robust diplomacy

The political vultures have been circling over President Obama in recent months, sensing and then charging weakness in foreign policy.  Some even claimed that Putin's seizure of Crimea occurred because the Russian president viewed Obama as weak.  The U.S. President said yesterday that in fact Russia was weak, and only a "regional power." Of course he'd say that.

But in fact, the Obama administration has performed remarkably well in recent weeks. The President seized the opportunity of the nuclear summit to conduct a G-7 meeting that agreed to boycott the G-8 summit in Sochi. He worked with European allies to establish serious sanctions against Russia, despite national differences over the issue. And he arranged for the first meeting in over a year between our two most important Asian allies, Japan and South Korea. That's pretty effective diplomacy for a supposedly weak U.S. president.

Best of all from the American point of view, the summit meetings dealt with real challenges instead of being derailed by backbiting over NSA surveillance.