The halfhearted threat to the US superpower

The hyperpuissance has become the halfhearted superpower. When Barack Obama abjured the military adventurism of his predecessor he could have been forgiven for hoping for a quieter life. Instead the US president has learnt that a reticent pose offers a flimsy defence against a world falling into systemic disorder.

This week Mr Obama said goodbye to Chuck Hagel. There have been plenty of whispered explanations for the defence secretary’s departure. He had fallen foul of the abrasive temperament of the national security adviser Susan Rice; he added little to meetings about the multiple crises of the moment; or, this slightly to the contrary, he was a little too outspoken about Syria. Perhaps he queried for how long the US can pretend to be fighting both sides in the war between Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the self-styled Islamic State?

Whatever the catalyst, nothing seems likely to change very much. Mr Hagel’s replacement will probably become as frustrated as the last several defence secretaries with micromanagement by the White House. The president shows no inclination to rethink his foreign policy, even as events force a reversal of US military disengagement from the Middle East. The Arab world often offers a choice only between bad options.

Written down, as it was for a speech at the West Point military academy earlier in the year, Mr Obama’s approach looks well-suited to the times. The US will chart a middle path between the reflex military intervention of George W Bush’s presidency and an isolationist impulse among American voters. The use of force will be a last resort, limited to the direct defence of US citizens and the nation’s “core” interests. Elsewhere US leadership will take the form of diplomacy, refurbishment of alliances and coalition building. The US will balance China rather than confront it.

Drawing a line around those places where Washington feels compelled to uphold vital interests shows respect for geopolitical reality. This recasting of the US as a selective superpower recognises the shift in the balance of global power – to rising states such as China and to non-state actors such as those now wreaking bloody mayhem in the Arab world.

At West Point, Mr Obama insisted that the US remains the indispensable nation. This is true as far it goes – American military might is unmatched and there are not many serious conflicts one can imagine being settled without US engagement. But if Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria prove anything it is that it is also the insufficient superpower.

Republican critics will doubtless step up the charge that Mr Obama is not tough enough against adversaries. Yet those same critics have elevated tax cuts above defence spending in the sequestration process to cut the budget deficit. Bluff posturing comes cheap, but America is not in the mood to fight more wars.

The US approach to Iran’s nuclear programme has measured up to the facts of the new order. The uncomfortable truth, denied by Washington hawks, is that if the regime in Tehran is determined to acquire a nuclear weapon there is not much anyone else, including the indispensable nation, can do about it. The international community can raise the cost of such a programme with sanctions. It could delay it by starting another Middle East war. But if Iran wants the bomb it can get it.

Things may yet come to war, but the only real hope of a nuclear-free Iran lies in persuading its leaders they have more to gain without the bomb. There is nothing at all nice about the Iranian regime. The same though can be said of supposed western allies such as Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. Washington should now reach beyond the technicalities of centrifuges and inspection regimes to frame nuclear self-restraint as part of a bargain to restore Iran’s place in the international community.

The intellectual logic of restraint runs into disobliging realities. Defining vital interests is easier said than done. If the US remains the only power that matters everywhere, it also has interests almost everywhere. Disorder is contagious, spilling over national boundaries and blind to lines of interest drawn on a map by a US president.

The criticism of Mr Obama that sticks is that he has been careless of the way power in the international system relies on signalling and perception as well as economic and military strength. What the superpower does here, matters there. Allowing Mr Assad to step over a red line in Syria sent a message to Russia’s Vladimir Putin about what he might get away with in Ukraine. A softish line since towards Russian revanchism gets noticed in Beijing.

Allies as well as adversaries have come to doubt US resolve in those places where its interests seem self-evidently “core”. As for public opinion, the currents often compete. Weary as they are of foreign adventurism, voters are still susceptible to the something-must-be-done clamour of the digital age.

There is no simple answer for a president under siege from demands that the US fix everything. But wisdom might begin with recognition of the difference between selective and halfhearted.

A selective superpower would match restraint with implacable robustness when its core interests were threatened. It would transmit the message that lines drawn could not be crossed. Mr Obama seems more halfhearted than selective – hesitant about acting anywhere. That is why the US seen by the rest of the world is a lot weaker than facts would allow.

philip.stephens@ft.com