Clift: Obama's First Big Foreign Policy Test

Pakistan could be the source of the biggest nuclear crisis to face an American president since the Cold War. With images filling television screens of Pakistani refugees fleeing Taliban fighters, President Obama is trying to reassure a nervous world that the country's nuclear weapons are in no danger of falling into the hands of Islamic extremists, at least for now. After sending mixed signals about his confidence in the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Obama this week made it clear to the presidents of both countries that he's not going to bail on them. He has no choice, really, but how Obama handles this explosive part of the world, and the relationship he establishes with these men, will show how the president, a cool customer in all his interactions, might avoid personalizing his dealings with foreign leaders.

Heads of state aren't supposed to be buddies. President George W. Bush looked silly after declaring he'd seen Russian President Vladimir Putin's soul after they met for the first time. Bush trusted his gut when it came to people. He often said he didn't read books, but he could read people. He trumpeted his ties with Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president who was forced from office. Bush called him one of America's best allies in the war on terror, which was true on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On the other days, Musharraf was placating the same insurgents he was taking U.S. funding to defeat.

Obama has drawn many bright lines between himself and Bush, and his reluctance to personalize relationships with foreign leaders is another one. It's not Obama's style to be effusive, so it's not like he's holding back. He is approaching Pakistan very differently and demanding more accountability in putting down an insurgency that looks more ominous than it did when Bush was in office. Correct and businesslike in public, Obama did make an effort behind the scenes with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to establish a human connection. Zardari took power after his wife was assassinated, and recognizing the human tragedy integral to their coming together, Obama took Zardari's 20-year-old son on a walk in the Rose Garden and told him how much he admired his mother, a gesture worth a lot in cementing a fragile relationship.

The foreign-policy establishment warned President Reagan against personalizing his relationship with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and there was a battle internally when Reagan planned to state in his 1987 speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." The fight wasn't over the sentiment—Reagan had called for the destruction of the Berlin Wall before. It was about was directing his words at Gorbachev. Foreign-policy types feared it would set back the warming relationship between Moscow and Washington, but Reagan went with his instincts. James Mann, author of The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War, explained before an audience at the Aspen Institute in Washington on Wednesday how Reagan's insistence that Gorbachev was a different kind of Soviet leader upended the advice of those around him and helped bring a peaceful end to four decades of Cold War.

One of the experts advising Reagan was Ken Adelman, a veteran diplomat who at the time directed the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He remembers how skeptical he was of Reagan's instinct about Gorbachev, thinking to himself, how could the president know Gorbachev was different? Yet Reagan was convinced. He told aides if he could only get Gorbachev in a helicopter over Southern California, and he could see all the swimming pools people have, capitalism would win hands down. But what surprised Adelman the most, he recounted, was discovering that Reagan was "an antinuclear freak," a position that came into full view at the 1986 summit at Reykjavik when Reagan surprised his advisers by proposing to ban all ballistic missiles and eliminate all nuclear weapons in 10 years. Aides worked through the night on the potentially historic deal, which collapsed when Gorbachev balked over Reagan's insistence on keeping in place his Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars.

Even though Reykjavik was judged a failure, Reagan was right that Gorbachev really wanted a whole new relationship with the West. The mark of a true leader is to have an insight that may not be apparent to everybody around him. We haven't had a comparable moment yet with Obama, who operates on a completely different intellectual plane. He likes to establish a process and analyze everything to the point where his policies, when they emerge, are rational in a world that is often irrational. But we don't know much yet about his instincts. There will come a moment, maybe with Pakistan, when his advisers will disagree, and there will be a crisis decision, and that's when he'll earn every one of the perks that come with being the most powerful leader in the world.