Richard Cohen is distressed that Obama does not have magical powers of omnipotence:

Russia will not cooperate on Iran. Neither will China. The two even vetoed a U.N. resolution regarding Syria. India will continue to buy Iranian oil, and the Iranians themselves have learned that they need only promise to behave and Washington will shimmer in relief. The Palestinians vow to unite in such a way as to dismiss U.S. threats to cut off financial aid, and the Israelis, not to be out-vowed, threaten to bomb Iranian nuclear installations, America and its concerns (and assurances) notwithstanding.

It is doubtful that Israel would proceed with an attack on Iran over U.S. objections, but what do all of these examples have in common? They are all examples of other states or would-be states pursuing what they perceive to be their national interests, which happen to diverge from Washington’s current goals. What seems to bother Cohen is that the U.S. is not responding to these actions or threats with enough punitive measures. “Nations should not be able to dismiss America or its president — as Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu did on settlements and Russia’s Vladimir Putin does on almost anything,” he writes. Lacking specifics, I don’t know when he thinks Putin did this, and I’m fairly sure that Cohen would not have approved had Obama tried playing hardball with Netanyahu to force him to halt settlement building, so I have no idea what this means in practice.

American relative decline is more of a function of the increased influence and independence of other states. The allied and client states that traditionally deferred to the U.S. lead have started charting their own courses that do not always match ours, and previously poorer and weaker states have become more prosperous and powerful so that they are able to pursue their own interests even when it conflicts with U.S. preferences. It is not as easy for the U.S. to wield influence as it was, say, fifteen or twenty years ago, and that is partly because more states can exercise their own influence and resist U.S. pressure to do things that are clearly contrary to their interests.

As Turkey has become more democratic and prosperous, it has become more assertive in regional politics, and that rankles Americans accustomed to a more obedient and “reliable” Turkey. Germany has its own priorities that are increasingly not ours. There were always limits on U.S.-Russian cooperation on Iran, and they have been reached. India and China are not about to cut off Iranian oil imports, which are important to the energy supply of both countries, and neither is Turkey. If Washington cannot compel them to cooperate on its bad Iran policy, perhaps the problem is to be found in the policy and not in the extent of U.S. influence. What Cohen finds so bothersome is that the U.S. cannot readily coerce other states into acting against their own interests.