But long-term disillusionment is unlikely, since the Obama Administration has too much theologically invested in multilateralism triumphing over the Bush Administration's unilateralist, cowboy approach. If there were just a single issue to watch for major developments in this Administration's future, it would unquestionably be the UN and multilateralism, both on political questions and on the international "norming" of policies heretofore properly considered domestic in nature, such as gun control, the death penalty, abortion and many others, starting with climate change. Europeans, so amenable to stripping their democratically elected governments of one competence after another to express mail them to Brussels, will soon find soulmates hard at work in Washington trying to do something similar with multilateral bodies.

In all the foregoing areas, Obama is daily acting out his worldview, and the prospect of more of the same should be deeply troubling to America's global allies. The conceptual road map until at least 2012 is now plainly in evidence, if only incompletely realised to date. Obama simply does not see America's strength as a particular asset, or its causes and interests as more than many other causes and interests competing in the world out there somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe. Long after global Obamamania has worn off, the geostrategic consequences of this insouciance will be sorely felt. Of course, by then it may be too late.