Where he has put his distinctive mark on US national security policy, there is little to write home about. Take the Arab Spring that began in Tunisia in December 2010. It has occurred entirely during his presidency, where he alone has set US policy. In his typical decision-making style, he could not at first decide what to do, wavering between supporting incumbent, pro-American rulers like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, then calling for his ousting. Obama's vacillation ended by supporting the Tahrir Square demonstrators' demands that Mubarak had to go, but only after convincing nearly all knowledgeable Egyptians that the White House was improvising on an hourly basis. Even worse, stable and friendly regimes on the oil-producing Arabian Peninsula watched closely as Mubarak was hung out to dry. They wondered whether they could count on US support when their time of trial came—perhaps Iran whipping up Shia populations against the hereditary rulers, threatening terrorism and nuclear intimidation.

Now, America and Europe stand idly by, watching as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt daily increases its power, along with even more radical Salafists. Initially, the Brotherhood said it would play only a limited role in electoral politics, but it reneged on its promises and won both the presidency and a parliamentary majority. Confronted with rulings by Mubarak-era judges upholding the military's decision to dismiss the legislature, and threatening the constitutional assembly, President Mohammed Morsi struck back with his own November decree eviscerating judicial review of his acts and those of the constitution writers. The Brotherhood then rammed through a sharia-friendly constitution, sweeping secular and Coptic Christian concerns aside, and called a snap December 15 referendum. Morsi has meanwhile worked vigorously to pack top military positions with Brotherhood supporters, hoping thereby to neutralise the military's independence. If successful, he would eliminate both the only political power centre potentially in his way and the last significant US influence in Egypt, bought over three decades by tens of billions of dollars in military aid since the 1979 Camp David accords.

Obama's—and America's—cascading loss of influence in Egypt has had broader international implications, exemplified by Morsi's August trip to Tehran, the first by an Egyptian leader since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Moreover, the Muslim Brotherhood's solicitude for Hamas, its terrorist subsidiary in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, could not have been clearer, as Mubarak's restrictions on access to Gaza across Egypt's border were suspended or ignored. The Sinai Peninsula is now a superhighway for smugglers and terrorists heading for Gaza or the Israeli border, even causing Israel to accept Egyptian military deployments to re-establish security in the Sinai technically in violation of Camp David. Whether those units ever fully draw back is now an open question, given the unconcealed hostility to Camp David itself that Morsi voiced during his election campaign and that the Brotherhood has long proclaimed.

The critical linkage between Egypt's new domestic and foreign policies was also graphically demonstrated in last November's Hamas-Israel conflict. Whatever credit Morsi deserves for brokering the November 21 ceasefire, he unquestionably felt sufficiently emboldened by his conversations with Obama and Secretary Clinton to move the very next day, America's Thanksgiving holiday, against Egypt's judiciary. We do not know what Obama and Clinton said precisely, but as the Soviets used to say, that timing was no coincidence, comrade.