Over at Care2, my other blog home, I have an analysis of Obama’s first year as foreign policymaker-in-chief.  A highlight:

In no area is this more true than in foreign policy, where Obama has managed to change the way the United States engages the rest of the world.  In contrast to the Bush Administration, which tried to dictate terms, Obama has recognized the limits of American power and the potential of American leadership.  Or as he put it in his inaugural address, “we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”. . .

What Obama has done is pursue a foreign policy based on sound strategic principles and coherent tactics.  It has emphasized both innovation and results, rewarding creativity and encouraging critical thinking.  Realism has trumped ideology, and principles have trumped “interests.” Call it pragmatic idealism, if you must apply a label.

This approach is not unprecedented in American history.  It. . .reflects the creativity and flexibility of the postwar Truman Administration, which, under the leadership of men like George Marshall and Dean Acheson, had to build new foreign policy and national security institutions virtually from scratch.

It therefore is possible that, to use Acheson’s famous phrase, we are once again “present at the creation” of a new paradigm, one that focuses on what the United States can do for the world, not what the world can do for the United States.  Thanks to the financial crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now Haiti, it will take more time than originally envisioned.  But in the end, Obama has the opportunity to remake the way the United States pursues its interests in the world.

You can find the whole thing, including my grades on issues ranging from Afghanistan to nukes, here.

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