OBAMA’S POLICY of humanitarian intervention and democracy promotion has been inconsistent. Such is the trouble for every president who must balance values and hard interests.

The most dramatic problems have been Libya and Syria. Obama rushed into Libya to help America’s allies crush a dictator. It was a tricky decision. Washington couldn’t ignore the pleas of friends who had fought alongside Americans in the two big contemporary wars. Yet the eager interveners hadn’t the foggiest idea whether they were helping future Islamic extremists or potential democrats. It is a welcome sign that Libyans bucked the regional trend of electing Islamists in their July elections but nothing to warrant a proper exhale. For now, the Obama team is happy it eliminated an Arab dictator to prove America’s democratic wares.

Not so, so far, in Syria. Unlike in Libya, Obama is wary of the potential sinkhole and rightly so—even as the neocons, as always, beat their war drums. And unlike in Libya, where the Arab League encouraged intervention, Obama has been spared its pressure to use force against the Assad regime. Nobody wants to take the military lead because of the blame that may come later. The hope is that Moscow, a supporter of Assad, may pull the plug on its ally and save everyone else from having to go in.

There is a big strategic question mark over Syria. Will it miraculously become calm and democratic? Will it become a radical Sunni state tied to Al Qaeda? Will Iran lose the future Syria as an ally, thus driving Tehran from its main Mideast outpost? Those at Syria’s borders are bracing for the worst.

The day may come when Washington can help Arabs toward a freer life. But that day still is not near, as the Arab Spring screams both hope and danger.

For Egypt, there is so much to say and so little that can be done. It embodies all America’s dreams and nightmares about societies progressing from dictatorship to democracy, with little or no grounding in democratic traditions and institutions. The fear, of course, is that dictators relatively friendly to Washington will be replaced by new dictators harsher to their own people and unreceptive to Washington. Hosni Mubarak was a corrupt dictator indeed, and it’s just babble to argue that America could have kept him in power and/or moved him toward democracy. He seemed dug in forever. Yet when Tahrir’s moment came, the dictator disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Obama now must choose between a corrupt and nondemocratic Egyptian military, possibly amenable to American interests, and the people’s choice: a Muslim Brotherhood that might be moderate now but extreme once in control. If the Muslim Brotherhood strips off its Clark Kent suit to become Islamist Superman, there will be hell to pay for Egyptians, Israelis and Americans.

The choice now would be no better had Obama immediately dumped Mubarak and sided with the protestors. The latter had little power and no political organization, demonstrated by their poor performance in elections. Indeed, Libya aside, liberals throughout the Arab lands are unprepared to compete with Islamists for power. With no obvious and viable ally, Obama has little choice but to keep lines out to most parties, as is his wont. He has been mostly cautious about the unknown tides of the Arab Spring, and for that he deserves commendation. But there is a future to plan for, and it is not too soon for a U.S.-led economic-aid project to strengthen the cadres of moderate reform in the Arab world.

Obama does not merit high marks for managing Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. He did virtually nothing to prod Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to prepare his people for compromise, and he allowed Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to denigrate the negotiation process. At a joint press conference, Netanyahu lectured Obama on the evils of a peace accord built around the 1967 borders, and the U.S. president just sat there. The modified ’67 borders, endorsed by several of Netanyahu’s predecessors, have been America’s position on peace for a half century. With November approaching, an American clarification of this issue has to wait until 2013. But at that point, Washington must be ready for straight talk with Israel and the Palestinians, backed up by the blessings of Arab states and an Arab economic-development plan for Palestine.

Latin America offers an opportunity largely ignored by Obama, and Africa represents a growing threat about which he can do little. Brazil is the world’s sixth-biggest economy, and the Mexican economy is booming. Even with America’s own difficulties and other international priorities, the Southern Hemisphere has commanded shockingly little time from the White House. The administration put muscle into passing trade agreements with Panama and Colombia only because it had the GOP votes in Congress. At the Cartagena summit in 2012, Obama was slammed for his failure to roll up his sleeves on either the Cuban embargo or drugs. The most interest Americans showed in the region came when Secret Service officers were found to be cavorting with prostitutes.

In Africa, some countries have strengthened their democracies, though many are now gravely threatened by corruption, internal butchers or Islamic extremists. The United States and others feign interest, but absent direct implications for other continents, outside lights rarely will shine on Africa for some time to come.

Even as fashion now runs to Asia, Europe remains America’s principal economic, diplomatic and security partner. Asia will never replace it—though Obama doesn’t seem to see it that way.

Our European friends have fallen on miserable economic times, and Washington can offer little help. But the degree to which Europeans have gone their own way is worrisome. Eastern European leaders are unhappy about Obama’s apparent lack of consideration for their feelings about the Russian bear. And Obama did not handle issues regarding that region’s missile-defense system in a way that inspired confidence.

When the Obama administration announced what sounded like a strategic shift in emphasis toward Asia, it demonstrated a lack of sensitivity to all Europeans in a time of great need. Explanations and qualifications flowed from Washington, but the damage was done. Not surprisingly, early European acclamations of Obama—fueled by hopes that he was more in tune with world affairs than Bush—have mostly dissipated.

In no theater of the world has Obama’s lack of a strategic vision had starker consequences than in Afghanistan. The White House has altered its objectives there so frequently, it’s hard to follow what America is fighting for now. First, it was to defeat Al Qaeda in retribution for 9/11. Then, it became to defeat the Taliban as well because the Taliban might let terrorists back into the country. Later, it was somehow to prevail in Afghanistan to bolster moderates in Pakistan and safeguard Pakistani nukes. This last objective was nothing short of psychedelic. It was never clear how any outcome in the wilds of Afghanistan, no matter how positive, could save a messed up, corrupt, multiethnic country of 190 million where the military and the Islamists are the only real political forces. Without realistic goals to give his actions ballast, Obama increased the U.S. military presence more than threefold from the approximately thirty thousand troops he inherited. He gave them a counterinsurgency and nation-building mandate that stretched credulity. Finally, now, he will withdraw all combat troops by 2014 and drop his broad counterinsurgency strategy in favor of a sensible, targeted counterterrorist approach. For all that, he still hasn’t decided the size of the residual force after 2014. It could be as high as thirty thousand and hang around indefinitely.

Administration officials say that their objective is to remove “almost” all U.S. forces in “coming years” while making Afghanistan more secure. And they aim to achieve these goals by taking three steps: exploring a deal with the Taliban, improving the performance of Kabul and Afghan security forces, and enticing Afghanistan’s neighbors to accept greater responsibility. But what the administration has here is a list—not a strategy.

A strategy starts with the essential judgment that the United States simply does not have vital interests in any major sustained presence in Afghanistan, but Afghanistan’s neighbors do—and it is to them, therefore, that Washington’s strategy must be directed. It is they who will have to worry about what happens after U.S. forces depart, they who will have to deal with the drugs, the refugees and the Islamic extremists that will flow across their borders—not the United States. As for U.S. concerns about Afghanistan as a global headquarters for terrorists, that time has passed. Today, terrorists operate worldwide, certainly more in the Middle East than in Afghanistan.

Task number one, then, is to convince Afghanistan’s neighbors that the United States is pulling almost all of its forces out, and soon, and that America no longer will bear the primary burden. These countries must be convinced that while Washington can live with an anarchic Afghanistan—or worse—they cannot. Otherwise, the neighbors will be happy just to sit back and watch. Afghan parties, including the Taliban, must understand that they will have to deal with these neighbors in America’s absence, and the neighbors must be made to see that they must shoulder the burdens or suffer the consequences. None of this is to say that Washington should simply walk away and hope these countries see the light. The United States still will have to play a leading role in getting this new coalition organized.

Image: Pullquote: Obama’s position at the political center in U.S. foreign policy has enabled him to deflect classic Republican charges of liberal weakness that always kept Democrats on the defensive.Essay Types: Essay