Nerd Analysis: Obama's Middle East Foreign Policy

Professor Shai Feldman (Co-Chair of the Crown-Belfer Middle East Project at the Harvard Kennedy School) has some analysis to go with the Palestinian statehood efforts at the UN.  Here is a piece of it:

... brilliant speechmaking became a substitute for establishing policy and devising strategy. While masterfully articulating his understanding of Arab-Israeli realities, Obama’s speeches rarely provided or were followed up by an action plan incorporating practical steps that would enable the U.S. to achieve the administration’s stated objectives. Indeed, the administration seemed to have lacked any strategy for moving the parties to where they did not volunteer to go or motivating them to assume risks they were not prepared to take.

Empty words?  Well, DUH.  Not, of course, that I think the speechifying really is all that "brilliant" or "masterful."