Foreign Policy By Popularity?

From Josef Joffee in the Wall Street Journal:
This litany will lengthen in months to come, but it's not too early to render a preliminary judgment on Team Obama's foreign policy.
The basic lesson, alas, is that nice guys don't do better than meanies like Mr. Bush.That is not how politics among nations works. The last president who excited so much enthusiasm was John F. Kennedy. Jackie did wow the French with her bow to Continental tastes, but Jack found an implacable rival in President Charles de Gaulle. Reaching out to Nikita Khrushchev in his first year, JFK went to the brink of nuclear war in his second with the Cuban missile crisis.
The point here is an old one, variously ascribed to Talleyrand, Palmerston or De Gaulle, about nations having everlasting interests rather than eternal friends or enemies. In today's language: interest beats affection any time. Mrs. Merkel surely knows how enthralled her country is with Mr. Obama. But that's not enough to place German soldiers in harm's way in Afghanistan, or to run up the national debt in a country that is traumatized by inflation.
Why should Kim Jong Il part with his nuclear weapons program when it's the only sure-fire way for an unhinged but smart dictator to get great powers to give him all sorts of goodies? Let go of the nukes, and Pyongyang will be nothing but the capital of Asia's most cruelly backward country.
Why should Iran roll over just because the U.S. seeks to flatter and cajole? The jihadis in Tehran don't want a nuclear bomb or use surrogates like Hamas and Hezbollah because they dislike the United States. They want hegemony over the Greater Middle East, and guess who stands in their way? Uncle Sam and Israel.
Can Mr. Obama sweet talk the European Union into more modest climate goals? No, because the Europeans believe that the U.S. is taking too much from the global commons (energy) and putting too much bad stuff into it (greenhouse gases).
"We will listen carefully," Mr. Obama said with a view to Tehran, "we will bridge misunderstandings, and we will seek common ground." Some 500 years ago, Francis I of France was asked what misunderstandings had fueled his constant wars with the Habsburg Empire's Charles V. He replied: "None, we are in complete agreement. We both want control over Italy." Conflict between states is made from sterner stuff than bad manners or bad vibes, past grievances or imaginary fears. International politics is neither psychiatry nor a set of "see me, feel me" encounter sessions. It is about power and position, about preventing injury and protecting interests. Love and friendship move people, not nations.