Does Obama inspire fear or respect?

Greg Sheridan:

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Machiavelli said for a prince it is better to be feared than to be loved.

For much of his presidency, most of the world feared George W. Bush. For a brief, shining moment after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, America's enemies feared Bush, while almost all the rest of the world loved him.

That is the perfect situation for any US president. It can't be sustained, of course, and Bush squandered the love part of the equation much more quickly and much more comprehensively than he should have. But he never lost the fear bit.

Here's my worry about Obama. Lots of people love him and he is indeed very lovable. But I wonder if anyone at all, anywhere in the world, really fears him.

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At some point, Obama is going to have to do something seriously unpleasant to someone.

Obama's one serious foreign policy initiative during the presidential campaign was to promise that he would talk productively to America's enemies. It would be easy to mock this; all US presidents, after all, have tried to talk to America's enemies, right up to the point at which they attack the US or its allies or just become unacceptable security risks. Nonetheless, Obama's approach, fortified by his huge global popularity, was certainly worth a try.

Which enemies, by the way, did he have in mind? The following list may not be exclusive but certainly Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, the Taliban in Afghanistan and, presumably, Syria all figured on it.

Yet the striking thing, almost a year into the Obama presidency, is how little substantial talk with these enemies has gone on and how what talk has gone on has produced absolutely nothing. Nada. Zip. Diddly-squat.

You see, I don't think any of America's enemies, or indeed any of its friends, fear Obama. I hope they are making a grave miscalculation, but I have my doubts.

The Iranians have made a kind of pantomime dance out of mocking dialogue with Obama. He wants to talk about their weapons-based uranium enrichment and their flouting of International Atomic Energy Agency rules. The mullahs of Tehran fall about laughing at this. They steal an election, bash, murder and rape their opponents into submission and deliberately miss Obama's solemn deadline of September for starting talks.

Obama set the September deadline partly so the Iranians could tremble before the assembled might of this week's UN General Assembly.

The Iranians said the talks would begin on October 1 and that is when they will begin. And the Iranians don't plan to talk about their uranium enrichment program. Instead they will talk about the injustice of supposed US domination of the UN.

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The failure of Obama's jaw-jaw strategy is becoming more apparent. Even if the Russians bail him out on Iran sanctions, there is no assurance that China will.  The Israelis were wise to ignore liberal Democrats and build a robust missile defense system.