Foreign Events Force Obama to Turn to Plan B: NYTimes

Quoted via NYTimes:

UNITED NATIONS — For President Obama, the handshakes and hugs during his first visit to the United Nations last week masked a cold reality: nine months into his presidency, he is being forced to retool his most important foreign policy initiatives, from the war in Afghanistan to peace in the Middle East and his diplomatic overture to Iran.

Mr. Obama’s efforts to reach out to adversaries and break political deadlocks are running up against old enmities, insoluble differences and foreign leaders who simply do not see eye to eye with the president.

The administration can point to successes: it has marshaled worldwide support for the campaign to pressure North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. And it has put relations with Russia on a firmer footing, with a decision to revamp a missile-defense system that may have paid extra dividends in helping to win Russian support for tougher sanctions against Tehran. more

Those bright spots, however, come amid a host of troubling developments, the latest of which was the disclosure by the United States and its allies on Friday that Iran was operating another clandestine nuclear facility.