In its first 50 days, the Obama administration has naturally been consumed by the economic crisis, but it has nevertheless made some striking shifts in foreign policy. Obama announced the closure of Guantanamo and the end of any official sanction for torture. He gave his first interview as president to an Arab network and spoke of the importance of respect when dealing with the Muslim world -- a gesture that won him rave reviews from normally hostile Arab journalists and politicians.

As George W. Bush's term ended, he had few defenders left in the world of foreign policy. Mainstream commentators almost unanimously agreed the Bush years had been marked by arrogance and incompetence. "Mr. Bush's characteristic failing was to apply a black-and-white mind-set to too many gray areas of national security and foreign affairs," The Post editorialized. Even Richard Perle, the neoconservative guru, acknowledged recently that "Bush mostly failed to implement an effective foreign and defense policy." There was hope that President Obama would abandon some of his predecessor's rigid ideological stances.

Hillary Clinton has racked up more miles in a few weeks than many of

her predecessors as secretary of state did in months, mixing symbolic

gestures of outreach with substantive talks. The administration has

signaled a willingness to start engaging with troublesome regimes such as

Syria and Iran. Clinton publicly affirmed that the United States would work

with China on the economic crisis and energy and environmental issues

despite differences on human rights. She has also offered the prospect of a

more constructive relationship with Russia.

These initial steps are all explorations in the right direction --

deserving of praise, one might think. But no, the Washington establishment

is mostly fretting, dismayed in one way or another by these moves. The

conservative backlash has been almost comical in its fury. Two weeks into

Obama's term, Charles Krauthammer lumped together a bunch of Russian

declarations and actions -- many of them long in the making -- and decided

that they were all "brazen ... provocations" that Obama had failed to

counter. Obama's "supine" diplomacy, Krauthammer thundered, was setting off

a chain of catastrophes across the globe. The Pakistani government, for

example, had obviously sensed weakness in Washington and "capitulated to

the Taliban" in the Swat Valley. Somehow Krauthammer missed the many deals

that Pakistan struck with the Taliban over the past three years -- during

Bush's reign -- deals that were more hastily put together, on worse terms,

with poorer results.

Even liberal and centrist commentators have joined in the worrying.

Leslie Gelb, the author of a smart and lively new book, "Power Rules," says

that Clinton's comments about China's human rights record were correct but

shouldn't have been made publicly. Peter Bergen of CNN says that "doing

deals with the Taliban today could further destabilize Afghanistan." Gelb

writes ruefully that it's "change for change's sake." Ah, if we just kept

in place all those Bush-era policies that were working so well.

Consider the gambit with Russia. The Washington establishment is united

in the view that Iran's nuclear program poses the greatest challenge for

the new administration. The only outside power that has any significant

leverage over Tehran is Russia, which is building its nuclear reactor and

supplying it with uranium. Exploring whether Moscow might press the

Iranians would be useful, right?



Wrong. The Post reacted by worrying that Obama might be capitulating to

Russian power. His sin was to point out in a letter to the Russian

president that if Moscow were to help in blunting the threat of missile

attacks from Tehran, the United States would not feel as pressed to

position missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic -- logical

since those defenses were meant to protect against Iranian missiles. It's

also a good trade because right now the technology for an effective missile

shield against Iran is, in the words of one expert cited by the Financial

Times's Gideon Rachman, "a system that won't work, against a threat that

doesn't exist, paid for with money that we don't have."

The problem with American foreign policy goes beyond George Bush. It

includes a Washington establishment that has gotten comfortable with the

exercise of American hegemony and treats compromise as treason and

negotiations as appeasement. Other countries can have no legitimate

interests of their own. The only way to deal with them is by issuing a

series of maximalist demands. This is not foreign policy; it's imperial

policy. And it isn't likely to work in today's world.

The writer is editor of Newsweek International and co-host of PostGlobal,

an online discussion of international issues. His e-mail address is

comments@fareedzakaria.com.