington Post Jackson Diehl writes about something that has puzzled me for a while: President Obama has not cultivated the close working relationships with other world leaders that previous presidents have.

This is triply paradoxical. On the one hand, Obama is exceptionally popular abroad with elites and the general public. Leaders pay relatively little political cost in working closely with Obama, unlike, for example, the abuse Prime Minister Blair suffered for his close relationship with Bush.

On the other hand, to the extent that Obama has put his own stamp on American grand strategy so far it has been in the extraordinary lengths he has gone rhetorically to accommodate the complaints levied against the United States. Indeed, the heart of Obama’s first year strategy has been restoring the “soft power asset base” of the United States by conceding many foreign critiques, clearing the decks for leaders to start anew with America if they want to. This may help explain the first hand, Obama’s general popularity.

And on the third hand, the dictates of international diplomacy inevitably focus on the personalized diplomacy of the top leaders. This was true even when communications technology frustrated the effort; consider the risks President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill ran to hold a secret summit in the North Atlantic. This is even more true today when the communications/transportations costs of close contact between global leaders approaches zero. The president’s time is still a scarce and precious resource, sought by far more global demandeurs than the White House can satisfy. But beyond this constraint, there is practically no limit to the closeness of the personal relationship that the president can build with other leaders — if he wants to.

Read the full post here