A very good piece on President Obama's foreign policy worldview in yesterday's WaPo by Scott Wilson. Focusing on Obama's statements about the shared interests and responsibilities of nations, Wilson gathered assessments of the emerging Obama doctrine from many leading lights of the foreign policy world (one added source that would've been interesting is Richard Haass, whose 2005 book The Opportunity essentially previewed the shared interests approach).

The article highlights what I consider the United States' central foreign policy challenge: getting other nations moving in the direction we desire. As NSC communications strategist Ben Rhodes put it, if nations were already inclined to live up to their responsibilities, "this would be easy."

So despite being a huge fan of Lee Hamilton, I have to quibble with a description he gave of Obama's approach -- that the president is putting "a lot of faith in his persuasiveness." The narrative of persuasion is one of the great misconceptions of this debate. The diplomacy of shared interests and responsibilities isn't an attempt to overcome skepticism via mesmerizing rhetoric and the force of our arguments. The administration isn't waiting for the Iranian government to tell us "you're right, our uranium enrichment is bad for global security." In a case like Iran, the real objective of tough-minded diplomacy is to offer a stark choice between cooperation and continued pressure from a unified front of powerful nations, as Secretary Clinton stressed in rejecting Iran's attempt to reopening the nuclear deal (via Politico).

With respect to gaining the cooperation of others more broadly (including to maintain pressure on Iran), my own tack is to ask what the alternative is. If the only hope for international cooperation lies in those areas where traditional national self-interests converge, this would all be easy. More to the point, international politics as usual would leave many problems -- nuclear proliferation, global warming, poverty, Israel-Palestine -- on a very negative trajectory.

It shouldn't take a lot of enlightenment to see the enlightened self-interests on these issues. A little statesmanship is all we're asking. After all, that's why they're called world leaders.