WASHINGTON — This is the speech President Obama did not make on his foreign policy (with thanks to Stephen Heintz, a shrewd observer of America’s role in the world):

My fellow Americans:

I have based my foreign policy on some tough realities that are hard to talk about because no American likes to hear about the limits of our power. But those limits have grown. American power in the 21st century cannot be what it was in 1945 — or even in 1990.

To say this is to be accused of defeatism, of managing American decline and of giving up on American exceptionalism. That is why I have pursued an implicit foreign policy rather than an explicit one. That is why I waited so long to give this speech on my doctrine of restraint. No president wants to make a speech called “The Consequences of the End of the American Century.” It’s political suicide.

Implicit has meant letting actions speak. Some say I have failed to understand the theater of American leadership. I’ll leave the strutting on the world stage to others.

Our world is more interdependent than ever. China, India and other nations have grown rapidly, ending an era of Western domination. The Chinese economy has quintupled in size since 1990. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq consumed trillions of dollars but did not bring victory. The enemies we face, often groups of violent extremists, cannot be vanquished through conventional warfare.