It occurred to me last year that Obama’s theory of foreign policy, which ventured past soft power and into the realm of “smart power,” might be more aptly described as “iPower.” That’s because it centered largely on the belief that — by dint of his background, intellectual, and charismatic gifts — Barrack Hussein Obama was uniquely positioned to influence foreign actors to take actions congenial to U.S. interests, even if those interests ran (or seemed to run) counter to the foreign actors’ own interests and goals. We’ve yet to get a definitive verdict on iPower, though the list of blunders committed in its name is unnerving. The closest we’ve seen to getting an up-or-down assessment of Obama’s personal ability to convince foreign bodies to work toward American interests was Iran’s blowing through the September 10 nuclear deadline. But even that isn’t entirely dispositive. However, Obama’s personal intervention in Chicago’s quest to host the 2016 Olympics does bring us to a clear data point. Either the IOC will give the Olympics to Chicago, as Obama will ask them to, of they will not. The question is, what happens if they don’t? If Obama’s iPower isn’t enough to convince the IOC to render a trivial decision that is utterly painless to them, then why should anyone believe that he can coax a hostile regime to take actions they deem contrary to their self-interest?
