Most Americans have noticed that President Obama's economic policies aren't getting the job done. Fewer, however, realize that the administration's foreign policies are flagging after just six months in the White House, too.

Since 2003, when negotiations began over Iran's nuclear program, there has been no shortage of warnings, reports and punitive sanctions voiced, written or imposed by the international community (a quick count shows at least three punitive European Union sanctions, four U.S. sanctions, five U.N. resolutions, 20 IAEA reports and an untold number of informal warnings).

The Obama administration is reacting to the anticipated launch of another North Korean long-range ballistic missile, expected to fly over the Pacific toward Hawaii sometime soon, by putting missile defense on alert. That's a big change from last time.

Few world leaders congratulated the “winner” of the recent fraudulent Iranian elections, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — and rightfully so. But there was a notable exception right here in our neighborhood: Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.

Hardly a week seems to go by without North Korean leader Kim Jong Il deciding to once again chest-thump President Obama in an increasingly dangerous game of school-yard bullying.

There is a popular notion that the world has changed dramatically with the election of a new American President and that the United States will not be challenged by ambitious peer competitors and rogue states in the coming decades.

If there's a shred of good news in the sentencing of American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling to 12 years in a North Korean prison labor camp, it's that they'll probably never see the inside of one.

Unfortunately, President Obama is likely to use this week's visits to Saudi Arabia and Egypt as stops on his Apology World Tour, repudiating Bush-era Middle East and War on Terror policies.

If you think reactions to President Obama's arrival on the world stage from the likes of the Russian, Chinese, Iranian, Venezuelan and even European leaders have been lukewarm at best, check out the North Koreans.

From the looks of it, the Kremlin hasn't bought into the whole “reset button” gimmick the White House has put forward as a framework for the Obama administration's new Russia policy.