Last summer I ruminated on President Obama's curious lack of personal connections with any global leaders of note. Peter Feaver's post below on Iraq and this New York Times story both demonstrate how this deficiency continues to hinder the Obama administration's foreign policy. The Times article describes Obama's "failure to build close personal relationships with foreign leaders that can, especially in the Middle East, help the White House to influence decisions made abroad."

Peter's post and the Times article both point to diplomatic mistakes made with Maliki in Iraq and Mubarak in Egypt. Meanwhile, the list continues to grow of President Obama's other missed opportunities, failures, and simmering crises that all could have benefitted from better personal relationships and rapports -- such as with Karzai in Afghanistan, Abdullah in Saudi Arabia, Merkel in Germany, Harper in Canada, Noda in Japan (the Senkaku Islands standoff between Japan and China could get much worse), Singh in India, Zardari in Pakistan, and especially Netanyahu in Israel. Sure, some of these global leaders can be difficult to get along with, but diplomacy has never been easy.

The two cases of Obama's positive relationships that have been reported were with Dmitri Medvedev, the erstwhile Russian president (and current but largely irrelevant Prime Minister), and Prime Minister Erdogan in Turkey. These are exceptions that prove the rule, and notably neither relationship seems to have produced significant policy results. Turkey's democracy continues to erode while it pursues a hedging strategy in the region. The White House's earlier effort to cultivate Medvedev was a failed bet on the wrong leader that damaged the U.S. posture with Russia, exemplified by Obama's hot-mic supplications to the Russians for "flexibility."

It may well be that President Obama has cultivated strong personal relationships with some other world leaders that have not yet been publicly disclosed. But given this White House's propensity to leak foreign policy information intended to cast the boss in a favorable light, the fact that a credulous media hasn't run many stories on such friendships probably means they don't exist. This lack of personal chemistry with foreign leaders seems of a piece with Obama's lack of personal connections with American Congressional leaders, as described in unflattering detail by many sources such as Bob Woodward's new book.

In my post last year I observed how previous leaders such as Secretary of State George Shultz and President Bush 43 cultivated personal relationships with their international counterparts, often doing so deliberately during times of calm, before crises struck. Other positive examples abound in the annals of American diplomacy, such President Clinton's close rapport with Tony Blair, or President Bush 41's deft statecraft with numerous leaders in ending the Cold War and successful efforts to line up multinational support for the Persian Gulf War. Or from the more distant past, my class this week read Mary Ann Glendon's excellent book on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, where Eleanor Roosevelt's personal warmth and persistent diplomacy brought together a wildly diverse and fractious group of international leaders behind a common human rights framework at the outset of the Cold War.

Personal relationships among leaders by themselves do not guarantee success. And for all of their advantages, they can also at times cloud good judgment, such as when Ronald Reagan's personal loyalties to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl led to the infamous visit to the Bitburg cemetery.

Yet the advantages of cultivating close bonds are manifest, and the failure to do so can be costly. For the Obama administration, the strategic consequences of this deficiency have resulted in a largely reactive foreign policy. While it is impossible to anticipate and stay abreast of all events, this White House to a surprising degree still seems to be regularly caught off guard, and leaves much of the rest of the world wondering where it stands and where it wants to steer the ship of state going forward. Having a few more world leaders on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue's direct dial would be a small but meaningful step in the right direction.

Josh Rogin's take on Gov. Mitt Romney's speech Tuesday at the Clinton Global Initiative gathering left me scratching my head. Much of his piece quoted Romney's remarks to good effect by highlighting portions where Romney calls for reforms designed to treat the causes of poverty, oppression, and suffering, not just the symptoms. But in a couple of key places Rogin draws inferences the text does not support, such as the inference that a Romney administration won't be as interested in humanitarian assistance. In another place, he says that Romney believes that the corruption that results from foreign aid is because today the vast majority of foreign aid comes from private sources (investment and charitable giving) and not from governments. But Romney simply did not say any of this. Let's look at these in reverse order.

Rogin notes that Romney understands the American public's frustration with decades of aid that is ineffective and doesn't solve problems. And worse, as Romney notes, the aid gets into the hands of corrupt governments. That is, Americans believe that for too long the U.S. provided aid that didn't do what it was supposed to do: End suffering and promote prosperity. The context of the entire quotation is historical in nature, and that is important to understand in order to get Romney's next point.

Romney asserts that "Perhaps some of our disappointments are due to our failure to recognize just how much the developing world has changed. Many of our foreign aid efforts were designed at a time when government development assistance accounted for roughly 70 percent of all resources flowing to developing nations. Today, 82 percent of the resources flowing into the developing world come from the private sector. If foreign aid can leverage this massive investment by private enterprise, it may exponentially expand the ability to not only care for those who suffer, but also to change lives."

But Rogin takes these comments -- the lament about ineffectiveness and corruption -- and interprets Romney to be saying that the failure is due to this very privatization of aid. This is odd. Romney cannot possibly believe that for two reasons. First, as an advocate of the private sector, the governor knows that corruption results from too much government control and power over people's lives, not less. More aid flowing from the private sector of the developed countries to the private sector of the less developed countries is a good thing. The only corruption I can think of that could be suggested by increased inflows of private sector money is when foreign businesses pay bribes to get an advantage, but Romney says nothing about that and Rogin does not suggest it. Besides, that would be an argument about too much power in the hands of government, the very thing Romney decries because it makes aid ineffective and breeds corruption.

Second, as I noted above, Romney is referring to Americans' frustrations in historical context, the "years of aid relief" that don't work as planned. So he states what Americans have been seeing and thinking over the years, and says they want something different. Romney thinks that something different is here and now but we haven't adapted to it yet. That is, more aid flows from and to private hands and that is a good thing, but our policy is outdated and needs to catch up to that fact and build on it. Says Romney, "If foreign aid can leverage this massive investment by private enterprise, it may exponentially expand the ability to not only care for those who suffer, but also to change lives." The point should be clear: If we want to avoid foreign aid ineffectiveness and corruption, we need to make sure our policies promote the private sector in the developing countries. This is the point about partnerships and trade.

Another problem with Rogin's interpretation of Romney's remarks is the former's assertion several times that Romney wants to "deprioritize" or "lower the priority" of humanitarian assistance. Romney simply did not say this. Let's first note exactly what Romney said the priorities of foreign assistance should be.

"There are three, quite legitimate, objects of our foreign aid. First, to address humanitarian need. Such is the case with the PEPFAR initiative, which has given medical treatment to millions suffering from HIV and AIDS.

Second, to foster a substantial United States strategic interest, be it military, diplomatic, or economic.

And there is a third purpose, one that will receive more attention and a much higher priority in a Romney administration. And that is aid that elevates people and brings about lasting change in communities and in nations."

This is a clear and definitive statement of Romney's priorities and goals with his suggested reforms. At no point in these lines does he suggest what Rogin appears to infer, that Romney wants the U.S. to provide less humanitarian assistance. But Romney would put a higher priority on aid that works; on aid that keeps governments from getting in the way of free people and free markets; and on aid "that elevates people and brings about lasting change." It is a stretch to say this means deprioritizing humanitarian assistance unless you believe that the one and only way to deliver humanitarian assistance is by means of government, or that there are no partnerships between the public and private sectors to fulfill this foreign assistance goal.

The GOP nominee laid out one of the boldest and clearest reforms since the U.S. foreign assistance regime was inaugurated with the Marshall Plan more than half a century ago. In doing so, Romney recognizes the problem of too much government control over problems that only the private sector can solve. He celebrates work and personal achievement over never-ending government programs that treat symptoms and not causes...sort of like he does with the U.S. domestic economic problems.

Has Obama fulfilled his most famous national security campaign commitment from 2008: to end the Iraq war "more responsibly" than he says we began it? According to this excerpt from Michael Gordon's new book on Iraq, the answer may well turn out to be no.

Gordon is considered by many to be the best reporter on the Iraq war and his long-awaited book is likely to shed new light particularly on the last half-decade of U.S. involvement. The excerpt in Sunday's New York Times covers the Obama administration's failed effort to negotiate terms for the long-planned-for stay-behind military force. The Obama administration is understandably reluctant to talk about these efforts much, and nowadays when the president mentions Iraq he makes it sound like he never considered anything other than withdrawing all but a handful of U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. However, if that was what the president secretly intended all along, it was not what the administration was officially pursuing for the first several years when it tried, unsuccessfully, to negotiate a new Status of Forces Agreement. 

I raised questions about some of these developments as they unfolded (see here, here, and here) and now Gordon's reporting is pulling back the veil to answer some of those questions.

The picture is not very pretty. Gordon documents:

• A president unable to engage in effective personal diplomacy at crunch time because he had failed to invest in the hard work of retail diplomacy along the way. This is a problem that extends well past Iraq, as another blockbuster New York Times story makes clear. As an unnamed U.S. diplomat told the NYT: "He's not good with personal relationships; that's not what interests him...But in the Middle East, those relationships are essential. The lack of them deprives D.C. of the ability to influence leadership decisions."

• A team whose wild over-confidence contributed to the failure to react in a timely manner to an unraveling situation. In one of the most devastating items in the piece, Gordon quotes Vice President Biden: "I'll bet you my vice presidency Maliki will extend the SOFA," he added, referring to the Status of Forces Agreement the Obama administration hoped to negotiate."

• A team paralyzed by infighting and poisonous civil-military relations. Gordon reports that Thomas Donilon, Obama's national security advisor, criticized Admiral Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for presenting military advice that ran counter to what the White House wanted to hear.

Perhaps a more adept president would have also failed to secure a follow-on Status of Forces Agreement. It is true that what the United States wanted from the Iraqis to secure an agreement was a very big ask, one that Prime Minister Maliki proved ultimately unwilling to give: immunity granted by the Iraqi parliament for all U.S. troops. But it is also true that the way Obama approached Iraq made it even harder for Maliki to deliver on his side.

Given the prominent role that the Iraq story played in Obama's approach to the 2008 election, it is ironic that it seems to play no role whatsoever in 2012. If Gordon's book reinforces the assessment that his excerpt provides, the lower profile may benefit Obama. The closer one looks at the facts, the less they seem to support the campaign spin of a "responsible" end to a troubled war.

The supposed grand master stroke of Obama's foreign policy, the Asia "pivot," is burning to death on the streets of the Middle East. The idea that the sole superpower can pivot away from any critical region was always strategically unsound. But even the Asia part of the pivot is not doing as well as the very self-satisfied Obamanians imagine (Full disclosure: I'm an informal advisor to Mitt Romney's Asia team). Herewith a few questions from a pivot skeptic:

1) Why are Japan and China close to coming to blows over the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute? Could it be that Japan is less than assured, as President Obama likes to say about another beleaguered allied democracy, that Washington "has its back?" In the absence of assurance of American power and commitment, might it be the case the Japan is expressing its concern over Chinese power through less than helpful acts of nationalism? Might the Japanese read the American newspapers stories that tell daily tales of a declining defense budget and nuclear deterrent?

2) If the Obamanians have managed the China-Taiwan relationship so well, why has China increased its arsenal of theater missiles pointed at Taiwan, its fighter-aircraft programs, and its strategic arsenal? Why hasn't the U.S. sold anything to Taiwan to offset these growing programs? Why does Taiwan remain outside of any meaningful international organization?

3) Might it be the case that Iran watches North Korea grow its nuclear arsenal and kill South Koreans with impunity and learns that having a nuclear arsenal offers a rogue country the ultimate deterrent that can protect it as it menaces its neighbors?

4) Why is it that for all the talk of a "rebalancing" or pivot to Asia, not a single ally or friend has a clue how it should reposture its military? Why isn't Washington bringing allies into a discussion of what military capabilities it is prepared to offer to help defend the Asian peace? For allies the pivot is beginning to look like a few nice speeches, a few thousand Marines rotating further away from flashpoints in Asia and into Darwin, Australia, and a few little ships deployed to Singapore.

5) President Obama was opposed to the South Korean Free Trade Agreement before he was for it. As a senator he helped the agreement gather dust after it was negotiated. As president he took his sweet time getting it ratified. Since then not a single solitary free trade agreement has been signed in Asia. Is free trade not an important tool of the smart power the Obamanians are supposed to be so adept at practicing?

6) Is India not an important part of an Asia policy? If it is, why is the Obama administration, which was for the surge in Afghanistan before it turned against it, showing every sign of rushing to exit Afghanistan? If Afghanistan is smoldering, it would seem that the Indians may not be able to play the role we hoped it would in East Asia.

7) Is it not the case that Asian allies who depend upon Middle Eastern energy resources may watch U.S. fecklessness in the Middle East and perhaps question Washington's ability to be the security partner of first resort in Asia?

Yesterday in Washington, Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi stood in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda to accept the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor Congress can bestow. The award had been waiting for Suu Kyi since 2008, when House and Senate leaders initiated legislation "in recognition of her courageous and unwavering commitment to peace, nonviolence, human rights, and democracy in Burma" and President George W. Bush signed it into law.

Still under house arrest in 2008, Suu Kyi chose not to accept the award in absentia. Instead, thinking optimistically, she decided to look forward to the day when she could receive it in person. And indeed she finally did.

A notable roster of well wishers -- including House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senator John McCain, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former First Lady Laura Bush and others -- went to the podium to pay tribute to Suu Kyi's courage and commitment to a free and democratic Burma. It was a welcome and increasingly rare display in Washington of bipartisan foreign policy consensus, something that has waned significantly since the end of the Cold War.

For the program's invocation, the Reverend Patrick Conroy, S.J., Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives, thanked God for Suu Kyi, calling her a "heroic witness to the dignity of all people." Amen.

Senator McCain, verging on tears, recalled first meeting Suu Kyi 15 years ago and being amazed that this "picture of gentleness and serenity" could be the same "implacable lady" who had so befuddled the men of Burma's military-backed regime.

Mrs. Bush hailed Suu Kyi as "the mother of her country" and recognized her moral clarity and strength. "One of the most repressive governments on earth attempted to isolate and silence one woman," she said. "It must have seemed an easy task. Instead, the regime encountered an immovable object -- and its legitimacy broke against her character."

Secretary Clinton turned to Suu Kyi with a big smile and marveled: "We knew at some point that change would have to come...It's almost too delicious to believe, my friend, that you are in the Rotunda of our Capitol, the centerpiece of our democracy, as an elected member of parliament." Applause ensued.

Suu Kyi graciously accepted the honor and then implored: "Please use your liberty to promote ours." She also issued a call to support not just the people of Burma but people "everywhere else in the world where freedom is still a dream." 

In that moment, it was almost impossible not to think about the late Vaclav Havel, the former dissident turned head of state who helped lead Czechoslovakia from tyranny into freedom. Not satisfied with the fruits of his labors at home, President Havel made it his mission to support those who were still seeking freedom from oppression, including Aung San Suu Kyi. And now we see this remarkable woman using her nascent freedoms to pay it forward, just as Havel did, and raising up the plight of freedom seekers beyond her country's borders.

Against this momentous backdrop, it is important to acknowledge the progress Burma has made in such a short time. It is equally important to recognize the enormous task that lies ahead.

In The Case for Democracy, former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky is unambiguous about the meaning of freedom. For him, the test is simple:

Can a person walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm? If he can, then that person is living in a free society. If not, it's a fear society.

In Burma, a corrupt and brutal military regime failed the "town square test" with impunity for nearly 50 years. Today, it's too soon to say the people of Burma are free, but we're cautiously optimistic about the future. 

Since Suu Ky's release from house arrest in 2010 and the emergence of a civilian-led government in 2011, Burma has experienced important openings. Hundreds of political prisoners have been released. Media censorship has been curbed. 2,000 individuals have been removed from the government's notorious political blacklist. Labor unions have been legalized. And Aung San Suu Kyi and her fellow National League for Democracy members have stood for parliamentary elections, openly campaigning across the country and sweeping 43 of the 44 seats they contested earlier this year.

Nevertheless, hundreds of political prisoners still sit in Burma's jails. The media now submit copies of their work to government censors after publication, rather than before. Ethnic conflict continues to claim lives. The executive has yet to submit to democratic elections. And constitutional reform is sorely needed.

While confident that her country can overcome these and other obstacles to a free society, Aung San Suu Kyi recognizes that "until the army comes out clearly and consistently in support of the democratic process, we cannot say that it's irreversible." Let us hope that day comes sooner than anyone expects, just as Suu Kyi's historic visit to America came this week.

James K. Glassman is former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs and founding executive director of the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas, Texas. Amanda Schnetzer is the Bush Institute's Director of Human Freedom.

No doubt the Obama administration has its hands full with a full-blown crisis in the Middle East, but we rightly expect presidents to have enough hands to deal with more than one crisis at a time. So far, there is little evidence that the administration is engaging with the trouble in the Pacific over a handful of disputed islands in ways that attend to U.S. national interests. Our interests are clear: aggression is not acceptable, and certainly neither is a war between China and Japan over disputed islands, no matter whose claim is ultimately justified. The United States should make this clear not only in public pronouncements but with serious behind the scenes diplomacy. Our goal should be to encourage all in the region that keeping a close relationship with the United States is paramount, and those who want our influence in the region should be favored. Showing weakness or inattentiveness over this dispute is just as dangerous as showing it in the Middle East with regard to the safety of our embassy personnel and with what should be our non-negotiable stance on free speech despite protesting mobs.

At this point, China is escalating its aggressive posture in both word and deed toward Japan (and the much weaker Philippines regarding another disputed set of islands). It also bullies other countries such as Norway for its role in giving the Nobel prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, and is distancing itself from the United States with its recent ill-treatment of Secretary Clinton and its refusal to engage in talks. All this escalation continues as Secretary Panetta visits the region and is being vocal about the dangers. In short, China has been for months strategically engaging in coercive diplomacy with any country that disputes its claims or offends its sensibilities regarding its human rights record. Unusually, not even the impending installation of a new premier has put this policy on pause.

But the role that China is playing is not the whole story. Japanese politics might be turning more decisively nationalist even as it reacts to Chinese pressure, and that could spell serious trouble for us as Joshua Keating points out at FP's Passport blog. It could also be devastating for the global economy if a trade and investment war breaks out. And we should not forget that in a region where we'd like to see democracy strengthened rather than derailed or weakened, this does not bode well, as Christian Caryl points out at FP's Democracy Lab blog.

Already Japan is matching Chinese diplomatic and economic actions with its own. It is now tit for tat. Each side is becoming locked in a downward spiral of slowing or stopping investment and trade, large demonstrations are manifesting in each country, and there are very loud and public calls for divestment and boycotts. Looming on the horizon is the increasing strength of more nationalist politicians in Japan who have chosen in this crisis with China to flex Japanese muscles. Cooler heads who in the past have defused tensions and maintained the huge mutually beneficial and complex economic engine of the Pacific Rim appear not to have the tiller in hand, nor can they afford to appear weak in an increasingly nationalist country. Understandably, more and more Japanese each year chafe at playing the role of dependent on U.S. might and diplomacy, or at least being perceived to do that. But whether anyone in the highest circles in Japan -- and China for that matter -- have been thinking about the grave risks they are running, even if they stop short of war, is anyone's guess. If emotion is overtaking reason, if leaders are more focused on righting the wrongs of history than in securing a stable and prosperous future, if they desire more to cut a figure before their publics (whether they get to vote for them or not) and on the world stage than to be statesmen, then we are all in serious trouble. Right now, it looks like that is what is happening.

It is the job of the United States to do all it can to prevent any kind of war, whether it be a trade war or an actual military conflict. This is our problem because the consequences of this conflict will impact us greatly, but also because we are party to the myriad territorial settlements and vague understandings of the disposition of the islands in the region after WWII. Given what has happened in the Middle East in the last two weeks regarding the Obama administration's record of being prepared, thinking ahead, and acting and speaking firmly in behalf of our interests, I am not encouraged.

Recent days have witnessed the emergence of two divergent narratives regarding the wave of anti-American protests that have spread throughout the Islamic world and beyond.

The first, which originated from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo at the very beginning of the unrest, is centered on the spontaneous and righteous indignation of the Muslim street in the face of an amateurish film defaming their religion. Although the administration subsequently distanced itself from the embassy's statement laying blame for the violence at the feet of the filmmaker, the assertion that the ongoing unrest was the result of a trailer posted on YouTube, rather than a more fundamental outpouring of rage, remains at the core of the administration's narrative.

The second narrative, which the administration appears keen to play down, involves a deliberate attack by an Al Qaeda affiliate on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi on the eleventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.  Although senior administration officials, most recently United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, have termed the attack a spontaneous event, such a view is increasingly at odds with the facts. In an interview with National Public Radio (hardly at the forefront of the vast right-wing media conspiracy) Libya's interim president, Mohammed el-Megarif, described the attack on the U.S. consulate as pre-planned and multi-phased.

Each narrative is problematic for the Obama administration. Perhaps, just perhaps, it is a coincidence that this wave of protests began on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. But perhaps not. Regardless of its origins, the ongoing violence is stark testimony to the failure of the outreach to the Muslim world that lay at the heart of Obama's Middle East policy.

Obama, a Christian originally of Muslim heritage who lived in Indonesia and attended a predominantly Muslim school as a child, has seen himself as uniquely qualified to use the force of his personality to transform America's relationship with the Islamic world. Speaking in Cairo in June 2009, Obama pledged to repair relations with Muslims. The logic undergirding Obama's policy was that a conciliatory approach would increase America's standing and improve its security.

Such logic appears increasingly open to question. First, data from the Pew Global Attitudes Project shows that the United States is more unpopular now in key Muslim states than it was when Obama first took office. In 2009, for example, 74 percent of Jordanians held an unfavorable view of the United States; today it is 86 percent. In 2009, 68 percent of Pakistanis held an unfavorable view; today it is 80 percent. And in 2009, 70 percent of Egyptians held an unfavorable view of the United States; today, after Obama's Cairo speech and the overthrow of Mubarak, the number stands at 79 percent. In other words, the roots of Muslim rage lie not in who occupies the White House, but in more fundamental and less tractable causes.

Second, the logic of Obama's policy was that if Muslims liked the United States more, then Americans would be more secure. Despite Obama's admonition that U.S. leaders not "spike the football" in the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden, the Obama administration has initiated repeated bouts of chest thumping. In recent months, administration officials have repeatedly portrayed Al Qaeda and its affiliates as organizations in decline.

The situation on the ground would appear to be somewhat different. Aside from the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi, the U.S. position in Afghanistan has suffered setbacks at the hands of Al Qaeda's friends, the Taliban. On Friday, U.S. forces at Camp Leatherneck in southern Afghanistan suffered an attack that killed two Marines and destroyed seven percent of the AV-8B Harrier attack aircraft in the U.S. combat inventory. Yesterday the U.S. military suspended combat patrols with Afghan forces because of a mounting wave of attacks by Afghan security forces on their American partners, undermining the thrust of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

It remains to be seen how the past week's events will affect the presidential election. At the very least, these emerging narratives call into question Barack Obama's stewardship of American foreign policy. More seriously, they could prefigure a more serious weakening of our position in the Middle East.

Precisely eleven years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the question of U.S. relations with Islamic countries and communities is once again at the top of the foreign policy agenda. As violent anti-American protests rage around the world, the Obama administration has focused on safeguarding U.S. citizens and installations on one hand, and seeking to dampen the fury of the protests on the other by pointing out that the U.S. government had nothing to do with the anti-Islamic video that ignited this burst of anger.

While this immediate focus on quelling the crisis is prudent, the U.S. response cannot stop there. While the video in question may have catalyzed these protests, it cannot accurately be described as the cause of them. In any event, any effort to quash future provocations of this sort is bound to be futile -- given the ease by which such media can now be produced and distributed -- as well as profoundly contrary to the American belief in the right to free expression.

The current unrest is not in fact a result of a single offensive video, but is rather a continuation and outgrowth of the Arab uprisings of 2011. Those revolutions were the result of deep-seated political and economic grievances that had been decades in the making: the absence of economic prosperity or the hope of individual advancement, paired with the inability to do anything about it as a result of the simultaneous absence of political rights.

But while the Arab uprisings resulted from those grievances, they did not by any means resolve them. Indeed, economies like Egypt's and Libya's are worse off now than they were at the beginning of 2011, as unrest and political uncertainty have driven away tourism and investment and politicians have as frequently sought to settle old scores instead of taking their countries forward. Political participation has increased, but it has not brought results sufficient to meet the (unrealistic) expectations of the people in these countries.

In such circumstances, it is not unusual for people to look for others to blame. As much as the recent anti-American protests and attacks on U.S. embassies have conjured an image of a U.S.-Islamic conflict, the United States is in fact just one of many parties upon whom blame for the Middle East's woes has been cast. The former regimes, religious minorities, wealthy businessmen, Israel, and liberals are among those who have been targeted in these Arab uprisings.

Just as there is no shortage of parties to blame, there have been an abundance of parties both within and without these countries ready to stoke these hatreds to advance their own agendas. Radical Islamists have perhaps been the most pervasive and vocal of these, but certainly not the only ones. In many Middle Eastern states, secular politicians have been as vocally anti-American as their Islamist counterparts. Whatever their ideology, the angry voices have drowned out the introspective ones, and those preaching simple fixes have too often prevailed over those offering sensible albeit difficult paths forward. In highly-charged environments where security and political institutions are either absent or non-functioning, it is a small step from rhetorical attacks on such perceived foes to physical attacks.

At such a pivotal moment, it is important that we correctly understand what is happening and why, and mount the appropriate policy response. We must in particular avoid the temptation of misapprehending the current spurt of violence as the harbinger of some sort of epic civilization-level conflict between the West and Islam, or the urge to disengage with the Middle East in frustration over the persistence of anti-Americanism and chaos there. The Middle East remains a region which is vital to U.S. interests, and we cannot afford either to ignore it or to act in a rash or naïve manner there.

Since the beginning of the Arab uprisings, the Obama administration has adopted a passive, hesitant approach to events, conveying the sense that America is increasingly disengaged, indifferent, or both when it comes to the Middle East. This can be seen in the disconnect between rhetoric and action on Syria, diffidence in dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, "leading from behind" in Libya, and even in the talk of a "pivot" to Asia in our foreign policy. The result has been a diminution rather than an enhancement in both U.S. influence and -- despite strenuous efforts to avoid disputes with new governments in the region -- our popularity.

Going forward, the United States should not lose our hope for a positive future in the Middle East or confidence in our own ability to shape outcomes there. However, we should be clear-eyed about the challenges that we face and the long timetable which lies before us to accomplish what we set out to achieve. Foreign policy has three fundamental objectives -- to promote American security, prosperity, and to advance U.S. values. This should be the starting point for successful policy in the region -- firmly and unapologetically advocate our interests, help governments to reform politically and economically, and support and work with parties within and without the region who share our interests and values.

Any spark can start a fire, but a sustained conflagration requires fuel and oxygen to sustain itself. There is little U.S. policymakers can do to prevent future sparks of the sort that triggered the violence convulsing the Middle East today. But through a clear understanding of the region's challenges and a principled and realistic response to them, we and our allies can hope to prevent them from becoming infernos which engulf our interests and those of the region's citizens.