Barack Obama's year of foreign-policy fumbles

Unfortunately, the Obama administration's campaign-style, “biography based” approach to international affairs just isn't making the grade, especially on today's weighty issues.

Iran: Tehran's nuclear (weapons) program advances despite our drawing of a line in the sand, after line in the sand — after line in the sand. News that Tehran has made strides in developing nuclear weapons, not just enriching uranium, only darkens the outlook.

Obama's response? Keep on threatening tougher sanctions, even though we can't get Moscow or Beijing to agree to them — while making plans to inevitably accept Tehran into the Mushroom Cloud Club.

And what about his snubbing of Iran's heroic dissident movement? Shameful.

North Korea: Pyongyang remains as troublesome as ever, immune to Obama's charms. It will likely light off another nuke this year — and shoot more missiles in our direction. The “Norks” won't even return to the negotiating table. China: The president's trip to Beijing last fall was a flop: He made no progress on opening the Chinese market to ease our US$200-plus billion trade deficit, a would-be bennie to our still-stumbling economy.

Nor was Obama's personal intervention enough to get Beijing, the world's largest greenhouse-gas producer, onboard at the Copenhagen climate conference (not that it disappointed those who saw that treaty as an economic-growth killer).

Meanwhile, China's military build-up proceeds apace, scaring neighbors witless — and now there are reports of Beijing extending its reach with its first permanent military base abroad, this one in the Arabian Sea.

Russia: Washington-Moscow ties are increasingly cold, despite White House affections. Sensing weakness, Russia is now holding America's European, anti-Iran missile-defense system hostage to strategic-arms-control reduction talks — an Obama priority.

Worse, Washington cuddles with Moscow despite Russia's occupation of Georgia's South Ossetia and Abkhazia; we've even put Georgia's (and Ukraine's) NATO membership on ice to appease the Bear.

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