Coming man: Vladimir Putin arrives to address Russia's parliament on Moscow's decision to annex the Crimea. Credit:AFP The following day in Iraq, Kerry met Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Publically he was there to encourage Maliki to build a unity government in the face of an onslaught by ISIL militants. Privately the message he delivered was that Maliki had to go. Maliki has ignored him on both counts so far, and had some stern words about Washington's failure to deliver. “We bought 36 F-16 American jet fighters, as usual the American process was slow and very long-winded and so far we have not had any deliveries," he told BBC Arabic. “Therefore . . . and frankly I don't mind if the world hears about it, we have bought second-hand jet fighters from Russia that should arrive in Iraq in two or three days.”

Good old days: as the US struggles to pivot to the Pacific theatre, its allies wonder if it can capture the American confidence of old, personified by Douglas MacArthur. On Tuesday, despite American calls for restraint, pro-Russian militants shot down a Ukrainian military helicopter in eastern Ukraine with a missile fired from a portable air-defence system. Russian aggression in Ukraine has been causing particular concern in Poland, which has been leading the diplomatic effort to ensure Western support for its neighbour’s sovereignty. A pro-Ukrainian protester in Times Square, New York. Credit:Reuters This week a weekly Polish news magazine published what appears to be a secret recording of the country's foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, telling Poland’s former finance minister that "the Polish-US alliance isn't worth anything".

As the BBC primly put it, he likened Poland’s stance in the alliance to providing oral sex and said such a subservient position could only lead to conflict with Germany and Russia. "[We are] suckers, total suckers. The problem in Poland is that we have shallow pride and low self-esteem,'' Mr Sikorski was quoted as saying. He has not denied using such language, though Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski told reporters on Monday that the US was a "very important ally and partner". The reports of his comments fuelled vitriolic domestic criticism of Kerry and the broader Obama administration for what opponents claim is a foreign policy that has either caused or contributed to violence and instability in Europe and the Middle East and failed to check China’s growing aspirations in the Pacific. As ISIL forces surged over the Syrian border seizing towns and cities in northern Iraq, the suppurating wound the 2003 invasion left on the American polity tore open. The neo-conservatives who championed the war took to the ramparts to blame Obama for failing to maintain security in Iraq and demand that America return in force.

"Rarely has a US president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many,” wrote former vice-president and Iraq war architect Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz in a joint Wall Street Journal opinion piece. "Mr Obama had only to negotiate an agreement to leave behind some residual American forces, training and intelligence capabilities to help secure the peace. Instead, he abandoned Iraq and we are watching American defeat snatched from the jaws of victory." Even reliable allies to conservatives, like Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, were affronted. ‘’But time and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well in Iraq, sir,” she said to Cheney when he appeared on her program. “You said there were no doubts Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. You said we would greeted as liberators. You said the Iraq insurgency was in the last throes back in 2005. And you said that after our intervention, extremists would have to, quote, ‘rethink their strategy of jihad'. Now with almost a trillion dollars spent there, with 4500 American lives lost there, what do you say to those who say, you were so wrong about so much at the expense of so many?” James Fallows called for the hawks to fall silent, writing in The Atlantic that Cheney and his ilk had been “wrong as a matter of analysis, wrong as a matter of planning, wrong as a matter of execution, wrong in conceiving American interests in the broadest sense. None of these people did that intentionally, and many of them have honestly reflected and learned. But we now live with (and many, many people have died because of) the consequences of their gross misjudgements a dozen years ago. In the circumstances, they might have the decency to shut the hell up on this particular topic for a while. They helped create the disaster Iraqis and others are now dealing with. They have earned the right not to be listened to.” This debate might be irrelevant except that it is against this backdrop that America’s response is being considered, and its broader foreign policy being defined. Is the cool response of "No Drama Obama" to crisis careful moderation or dangerous fecklessness?

Barry Posen, director of MIT’s Security Studies Program and author of the new book Restraint: A New Foundation For US Grand Strategy, believes Obama is still captive to the notion of “Liberal Hegemony” – that America has a responsibility to impose its liberal world view where it can around the world. But he says the tone in what he calls the “deep state” of DC’s foreign policy pundit class has started to change. In an interview with Fairfax Media this week he said until recently anyone who championed restraint or moderation in foreign policy was immediately silenced with the charge of being isolationist. Now, he says, the debate is allowed to continue. “If you keep telling people everyday, about every issue, that it is 1938, at some point people are going to stop and say 'is this really true?'” he says. Posen believes that through his observation of foreign policy as a senator and his experience as president, Obama has now developed a “proper scepticism for the military as an implement” though he remains a little too “exuberant” in his use of limited strikes and special forces.

If Posen is right, this could be what we are seeing in the White House response to the ISIL attack in Iraq. Obama has ruled out deploying troops but is keeping open the option of air strikes. Posen is one of a small but noticeable chorus of experts advocating Obama do nothing at all in Iraq. He argues that the US should only use force to protect its territorial integrity, sovereignty, safety or power position.Indeed Posen goes further, arguing that since the end of the Cold War the US made itself central to many nations’ politics and that this has made it easier for those nations to blame America when things go wrong. Obama’s response to date appears to be in line with his recent West Point speech on foreign policy, in which he declared America would use unilateral force to defend its interests and that it would defend it allies, but in other circumstances that called for military action it would seek to foster and lead international coalitions. His critics say this creates too much uncertainty among allies and potential adversaries. After all, a system of alliances underpinned by the world’s most powerful military loses deterrent effect unless adversaries believe that that military would be engaged. Congressman Randy Forbes, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told Fairfax Media this week he believes the Obama administration has fostered such uncertainty, particularly in the Pacific, the arena to which the Obama administration has been trying to "pivot".

He says it was “unfortunate” that the rhetoric of the pivot, announced by the previous secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, was accompanied by military budget restraint and cuts to the size of the US Navy. Forbes says he agrees with Tony Abbott, who told him at dinner earlier this month that US allies want more American leadership rather than less, and that they believe America can restore its confidence and deliver it. What is less clear, Forbes remembers Abbott saying, is whether America itself still has that confidence.