According to the Washington Post, a senior diplomat from a major European country, a Middle Eastern ambassador, and an Asian ambassador—all of whom represent “major, big-league countries”—have been getting lots of messages from their home offices wondering how exactly President Obama will exert his influence over the contracting American Empire.

Apparently “Barack Obama’s folks aren’t talking” to these and other diplomats who, like the rest of the “insiders” in Washington, have been unable to figure out Obama’s foreign-policy direction.  This suggests to some that Obama has a coherent foreign-policy vision as well as a strategy to implement it; he’s just doing a great job at keeping all of that top secret—certainly a valuable skill for those who want to win victories in the games that nations play.

But perhaps this interpretation gives too much credit to the President’s diplomatic skills.  Is it possible that he actually does not have any grand diplomatic strategy in mind and that the code of silence that Obama and his aides have maintained stems from the fact that they have nothing to hide—or say?

In a way, this Obama Enigma explains why those of us who are trying to solve the mystery and come up with some predictions about Obama’s diplomacy end up projecting our own hopes—or fears—on the situation.  Hence, many opponents of the neoconservative agenda, including some who would describe themselves as conservative or libertarian, announced their support for the Obama candidacy based largely on his earlier opposition to the war in Iraq, his willingness to open a diplomatic dialogue with Iran and Syria (as opposed to invading them), and his criticism of the Bush administration’s messianic foreign policy.  From this perspective, when you compared him with the ideologues and fanatics who have been in charge of our diplomacy during the last eight years, Obama sounded almost . . . conservative.

Indeed, Obama reiterated several times during the campaign that he had a lot of respect for the Realpolitik types who were responsible for the more traditional diplomacy of the first President Bush.  The Wall Street Journal reported that Obama consulted one of those realist luminaries, former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, about his choices for foreign-policy positions in the Obama administration.  And the fact that two Republicans who adhere to the realist school of thought and have been critical of the Bush administration’s Iraq adventure—former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel and former Secretary of State Colin Powell—endorsed Obama seems to have burnished Obama’s credentials as the anti-neocon candidate both in the Democratic primaries against Hillary Clinton, who had voted in favor of the congressional resolution authorizing Bush to attack Iraq, and in the general election, as Obama ran against The Weekly Standard’s presidential candidate.

While the members of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party have never been fans of the Kissingerian wing of the Republican Party, they seemed to share Scowcroft’s loathing of the neocons and regarded Obama as the only serious challenger to Senator Clinton.  The former First Lady was perceived to be more hawkish than Obama, especially in light of her close ties to the pro-Israel community and her suggestion that the United States may need to use military power against Iran to prevent the mullahs from acquiring nuclear bombs.  The biography of a mixed-race/African-American public figure, who had spent some of his school years in Indonesia and was the son of a Kenyan man, clearly helped to turn Obama into the multicultural darling of the Democratic Party’s cosmopolitan intelligentsia, whose members hoped that Obama would be able not only to reverse Bush’s neoconservative policies but to win the hearts and minds of Muslims everywhere.

It is too early to say that these expectations have not been fulfilled.  But one could feel the pain of some of the readers of The Nation and Mother Jones, the regular viewers of Keith Olbermann’s Countdown, and perhaps even some readers of Chronicles and The American Conservative, after Obama announced that he was retaining Robert Gates as secretary of defense and nominating Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and retired Gen. James Jones as his national-security advisor.  The noninterventionists’ mood was probably not improved after reading that Obama was also asking current undersecretary Bill Burns to stay on and was planning to select former U.N. Amb. Richard Holbrooke as a special envoy for India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and former Middle East advisor Dennis Ross as special envoy to the Middle East.  Indeed, those of us who were hoping and praying for a new paradigm under which the President would start removing the foundations of the American Empire—U.S. disengagement from the Middle East; an end to the special relationship with Israel; U.S. withdrawal from NATO; termination of the U.S. military pacts with Japan and South Korea; a less belligerent approach toward Russia—were bound to be disappointed by Obama’s foreign-policy team, whose members remain committed to a hegemonic project in the Middle East and elsewhere and whose political survival depends very much on satisfying the needs of both local and foreign interests, the Beltway Bandits, Big Business, and the rest of the rent seekers whose wealth and power derive from the earnings generated by the American Empire.

But then, Obama never said that he planned to embrace the noninterventionist foreign-policy agendas of the Taft Republicans or McGovern Democrats: George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton were his role models when it came to diplomacy and national security.  And these two were both committed to maintaining a dominant position in the post-Cold War era, which included the use of military force in Iraq and the former Yugoslavia.  Admittedly, neither Bush I nor Clinton embraced the more ambitious neoconservative policy proposals that called for invading countries in the Middle East and establishing a permanent U.S. military presence there.  And while they and their aides occasionally employed Wilsonian rhetoric, they never had any urge to “liberate” Iraq and impose democracy on the Middle East.  Theirs was an opportunistic foreign policy that took advantage of the collapse of the former Soviet Union and America’s economic might to establish a dominant position in the Middle East and East Asia, to expand NATO to the borders of Russia, and to continue calling the shots at the United Nations and other multilateral organizations.  Under Clinton and Holbrooke, Bush I and Scowcroft, Washington could maintain an American Empire whose costs the American people were willing to bear.

With the help of the Clintonites and the Scowcrofts, Obama is hoping to recreate that kind of “New World Order.”  Hence, applying diplomatic means to reach a “grand bargain” with Iran and to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process could permit the United States to withdraw her troops from Iraq and reassert her influence in the Middle East.  Creative statesmanship could also help reduce tensions in South Asia and create the conditions necessary for stability in Afghanistan.  Working more closely with the European Union, Washington could bargain and make deals with the Russians.  And then there is America’s Soft Power, charged by the sex appeal of Mr. Cosmopolitan Cool himself; that charm could seduce even the most fanatic Islamic terrorist.

The problem with this kind of strategy is that the America of 2009 may find it very difficult to secure even the less ambitious goal of being first among equals.  The debacle in Iraq and the mess that Washington has made in the Middle East, coupled with the horrific costs of the financial crisis, have eroded U.S. military and economic power—and, by extension, U.S. diplomatic influence.  Is Iran even interested in playing ball with Obama?  Could America help deliver an Israeli-Palestinian peace?  Will the Europeans continue to follow American leadership, or will they try to make separate deals with Russia?  And then there is China and India, both of whom are climbing up the economic and military ladder just as America seems to be stepping down.  Given those circumstances,Realpolitik in the Obama Age could prove to be a painful cost-cutting exercise as Washington readjusts to the realities of the postneoconservative era.  Imperial retrenchment could prove to be the default choice of our new President.