Secondly, the Obama Doctrine demonstrates Obama’s massively overweening sense of self-importance. Foreign leaders are not idiots -- if they sense they can elicit concessions from America simply by inflating Obama’s confidence, they’ll do it. Even assuming Obama’s supposed international popularity, that popularity does not translate into a better international deal for America. Foreign leaders can stroke Obama’s ego while undermining America’s strength in the world. The world’s fawning patronage of Barack Obama does not mean the world will treat America as an ally.

That is because nations view each other historically, not based on what they’ve done the past few months. Viewing Germany as a peaceful socialistic country, ignoring its fascist past, . . . Viewing Russia as a corrupt mobocracy ignores its undercurrents of communistic thuggery, relics of the Soviet era.