It’s no surprise that President Obama’s foreign policy challenges are unsavoury, diverse and numerous, but most worrisome is the degree to which they overlap in the worst ways possible. For Americans, our allies’ concerns, our enemies’ threats and victims’ pleas are inextricably tied to one another — by nature, or the hand of political leaders and institutions across the globe. Solving one problem seems impossible without solving the rest, or at least pretending to do so.
Iraq and Afghanistan are seldom far from our doorstep for obvious reasons; but with Obama’s focus on renewing old alliances and forging newer (convenient) ones, many others are requesting an audience. Unfortunately, it is impossible for Obama to address each or even most of them. And inevitably the process of prioritising is going to get ugly.
Here are just a few of Obama’s more important foreign policy goals: 
Eradicating (or rendering impotent) al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Securing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and some modicum of democracy there. Withdrawing US forces from Iraq and preventing the Iranians from filling the void. Derailing and/or deterring Iran’s development of a nuclear (weapons) technology programme. Spreading democracy across the globe, especially in Muslim and former Soviet states. Reaching a final settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mitigating the heavy spillover from the drug wars in Mexico into America’s southwest. Limiting the social and political upheaval of a global recession.
If only these goals could be divided up instead of being connected in one interminable sentence. To defeat al-Qaida, we have to remove its support structure along the Afpak border; to do that, we have to (implicitly) convince Pakistan that it does not need an Islamist buffer in Afghanistan to ensure its own survival; to do that, we have to ensure economic development in southern Afghanistan.
To rebuild Afghanistan, we will need supplies, and those supplies will soon be guaranteed only when transited through Russia’s backyard (1). To get that access, however, Russia is insisting that we abandon our plans to install anti-ballistic missile shields in eastern Europe. Obama seems happy to do this as long as Russia stops supplying Iran’s nuclear development. But for that concession, Russia is also demanding that we abandon our efforts to integrate Russia’s former satellite states (Ukraine and Georgia, specifically) into Nato and other western institutions.
We might be in a position to refuse this last Russian demand if only we could knew for sure that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons programme. But to obtain that reassurance from Iran, Tehran itself is looking for carte blanche to consolidate Shia influence in Iraq (Iran’s great historical enemy). We might be willing to make a trade — nukes in return for Iraq — but the US is slated to withdraw most of its forces anyway, so we have little to offer Tehran that it won’t get anyway.
Perhaps the gridlock will dissipate if we manage to break Syria’s alliance with Iran, but that requires Israel’s willingness to negotiate with Syria and other enemies – a practice which Israel’s new prime minister is apparently refusing to do until after Obama defuses Iran’s nuclear ambitions (in one way or another).
If you are confused, join the club. No one knows where this negotiation starts or ends, who the parties really are, and what concessions they are prepared to make. So far, the only real sacrifice Obama has asked of the American people is economic. He has not asked us to tolerate an Iranian bomb or suggested we send our sons and daughters into northwest Pakistan or indicated just how far he would go in a confrontation with Russia.
The one thing that is clear is that Russia, Iran and Pakistan are at the centre of nearly every obstacle we face abroad, and we lack the military, financial and political resources to address more than one of them at a time, if that.