How's this?
This sentence was chosen for response because seems to make the point. How can a foreign policy that consists mostly of doing very little become more subtle and sophisticated. Perhaps the diplomats can be more decisive in their choices of wine and hor’derves.
Then there is the part about the gathering into groups to project power. There have been attempts in the Western hemisphere that are failures. He left out the Gulf where there is the grouping of the GCC countries that are making steady progress toward becoming a very strong economic force and more important in world affairs than the stodgy Euros.
George Bush changed the world by invading Iraq and destroying the status quo. That action and the results flowing from it removed the Euros from having a voice in the change in the mid east. America, The GCC and Iran are now the players. Israel became less important because the moderate Arabs learned that fighting the Palestinian battle was small potatoes compared to the coming war with Iran. It is better to have an ally you don't like than fight a bad enemy alone.
When Iraq joins the GCC and the might of the military there is honed to American quality, the power shift will be complete. Iran will be isolated and all alone. In ten or fifteen years, there can be a resumption of the ostracicing of Israel except by that time there will be enough trade to temper animosity.
The rise of the Gulf is already a threat to the Euros. Trading companies owned by UAE Arabs and staffed by Indians are making strong inroads into the century old trading relations between excolonial Africa and Europe. Stodgy French trading companies are losing out to fast moving and technically savvy Gulf traders. Plastics and such derived from oil are being made in the Gulf because there are better, newer plants staffed by non union Asians. The oilless Euro petro chemical plants are doomed.
The Gulf states know that there can be extremely rapid progress when American organizational skills, oil money and third world labor are combined. Those forces will be applied by Kuwaiti, Saudi and Dubai companies to cause Iraq to explode with economic capability. Now that the shackles are gone, the pent up power can be released.
This growth will obsolete Europe.
Meanwhile in the Western hemisphere, most will stagnate. Brazil and USA/Canada will do well but the rest will writhe in the slime of the patriarchs fighting against the masses.
Then there is Asia...... India, China, Japan? how will they get along?