Both Anne Applebaum and Dan Drezner have pinpointed Barack Obama's overarching foreign policy problem: sitting at the apex of the international pecking order brings a lot of headaches and apparently very little camaraderie. Neither of them quite hits the mark, however, for how the United States should handle this strategic loneliness.

Applebaum thinks Obama will have to swing the pendulum back toward unilateralism, and Drezner says the US should start to take its hands off the wheel and see if the free-riders move up to the front. I'm sympathetic to both of their frustrations and believe the spirit of their approaches can and should be incorporated into the strategy of engagement.

Applebaum looks at Obama's search for international partners and notes that so far he's not really finding them:

Having come to office promising to work with allies, it may soon discover that there are no allies with which to work. Europe is still our best hope, because Europeans share most of our values. But organizing sanctions with a divided Europe--never mind a military operation--will continue to be a major chore. China, meanwhile, is acquiring vast foreign interests, trading in Africa and South America as well as Asia, and maintaining a vast army. But China appears uninterested in joining an international campaign against terrorism, nuclear proliferation, or anything else.

So America may indeed find itself standing alone, true enough. But the option of acting alone remains fraught with the same problems that became so familiar for the last eight years. Ultimately our strategy is to spread the sense of ownership over problems like Iran as widely as possible. Until others start rolling up their sleeves, the sole superpower has to keep stressing the seriousness of the problems, the consequences of inaction, the reality that they won't solve themselves, and the fact that a strong and healthy international system won't run on autopilot.

I also agree with Dan that the advantages of being the acknowledged and (largely) accepted global top dog are accompanied by a bum rap: "the United States gets blamed when global public goods are not provided -- even if the United States is largely blameless." To deal with the free-riders, Drezner raises the idea of telling them that the superpower will happily pull back and let matters take their course. I certainly see the temptation, but as Dan himself notes, we'd be among those living with the consequences.

What I share with Applebaum and Drezner is the assessment that as other powers remain aloof, they are misjudging what's at stake. And while the responses they weigh would bring more problems than they'd solve, the Obama Administration should, and may well, keep ratcheting up the rhetoric of shared international responsibility. Perhaps President Obama's Nobel Prize acceptance speech presents an opportnity. In the spirit of Dan and Anne's frustrations, I'd be tempted to lay it out quite straight:

"I cannot fulfill any of the hopes symbolized by this award without other world leaders joining me in confronting the shared challenges of our times. America has adopted a new approach based on the premise that diplomacy and cooperation will be more effective in building a peaceful and prosperous world. But the diplomatic approach is not an end or an achievement in itself; it's real value will only be proved by its results in tackling the urgent challenges of nuclear proliferation, economic development, and climate change. Unless more political leaders rise to this challenge, then not only will the hopes of the Nobel Committee be disappointed, but we will be delinquent as stewards of our world and leave the next generation an international situation worse than when we assumed the responsibility of leadership..." [I'm sure Jon Favreau and Ben Rhodes will have much better ideas.]

For years internationally minded wonks have been intoning that the problems of today's world are too complex to be solved even by the world's most powerful nation. We need the rest of the world to wake up to the flip side of this reality: the requirement that others step up to the plate.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.