While it is often ruefully noted that you can't pick your relatives, there is an expectation in life that you can pick your partners. Barack Obama is discovering that when you are president of the United States, that's just not the case.

In fact, if there is one theme that runs through every corner of the Obama presidency it is that he has been forced into partnerships that are so complex, difficult, and undependable that it must leave him yearning for the relative simplicity of good old fashioned enmities. This was illustrated yesterday as the president made the short walk across Lafayette Park to visit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, symbolic headquarters of the U.S. business community, a group with which the president has come to realize he must work more closely going forward.

But in and amid all those complicated relationships, which are the most difficult? Naturally, there are many ways to measure this but we'll stick with one: Which among the most difficult are most likely to blow up in his face during the next two years?

Here's the verdict:

10. China
This, the most important international bilateral relationship, is both difficult and likely to be relatively stable because it is so complex. There is so much economic co-dependency here that the political issues are likely to work themselves out. Over the next two years trade and currency tensions may grow, but it is unlikely that either side will flirt with a big blow up prior to the 2012 leadership change in China or the presidential elections that same year in the U.S.

9. Russia
China is likely to be the U.S. most important international counterpart in the decade ahead but Russia remains the wildcard among the major powers. Stephen Cohen summed it up well on "Morning Joe" this morning: Russia's the biggest country in landmass, the leader in energy output and it has all those nuclear weapons. It also has a massive Muslim population, related challenges in its near abroad, memories of empire and what might politely be called a mischievous streak when it comes to international challenges. Oh, and it is undergoing a demographic meltdown and it is suffering from a divided less-than-dependably friendly political leadership. It's at the bottom of this list primarily because of the "next two years" focus of our metric.

8. Israel
Israel is the United States' most dependable friend in the Middle East and a vital ally. That said it is also facing massively unsettling changes from within and without that are creating enormous pressures on its political leaders. The Bibi-Barack marriage was never exactly made in Heaven but as the Israelis face demographic pressures at home, the Hezbollah take-over of Lebanon, instability in Jordan and Egypt, the prospect of a nuclear Iran, growing international pressure to cut a deal with the Palestinians and seeming growing inability of the Palestinians to cut a deal due to their own internal divisions ... what was difficult is going to get any easier. While many expect Netanyahu to offer his own concessions and a roadmap to progress sometime soon, there is real concern even among his supporters whether he can go far enough to break the logjam in the peace process. If he can't, pressure will build in this already fraught partnership.

7. Egypt
Egypt nudges out Israel only because it is so volatile right now and we don't know where the current unrest now heading into its third week is likely to head. One thing we do know, there are almost no circumstances in which the relationship will be easier for the United States. If there are massive reforms, a more pluralistic Egypt will be harder to deal with than an autocracy with a fairly dependable ally at the helm. If the current regime holds, they will never trust the U.S. in the same way as they did prior to this crisis.

6. Democrats in the Congress
Will Rogers said, "I'm not a member of any organized party, I'm a Democrat!" And as far as we know he never sat at a cocktail party between bickering leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer or Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer. (Although, Pelosi clearly had a little celebratory sip of champagne last night to celebrate the departure of Jane Harmon, a longtime thorn in her side.) Pick an issue from fighting the deficit to rationalizing our regulatory framework to investing in energy infrastructure, you'll find both Obama's biggest supporters and some of his most difficult opponents in his own party.

Read on

If I understand this correctly, Russia directed its elite intelligence assets to spend the better part of the past decade trying to infiltrate the New York club scene and the Montclair, New Jersey PTA.  

In the scheme, Russian master spies were also trained to ingratiate themselves with influential members of the think tank community in order to glom on to secrets about U.S. foreign policy. While this might seem a futile exercise to some (such as anyone who has ever met a member of the think tank community), there is a greater intellect at work beneath the veneer of palpable insanity which has been cleverly concocted by the heirs to Lavrentiy Beria in the Kremlin. Because any spy that could actually find an influential member of the think tank community would be capable of ferreting out any secret anywhere--including those lurking in the heavily shadowed corners of the Montclair school system. In fact the much rumored but never seen influential think-tanker was alleged to be the focus of the Da Vinci Code until it became clear that it would be much more plausible to actually find the Holy Grail instead.

What's more, of course, should such a spy be able to learn anything at all about U.S. foreign policy when even some of those in the White House who are framing it are clearly clueless about the subject then that spy would deserve at least an Order of the Bare-Chested prime minister with a Double Oak Leaf Cluster. At the very least they would certainly deserve to have a movie made about them.

And with all due deference to the producers of the new Angelina Jolie vehicle Salt who seem to be so actively promoting this spy scandal as a tie-in to their film that I actually think they might be behind the whole thing, this really needs to be another movie. And I don't just say this just because I've never gotten over the way Angelina and Brad abused poor Jen.   

No this is a different kind of movie altogether. Something more in the vein of The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming or almost anything with Peter Sellers in it.  Clearly, Emmanuelle Chriqui needs to play Anna Chapman and while that would probably be enough to get me to go buy a ticket, the rest of the story lends itself to a big comedy and some whacky chase scenes involving mini-vans and secret messages delivered to a playground drop site in an iCarly lunch box.  Jason Bateman also deserves a key role, but that's due in part to the fact that he should be in almost any movie.  In fact, maybe it should be Judd Apatow's first thriller and he can bring along his wife, Leslie Mann, and Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill and Jason Siegel and the whole gang.  Alternatively I vote for passing it along to Kevin Smith who already has an impressive track record of bringing the Garden State to the cinema (who deserves eternal credit for the genius behind Dogma and the inspired casting of Alanis Morissette as the deity.)

Joking aside, however, there is something seriously disturbing about this scandal. And it's not that the Russians have kept spying. Anyone who for one moment thought that they had stopped is so naïve that they probably don't believe that Vladimir Putin sits at home at night -- still bare-chested, flexing his pecs in the mirror and stroking a giant white Persian cat  while conspiring with Verne Troyer about how to sabotage the Mall of America roller coaster. No, what's disturbing to an inside-the-beltway denizen like me is that Russia thinks all the action is happening somewhere else. They are more interested in trying to infiltrate accounting firms as a path to connecting themselves with private equity moguls in New York than they are reaching out to real Washingtonians. You think Anna Chapman couldn't have done some damage down here? Don't they read the papers? She'd be First Lady by now. Or at least she'd be on Oprah talking about how she and John Edwards are going to make it work. 

Come to think of it, maybe those Russians aren't as silly as they appear. They seem to recognize the difference between real power and the power haircuts that dominate so much of Washington today.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, the front page of the New York Times contained stories on school dress codes, violence between Israelis and Palestinians, the struggling U.S. economy, stem cells, nuclear smuggling, and morning television. 

Which is to say history is what happens when you are looking in the other direction.

That's not to suggest that the lead story in the newspaper is never the most important story of the day. It is however to urge we approach "news" with considerable caution. What seems newsworthy (Woods-Uchitel) is (the Salahis) often (Going Rogue) just a reflection of conventional wisdom about what's important and ignores other minor factors like history or the fact that people tend to want to read about salacious crap or journalists like to write about things that are easy to caricature politically. As with food we tend to be drawn to the fast, easy or tasty without really much consideration of what we really need.

So it is with the Afghanistan story. Now, it's hard to dismiss any presidential decision that will put over 100,000 American troops at risk as being unnewsworthy.  But it is undeniable that most of the coverage misses the bigger point: Afghanistan is a costly distraction for the president, the military, and reporters on the lookout for the big stories of our times.  It just barely makes the list of our Top 10 Concerns in the Region and would be unlikely to make the list of our Top 20 or 25 National Concerns overall. At least that would certainly be the case had we not made the decision to put so many of our sons and daughters at risk over there.

President Obama's speech seems brilliantly conceived to mesmerize the punditsphere thanks to what will either be seen by supporters as its balance or by its detractors as its compromises. (It's the Certs approach to speech writing: it's both a breath mint and a candy mint -- both an escalation and an exit, an effort to be tough with and to support the Afghan government, to strengthen institutions but not to do "nation building", to make the war about Afghanistan and about Pakistan, to support the military and to support the critics of the war.) But what all that masks is that every minute further the president is focused on Afghanistan and every dollar further we spend there is withdrawn from some other account, some other higher priority.

Let's just take the Middle East to illustrate the point. We begin, of course, with the fact that Afghanistan is not even the biggest challenge we face in AfPak. (That would be Pak, in case you haven't had your coffee yet.) 

In fact here's a handy list you can argue about around the water cooler, the biggest challenges America faces in the Middle East in terms of the broader consequences associated with the problem:

1. Dependence on Oil from the Middle East
2. Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Exhibit A: Pakistan (includes potential for loose nukes or conflict with India)
3. Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Exhibit B: Iran
4. Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Exhibit C: Likelihood of Regional Arms Race
5. Growing Influence of Muslim Extremism in Countries from Egypt to Saudi
6. Growing Loss of Influence in the Region to the Russians, the Chinese and others
7. Deterioration in the Israeli-Palestinian Situation (Could include further conflict there or even Israeli action against Iran)
8. Failure of the "American Experiment" in Iraq
9. Consequences Internationally and Regionally of Economic Failures in the Gulf (...watch Greece, Russia, and others carefully on this front...)
10. Afghanistan

And the only reason the decline of the dollar and the fiscal burdens on the U.S. economy that will severely limit our ability to act in the region are not on the list is that they seem very domestic ... but they would rank near the top otherwise. And as I noted before they are linked to the host of other issues domestic and international which actually outrank the Middle East (hard though that may be to believe to all our friends from all those lobbies, think tanks, and government contractors out there.)

This misplaced focus is revealed especially effectively in the regional context thanks to the juxtaposition of the final stages of this "Afghan decision" (and don't delude yourself into believing this is the last such "decision" or that the new policies will go very far toward resolving the core issues associated with stabilizing that country or getting out) with the recent announcement by the Iranians to proceed with plans to build 10 nuclear enrichment facilities. Whether or not they are capable of doing this, by now it should be quite clear that Iran has adopted a stance that virtually every one of America's enemies in the world has adopted during the past year. They have challenged us to demonstrate that we will simply not confront them in any effective way. 

Call it Iraq fatigue, blame it on the economic crisis at home, call it a propensity for dithering, call it a learning curve, the primary message the Obama Administration has sent to the world this year is an unintended variation on the one they intended to send: this administration really is different from that of George W. Bush. On international matters, Bush acted without thinking whereas until this week, it seemed, Obama thought without acting. Given the developments of the past few days, it seems the president has now become adept at thinking and then giving the illusion of action while actually compromising many of the benefits of decisiveness away. For example, while committing the troops must be seen as a kind of an action, it is presented as a double negative thanks to the escalation-exit strategy structure. It's what Groucho Marx might have called the "Hello, I must be going" approach.

And the Iran problem illustrates the consequences of focusing elsewhere (although it is just one such example.) Because thanks to Bush's erroneous decision to focus on Iraq and Obama's premature (last Spring) decision to move his chips to Afghanistan -- thanks to their political and economic costs -- the United States has found it ever more difficult to credibly suggest to Iran that there will be any kind of negative consequences to their move toward becoming a nuclear power. And giving the bomb to the world's largest state sponsor of terror is almost certainly a much greater threat than anything we might see in either Afghanistan or Iraq. (Admittedly, Pakistan poses a similar problem ... and for my money, Pakistan and Iran are the places we ought to be focusing the most of our energy and efforts.) In fact, I sometimes wonder who is pulling the strings for the Iranians in the U.S. government because almost every action we have taken in the past decade or so seems to have inadvertently benefitted them or at least made it harder for us to influence them.

In the end, I'm going to cling to optimism and hope that Obama's decision produces the best possible outcome, the one he and his team clearly are hoping for: a few strong blows against al Qaeda and the Taliban, some measurable stabilization and an exit. Because history is happening elsewhere and as long as we are distracted with wars like this, we raise the likelihood that it will be happening to us rather than that we will have a constructive role in shaping it.

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

You could tell it wasn't going well. The conversations with Medvedev and Putin were tense, the body language awkward. The speech at the New Economic School laid an egg. The press seemed bored with the visit of America's rock star president. And as for real results, well, there weren't any. 

Looking for explanations in an article Clifford Levy and Ellen Barry in today's New York Times called "In Russia, Obama's Star Power Does Not Translate," a range of possible answers were rolled out: Russians are jaded, Russians don't go for U.S. political posturing, Obama's speeches don't translate well, and, according to one person who ought to understand politics, a Russian circus designer, "Russians are the smartest people in the world." (A fact they have carefully hidden behind a veil of hundreds of years of economic and political catastrophe.)

Somehow, the formula that has been working for Barack Obama since early in 2007 suddenly seems to have gone cold. It is not enough simply to be him or to roll out Michelle and the girls (all of whom joined him in Moscow...unlike say, his top two State Department officials). What's more, it's not just Russia. Oh sure, the press still swoon in most corners of the world and crowds and political leaders still get all fluttery when first exposed to America's charming, thoughtful, intelligent, young president. But we are now starting to see what happens when being Barack Obama is not enough. We are now starting to see the shortcomings of the new administration's approach wherein the president has actually been the policy. 

He has said we had changed and offered himself as evidence. He has been what we have offered to friends in terms of visits, access and calls. He has been the headline grabber, the spokesperson, the new voice of America. He has enabled the administration to take inherited policies and wrap them in Obama-paper with Obama-glitter all over it and all of a sudden, the old was repackaged into appearing new. Where there have been differences, as with the concept of engagement, the change has been sold as a difference between him and his predecessor, with his speeches describing what was new and the possibility of interacting with him being the potential pay-off.

This played big during his early trips overseas, the novelty value was high and the eagerness to move on from the painful prior era was great. At the G20 meeting, at the Summit of the Americas, in Cairo, the concept of "president as policy" seemed to be working. But now we see where it is not. Not in Russia. Not with the Iranians who are happy to accept engagement and anything else that will be given to them but no strings, please Not with Hugo Chavez, who hammed it up with Obama in Trinidad but led his misfit chorus in reflexively hammering the United States after the coup in Honduras. Certainly not in North Korea.

It seems that having the president as policy works best with the people who are pre-disposed to like us and to some extent with the young and the disenfranchised. But with the hard cases, with our enemies, it falls painfully and dangerously flat. 

In these instances, the new president is discovering that something much more than personal diplomacy and smile from the genuinely appealing Obama clan is needed.  In these instances, we are going to need to go back to the drawing board and do the grunt work of foreign policy, the tough negotiations, the nuanced position changes, the threats, the cajoling. It's a very different game from American politics and, in fact, is often completely unconnected to it. What works here, very often does not play at all overseas.

There is a problem with this new reality. It requires a coordinated, multi-tiered, high-functioning foreign policy establishment. It needs the State Department to be in a central role. It needs the NSC to work both as a policy development and policy implementation mechanism and the National Security Advisor to be seen and respected...like the Secretary of State...as key advisors. It requires that the foreign policy of the United States is not centered too heavily either the president or the executive office of the president -- although the president will always remain the ultimate key.  It is perfectly appropriate for the president to be part of the product, part of the rewards offered, and the mastermind...but he needs to move beyond campaign mode to something new. It is much akin to the entrepreneur of a successful company recognizing that for the company to grow further, to become a mature organization, he is going to need a mature structure that depends less on him and more on delegation of power to effective lieutenants and their teams.

We're not there yet. The secretary of state and the State Department have been visibly marginalized.  She has become a kind of behind the scenes player. She's not on the Sunday morning shows. The president or the vice president handles the big media assignments (often not sounding exactly like they were on the same page). The National Security Advisor, for all his personal strengths, is viewed as a bit of a lost cause five months into the presidency. One of his predecessors in the job said to me when asked whether he viewed General Jones as failing in the job, "to me, on that issue, where there is smoke, there is fire." Tom Donilon, Jones's deputy, is seen to be managing the NSC process. Denis McDonough and Mark Lippert, Obama confidantes, are seen to be working closely with him and his inner office team (Rahm Emanuel, the VP, David Axelrod, Greg Craig and others) to play the leading role in shaping policy. 

Clearly neither Hillary Clinton nor Jim Jones is a weak person. But all power in the U.S. national security apparatus flows from the president. And there is no denying that, despite the fact that they show up at work every day and go through the motions, that their roles don't measure up to many of their predecessors and the structure that is emerging suggests problems to come. 

It's time to move out of campaign mode and into governing mode. It's time recognize that it really does take a big team of empowered leaders to make the complex foreign policy of the U.S. work and evolve in the right directions. It's time to recognize that it does not reflect badly on the president if we all agree he cannot transform the world single handedly, that however different he may be from his predecessors, that alone is not enough. 

ALEXEY DRUZHININ/AFP/Getty Images

Millions of you turn to this blog site every day because you feel I will offer you insights that will help you make sense of the world. I know this. It's a humbling responsibility. And frankly, the enormity of it forces me to offer a confession. Today I reviewed the morning papers as I usually do (online, sans paper) and watched the early broadcasts of TV news organizations and I have got to admit it, I find everything pretty confusing. 

For instance:

• The Michael Jackson memorial service will cost the City of Los Angeles $4 million. That's their official estimate. I would bet you my copy of the "Thriller" album that the costs are considerably higher and they can't bear to admit it. Why? Well, because California is broke, right? So here we have a government that is strapped for cash forking out for the public funeral of a multi-millionaire...an event that is likely to sell hundreds of thousands of records the profits of which go straight to Jackson's family.

• On top of this, isn't this the same local government that spent hundreds of thousands trying to prosecute today's hero for child molestation? Whose case was made more difficult because today's hero paid millions to buy the silence of children with whom he had some sort of interaction...one that was worth millions to keep covered up?

• Also baffling: in a bizarre twist on a bizarre case, in order to defray the costs of memorial, the NAACP is, according to MSNBC, trying to raise funds from their members and supporters. Am I getting this right? The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is pulling out the stops to raise money for an individual who actually spent a small fortune testing the boundaries of medical science in order to actually cease being a person of color?

• And, back to California being broke, yesterday its credit rating dropped to two notches above junk status. This is an economy that were it that of a country would rank 8th in the world. This is a failing government that controls an economy larger than that of Russia, India, or Brazil. (Not to mention, Canada, Mexico or Italy.) And yet here in Washington, I get no sense of urgency on this. We do company bailouts. What's our policy going to be on state and city bailouts?

• Meanwhile, while the media's attention is focused on the Staple Center in Los Angeles, the President of the United States is meeting with the prime minister of the world's only other nuclear superpower. This story is less important than the media canonization of the guy who actually invented the concept of celebutard (someone famous primarily for doing really stupid things) and whose greatest accomplishments consisted of making high-pitched noises come out of his food hole. Want to get a sense of what it must have been like to be in the room with Vladimir and Barack? Take a look at the video of them settling in before the cameras for their joint statement this morning. Yikes. Calling all body language experts. There was none of that George W. Bush staring deep into each other's eyes you can rest assured about that.

• At the same time, roughly the same number of protestors was likely killed in Western China as in Iran a couple weeks ago, and the global outrage-o-meter is barely stirring. Apparently Muslims killing Muslims is worse than Muslims and Han Chinese killing each other which proves what? The media believes in the multiplicative power of Muslims in weighing the value of a story? Or could it be that China is too big and important to too many people to be called out on its abuses? When will we realize that we can't actually have a strong relationship with a country and a spineless one at the same time? For the United States, for example, our shared interests with China and the strengths of the relationship need to be strong enough to endure the airing of our differences or they are meaningless and the relationship will ultimately be doomed by the tensions that are not aired.

• Meanwhile, sitting in his gilded Vatican palace, the Pope has issued an encyclical striking out against greed. The encyclical, while assailing the ethical lapses that caused the current global economic meltdown, makes no mention of hypocrisy however. This might be seen as a lapse given the Church's financial record over the years, including but not limited to the failure of Banco Ambrosiano, a bank it owned. (Although one has to wonder if they had access to a higher power that guided the Vatican treasury away from investing in derivatives, which they reportedly eschewed.) Interestingly, the encyclical also warned against the perils of mismanaged globalization...an interesting switch since arguably the Catholic Church was the world's most important early force for globalization, a fact which largely triggered the reformation. (Well, the globalization thing and the financial excesses and ethical abuses of senior church officials.) And, confusingly enough, noting all these ironies and twists, the message of the Pope's encyclical about better ethics and distribution of wealth seemed timely and useful.

• Similarly confusing to me was the fact that in the wake of the United Nations latest impotent, paper condemnation of North Korean missile tests that one could not hear a wave of laughter rippling around the world. But then again, perhaps everyone was too busy figuring out which of the 16 television networks that were scheduled to be carrying the Jackson memorial they would be watching. Fortunately for us all, the Security Council, according to an AP report quoting its current president Ugandan Ambassador Ruhakana Rugunda, "will continue to closely monitor the situation and is committed to a peaceful, diplomatic and political solution." What a relief. 

• Finally, while all the above surprises me, one last thing that I find a bit bewildering is the number of things that are utterly unsurprising that pass for news. Just to take a couple of utterly predictable examples from today's Washington Post, "Post-Bankruptcy GM Will Have Work Cut Out for It," "Pottermania Grips London for World Premiere" and any story that discusses the arrest of former DC Mayor Marion Barry.

David McNew/Getty Images

In case you missed it...and unless you were in Lente, Italy this weekend you probably did...the G8 Finance Ministers met to reassure one another of their relevance. By this metric alone, they were not very successful. 

Not only has the G8 been rightfully eclipsed by the G20 as the relevant forum for addressing the current financial crisis, but many of the reasons for past G8 meetings seem to have faded or been overtaken by developments.  First, the European members of the group only have one monetary policy between them and that one doesn't seem to be going so well. Next, European leaders have effectively opted out from anything other than rhetorical interventions in world markets in the wake of the crisis. Third, even on the rhetorical front there is precious little consensus among the leaders of these countries.

This last point is ironic since the reason G8-ophiles give for continuing to operate the group even given the absence of the key emerging economies is that we need to gather "like-minded" countries. But the Europeans want big change in the international system. And the Americans seem to want as little change as possible. 

No meaningful addressing of the "too big to fail" issue. No meaningful addressing of executive compensation. No meaningful regulatory reform.  (Just strengthened coordination which, without new global rules and enforcement mechanisms, is just a page from the "what I said before only louder" policy playbook, a favorite for the governments everywhere. For another example see again the recent U.N. "sanctions" against North Korea.) The whole approach to the financial crisis seems to be: "What? There's no wizard? There's a man behind the curtain?! Shit. Give me a drink of stimulus. In fact, give me enough shots of stimulus that I can forget that there's no man behind the curtain and get back to believing in the wizard. Gosh, I loved that wizard. Wizard...wizard...where are you wizard?")

If because you missed the relevance of the G8 gathering then you may be forgiven for not recognizing that the session's irrelevance is being underscored by the relative importance of the meeting in a couple days of leaders of the BRIC countries in Ekaterinberg in Russia. This site was no doubt offered up the Russians because of its rich, resonant irony. That's because it was near Ekaterinberg that the last of the czars and his family finally met their end, and it is at this location the BRICs hope to realize the promise of Fareed Zakaria's Post-American World by cutting down to size the closest thing to an imperial power the world has these days...which sadly, fellow Americans, would be us.

The not-so-secret weapon of this group, besides their size, their resources, their power and, most importantly, their growing significance, is their ability to coordinate their policies. This is not so easy, their interests often conflict (example: Brazil and India want in to the U.N. Security Council, Russia and China are not so enthusiastic about their joining). But try to imagine our arriving at a solution to the problems in North Korea or with Iran's nuclear program, containing threats in Pakistan, stability in Central Asia, or from climate change, or running the world trading system without them and you see the potency of the group...if they stick together. This is particularly true with the one issue that no doubt will be central to this week's discussions -- their effort to assert significant influence over the future value of the dollar. In recent months, BRIC leaders have argued for the adoption of a new international currency (not so realistic), they have shown a willingness to purchase/use IMF SDRs (standard drawing rights, a kind of currency equivalent) instead of dollars, and they have talked about their doubts about the dollar.

It is often said that it would hurt the Chinese and the others for the dollar to collapse given their currency holdings and their dependency on trade with and investment from the United States. And while this is true, that doesn't minimize the leverage they gain from proving to the world that they can play a role in establishing the price of the dollar and that they are not unwilling to use this power. In fact, their recent statements and actions prove this but I think it's fair to speculate that they will, at some point, rattle the saber even louder to enhance the leverage they already have. (It's a power they've used increasingly. The Chinese called the U.S. Treasury during the Fannie Mae crisis to demand action with the more than implicit "or else" being the sell off of U.S. government securities.)

Having said all this...and despite the importance of Russia's oil and nukes, India's billion people and promise and Brazil's continental size, ag export leadership, and recent oil discoveries...there is one critical fact to remember about the BRICs:

Without China, the BRICs are just the BRI, a bland, soft cheese that is primarily known for the whine that goes with it. China is the muscle of the group and the Chinese know it. They have effective veto power over any BRIC initiatives because without them, who cares really? They are the one with the big reserves. They are the biggest potential market. They are the U.S. partner in the G2 (imagine the coverage a G2 meeting gets vs. a G8 meeting) and the E2 (no climate deal without them) and so on. And so while the Russians have been the most eager of organizers of the BRICs because they want to create a counterbalance to U.S. power (not a terrible thing, I think for the world or for the United States given what we've seen of our tendencies when we do when being the sole superpower goes to our head), we should see the emergence of the BRIC bloc for what it is at its heart, a major amplifier of the influence of the country at its heart, China. 

As an aside, I don't think we should see the rise of a counterbalancing bloc as a terrible thing either for the world or even for America. While having enemies is to be avoided wherever possible, having rivals is essential. It promotes reevaluation and growth. Imagine what computing would be like if we lived in an all Microsoft, Apple-less world. They make each other better. (Which in that case means Microsoft forces the smaller Apple to be innovative and Apple forces the Microsoft behemoth to be less awful.)

That said, we should also recognize how far the bloc has come in its development and consider that in the future they are -- strengths, weaknesses, imbalances, tensions and all -- the most likely counterbalance to U.S. influence...and for that matter to the influence of more radical voices like those of rogue states or of extremist Islam somehow united (which is much less likely than the BRICs keeping their act together.)

Having said that, I have to emphasize that they are not a direct threat to the United States and we should not view them as an enemy. Their efforts to align themselves actually is likely to diminish the tendency that any one of them may have (I'm talking about you, Vladimir) to stray into more confrontational postures. And so long as they responsibly play the voice they assert they seek -- as an effective counterbalance to the U.S. representing the equities of major populations worldwide -- they actually have a very constructive and useful role to play in global affairs. 

ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP/Getty Images

Today, President Obama is following in the footsteps of great American diplomats like Steve Carell, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, and Romany Malco. Our 47-year-old foreign policy virgin, like those who went before him cinematically, is experiencing the exhilaration, high highs, low lows and comedy (intentional and otherwise) of speed dating. In Obama's case, this first full day in London for the G20 Summit has produced a round of diplomatic hooking up with...

Gordon Brown

With whom Obama had a very public, rather hard-to-watch quickie in Washington not too long ago. While perhaps not quite as awkward as movie speed-dater Paul Rudd's desperate attempt to fix his battered relationship with old flame Amy (the incomparable Mindy Kaling), like Rudd, Brown had a lot riding on this meeting turning out better than the last one between the two. According to reports, it did, with the two of them providing the media highlight of the morning with a question and answer session with the press. During the session, the two said that they were highly compatible, enjoyed long-walks on the beach and wanted to turn what Obama called "a sense of urgency" into "working alongside the United Kingdom in doing whatever it takes to stimulate growth."

Dmitry "Call me Gina" Medvedev

This meeting was probably the diplomatic high point of the day. With an outcome that involved an invitation to go back to Dmitry's place this coming July, they also agreed to see whether they could reach an agreement on missile defense and trimming back their nuclear weapons to mutually acceptable levels. It is easy to imagine the exchange:  

Gina...er...Dmitry: "You're a good lookin' man."
Barack: "Thank you."
Dmitry: "Very pretty. Real soft, delicate features. They're real feminine, you know, which is good for me, because that would be a simple sort of transition. You know what I'm saying? Maybe throw a little rouge on you... maybe tuck back your SAC (Strategic Air Command)?

O.K. Maybe it wasn't exactly like it was in The 40 Year Old Virgin but I'm working a metaphor here and you have to bear with me. And it does capture some of the hopeful innocence and yet manipulative desire that no doubt infused the scene as Medvedev sought a brand new type of relationship with the United States -- one in which he felt he might be able to take advantage of the man across the table's eagerness to strike a deal, an eagerness that might lead this president, given our circumstances, to consider the kind of partnership between the two countries his predecessors might have ruled out. 

Hu Jintao 

By this point, Obama's charm offensive was producing impressive results, with the two leaders exchanging digits to ensure an on-going Strategic Economic Dialogue and cooperation on North Korea and Iran. And because Obama neatly sidestepped a discussion about human rights (which is just never appropriate for a couple's first meeting), tabling it for a future date, he got another invitation: the chance to visit Hu's Forbidden City sometime later this year.

Queen Elizabeth

This was a threesome, joined by wife Michelle, who has spent the day dazzling London. Obama indicated how enthusiastic he was about the meeting earlier in the day at the press conference with Brown when he said, "There's one last thing that I should mention that I love about Great Britain, and that is the Queen." And who doesn't really? Although Obama did add an element of decorum to his public statement of love for the monarch when he added, "I think in the imagination of people throughout America, I think what the Queen stands for and her decency and her civility, what she represents, that's very important." He showed her what she meant to him by giving her an iPod that had on it video and pictures from her last visit to the U.S. and one can only imagine what else. A special playlist is always a nice gift. Anyway, it's a technological cut above the DVDs Obama left Brown with on the PM's walk of shame away from their DC meeting a couple weeks ago.

Then, tonight, a romantic dinner catered by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. All in all a perfect, love filled "Date-a-Palooza" for Obama, aside from the screaming mobs in the streets outside.

VLADIMIR RODIONOV/AFP/Getty Images