Ever since the Obama administration took office and even as far back as the campaign, I have been trying to figure out what their overarching foreign policy philosophy was.  During the Bush administration, the much-maligned pejorative “neocon” concealed was was in fact a serious binding principle for American policy — maintaining unapproachable American hegemony.  For Clinton and Bush before him, the core principle was stability among post-Cold War chaos.  Reagan was post-Vietnam recovery, Carter had a human rights focus, and so on.

I believe the picture is finally becoming clear.  Obama’s principle appears to be American retrenchment.  This is easily mischaracterized as retreat or weakness and it surely has been so misrepresented by many of the administration’s more knee-jerk critics.  But rather than signaling a wholesale withdrawal or forfeiture of commitments, it prescribes a selective reassessment of exactly when and where to invest U.S. resources.  In some places, like Afghanistan, this will mean an increase in U.S. commitment.  In others, such as Iraq, it will mean a retraction.

The unexpected implication of this new approach is being revealed by no less than the Vice-President and the Secretary of State.  Bluntly put, they are calling the world’s bluff, flatly saying that other countries who long made political hay by carping about American overreach are going to have to step up themselves while the United States limits its role.  Free-riding on U.S. enforcement of the international order while reaping cheap rhetorical points by complaining about it at the same time is no longer an option.  Biden put it most clearly, albeit in his characteristically stumbling way:

“But… we do need rules of the road. We acknowledge that. And we will play by the rules. But one of the things I would say to all of us is when the rules are broken don’t just expect us to enforce the rules. Let me say that again — when the rules are broken, as they repeatedly are, we are reluctant, as an international community, to enforce the rules, whether they be in Iran or whether they be in other countries in the world.

“One the rules are set, we will abide by them as part of the effort to draft them, but when they’re broken there’s a need for all of us to step up,” he said.

“And so the good news is there’s a change. The bad news is, for you all, there’s a change,” Biden said to laughter among his audience. “The very good news is that we’re willing to, and want to collaborate. The bad news is that you don’t have the last administration to use as an excuse…. for non-action.”

While it is certain that many conservatives will rail against this reorganization of American commitments, in truth the Obama approach is responding to one of conservatism’s long-standing complaints — that U.S. allies fail to pay their share of maintaining global order while bashing the U.S. for paying more than its share.  And conversely, while many liberals will rejoice at the prospect of a more humbled United States, they may find less to celebrate if the French, Chinese, et al fail to do a better job in places like Darfur, Congo, or wherever humanity’s next genocide breaks out.