"It will take a coalition of countries to confront them, and building and maintaining such a coalition should be the diplomats' first priority".
Since then Barack Obama has tried to fashion a more collaborative approach, built on a belief that America can make common cause with other countries to confront shared problems and isolate wrongdoers.
"The growth of Isis while Hillary Clinton was the chief architect of US foreign policy proves that she didn't ask or wasn't able to get other countries to confront these and other terrorists like Boko Haram".
But China, emboldened by its rising economic might, appears to be more determined than many other authoritarian countries to confront the West's notion that Western values are universal and to mobilize China's citizens against what it views as an assault on its political system.
"I have believed for some time that climate change is the most all-embracing problem humanity faces today," he has written, "and would be happy to vote [to spend] 1.8% of the GDP of rich countries to confront the problem".His argument is not as self-contradictory as it sounds.
Instead, the United States is offering only to transport troops from other countries to confront the most immediate crisis in Sierra Leone, he said, but the United Nations is turning down those offers because the cost of using American planes is more than the organization can afford.
