Does Having Friends Matter in Diplomacy?

“While tangling with the leaders of two cold war antagonists of the United States is nothing new, the two bruising encounters in such a short span underscore a hard reality for Mr. Obama as he heads deeper into a second term that may come to be dominated by foreign policy: his main counterparts on the world stage are not his friends, and they make little attempt to cloak their disagreements in diplomatic niceties,” the New York Times reports.

Daniel Drezner: “It’s worth remembering that Tony Blair was both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush’s closest friend on the global stage. Those friendships produced… mixed results. So maybe, in the end, this is a big bunch of nothing.”