Obama is not a popular president in the US, but he is trying to lead his country in a world that, for the first time in 200 years, will not be dominated by Western power. Americans believe that their combination of democracy and capitalism is invincible, so a president who accepts that China will shortly supplant the US as the world's first economy is courting political rejection. He is tempting political culture.

We are hopeful and optimistic ("aspirational" is in vogue). But we are also fearful. We know in our hearts that Britain, the greatest of the European colonial powers, and the US, the strongest of the global powers, are responsible for the record, not us. Whenever victory eludes us, as in Vietnam during the Cold War and Iraq in the war against terrorism, we quickly lose confidence.

It's an impressive heritage, which accounts for some of the confidence, even cockiness, that we display from time to time. Unlike people in Germany and Japan, France, Italy and Russia, not to mention those with long memories in Greece and Egypt, Turkey and Iran, Australians have not yet had to factor defeat into our national resolve.

The past is a compelling Anglo-American record and it is not surprising that an Australian political leader with warrior tendencies should want to identify with it. Through its association with Britain and America, Australia was on the winning side in the global wars of the 20th century, the First World War, the Second World War and the Cold War, which, depending on how it is defined, lasted for the greater part of the what was left of the 20th century, until the last decade.

He is also warning his country about climate change, another contrast with Abbott. His statement of priorities recently at the United Nations could not have been clearer. "For all the immediate challenges that we gather to address this week – terrorism, instability, inequality, disease – there's one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate." The US-China joint declaration on climate change showed that he is prepared to act. The decision to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba is another indication that Obama is thinking of a different role for the US in the 21st century.

He is not the first US president to do so. Gareth Evans, then Australia's foreign minister, drew my attention in the 1990s, when we were writing Australia's foreign relations, to a speech by Bill Clinton. The former president had suggested that the US should be looking to new "rules and partnerships and habits of behaviour that we would like to live in" when the US was no longer the world's primary military and economic power.

When Kevin Rudd became prime minister for the first time, I thought it possible that, using his good relations with Obama and building on his success in getting the G20 elevated to heads-of-government meetings, Australia might help in getting this kind of thinking established in Washington. The prospect faded with the leadership changes in both major parties in Australia.

The idea of the Asia-Pacific region as a fusion of values and interests, rather than a cockpit of power politics, remains alive in the US, if mainly in the White House. It is supported by Henry Kissinger in his book On China, in which he discusses confidence-building measures and shared development in a Pacific community similar to the Atlantic community between Europe and the US, as a way of avoiding conflict between China and the US. "It would enable other major countries such as Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, India and Australia to participate in the construction of a system perceived as joint rather than polarised between Chinese and American blocs."

The Asia-Pacific region is shaping as the economic powerhouse of the 21st century. If it is prosperous and peaceful, the world is likely to be prosperous and peaceful. It would seem obviously in Australia's national interest in 2015 – the centenary of Gallipoli – to be a little less like a warrior and a little more intellectual.