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 But former U.S. officials and experts familiar with the White
House’s thinking say he appears locked into policies aimed more at
containing such threats and avoiding deeper U.S. military engagement
in the last year of his presidency.
This, they say, all but guarantees that the toughest geopolitical
challenges will be inherited by Obama’s successor. That will likely
give fuel to Republican presidential candidates who are eager to use
Obama's foreign policy woes to attack, by extension, Democratic
front runner Hillary Clinton, who served as his first-term Secretary
of State.
Islamic State has extended its deadly reach across the Middle East
and beyond, with recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino,
California, carried out or inspired by the jihadist group. North
Korea stunned the world last week with its fourth rogue nuclear
test. Taliban insurgents are gaining ground in Afghanistan. Beijing
continues to flex its muscle with its neighbors.
Russia remains undeterred in Ukraine’s separatist conflict and has
challenged U.S. influence in the Middle East with its military
intervention in Syria’s civil war, a conflict that Obama’s critics
have seized on as evidence of a rudderless foreign policy.
 Most outside analysts agree with administration officials’
insistence that much of the global tumult is driven by forces beyond
Obama’s control.
But experts also give credence to criticism that Obama’s crisis
response has often been hesitant and that policy missteps have
either fueled conflict – or done little to curb it - in places like
Syria, Iraq and Ukraine.
“This is a risk-averse president who sets red lines he doesn’t
enforce,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East adviser to
Republican and Democratic administrations. “There’s not a lot of
inclination for heroic initiatives in what’s left.”
Obama took office in 2009 hailed by his supporters as a
transformational leader and pledging to bring U.S. troops home from
the long, unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In his first inaugural speech, he promised to help usher in a “new
era of peace,” including outreach to Muslims alienated by the
perceived excesses of his predecessor George W. Bush’s global “war
on terror.”
After popular revolts began to convulse the Arab world, Obama used
his 2011 State of the Union speech to trumpet support for the
“democratic aspirations of all people.” But the “Arab Spring” has
since taken an ugly turn, leaving Obama facing a Middle East region
that is more unstable yet no more democratic than before.
 FORMIDABLE OBSTACLES
Recent polls show that more than half of Americans disapprove of the
way Obama is handling foreign policy and two-thirds are displeased
with his response to Islamic State and the terrorist threat.
The Obama administration strongly denies that it has now resigned
itself to merely containing the seemingly intractable conflicts. As
evidence of success, it can point to its landmark nuclear deal with
Iran, the historic diplomatic opening to Cuba and a sweeping
international climate change deal - all of which a senior
administration official said will likely be touted in Tuesday’s
speech. He has also forged a major Asia-Pacific trade pact but faces
an uphill fight to get it through Congress.
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For the coming year, Obama has left the door open to using executive
powers to fulfill his early pledge to close the Guantanamo military
prison, and could also act on his own to further loosen the
half-century-old economic embargo on Cuba.
“The president will be focused on finishing strong on his foreign
policy agenda,” the senior administration official told Reuters. “In
no lexicon I’m aware of is this a strategy of containment.”
Obama insists his aim is to destroy Islamic State in Syria and Iraq,
but there are strong doubts that his combination of relying on
U.S.-armed local partners, targeted American special forces raids,
coalition air strikes and financial sanctions will be enough.
The quest for a diplomatic solution to Syria’s civil war also faces
formidable obstacles, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who
Obama said back in 2011 “must go,” looks all but certain to outlast
him in office.
“This all adds up to attempted containment - getting through 2016
until it becomes someone else's problem,” said Frederic Hof, a
former State Department adviser on Syria during Obama’s first term
and now at the Atlantic Council think tank.
Obama has recently reinserted about 3,500 U.S. military personnel
into Iraq, slowed the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and
authorized small numbers of special operations forces in Syria –
though he adamantly rejects any large-scale military deployment
His reluctance to get pulled into new conflicts remains at the heart
of his foreign policy, and critics say other world powers are taking
advantage of that.
China has shown growing assertiveness in the South China Sea, where
it has defied U.S. criticism of its island-building and felt no
apparent consequences.
U.S. ally Saudi Arabia has shown its willingness to buck Obama by
going ahead with the execution of a prominent Shi’ite cleric,
provoking a feud with Iran that Washington appears powerless to
quell.
North Korea’s announcement last week that it had exploded its fourth
nuclear device since 2006 raised new questions about the Obama
administration’s “strategic patience” doctrine that essentially has
sought to contain Pyongyang without provoking it.
“I doubt that the president will put in any political capital to
this,” said Bonnie Glaser, senior Asia adviser at the CSIS think
tank in Washington. “What can the president do in his last year?”
(Additional reporting by Warren Strobel and David Brunnstrom;
editing by Stuart Grudgings)
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