Secretary Clinton’s visit to Pakistan has been remarkable in the candor and sense of relative equality in her exchanges with the Pakistanis. The students, women, and other groups with whom she met do not like American policy, and they let that be known. Clinton listened to their objections, but argued instead that an anti-terrorist alliance between the Pakistani and American militaries was the way to go. She treated them as peers and rivals. She did not condescend, and they did not treat her as representing an overweening bully against whom they had to protest.

The exchanges reflect real changes in the global situation, especially since 1989. Once it lost the cloak and nightstick provided by anti-communism, the United States lost much of the political clout that kept nations lined up behind it. Its “cultural power” — jeans, rock music, i-phones — was so linked to the market, that it quickly diffused, becoming an example of “globalization,” and not of American leadership. Its economy became weaker and weaker and less appealing as a model, as its reliance on artificial booms became clear. That left it with naked military force, a basis for coercion, but not hegemony.

Meanwhile, China generated through economic growth what Japan had once tried to accomplish by force, the economic unification of East Asia. Intellectually we saw Asian innovation in the sciences, as well as new, global paradigms in historical studies, literature, music and the study of culture. The Pakistanis who confronted Clinton are a narrow, exploitative elite in a country that lives in poverty, but they are no longer a comprador class, a satellite regime for America. These changes were all reflected in the Clinton visit.

The larger question however, is whether these realities will also be reflected in Obama’s foreign policy, or whether, as has so often been the case with Obama, Clinton’s visit is window dressing. All indications point to the latter. Obama is in the process of compounding the fraud of the Karzai election by creating a much greater fraud, a second election, with a predetermined outcome, not only as to the “winner,” Karzai, but as to the results, an American escalation. Almost certainly, this outcome was known from the time of McChrystal’s initial request for troops, and the much-vaunted series of meetings that have taken place, meant to bolster Obama’s carefully-marketed inage of reflection, thoughtfulness, listening to all sides, is a sham. Yet the continuing American presence in Afghanistan, aside possibly from a small force of perhaps ten thousand, can have no justification. Fighting terrorism should be way down the list of American global priorities (which does not mean it is not a priority), and should be aimed at people organizing terrorist attacks, and not at religious fundamentalists or people who simply hate the United States.

What should the United States policy in the Middle East be? In my view, a phased but ultimately complete military withdrawal should be the overall goal of U.S. policy. At least in the Middle East, in every case where it intervenes, the U.S. creates conflicts, it does not resolve them. It is an inflammatory presence, like throwing gasoline on brush fires; it is the greatest terrorist-producing engine in world history.

Certainly, Israel will never settle with the Palestinians as long as the U.S. is on the scene. Yet, if the U.S. withdrew, Israel would not only remain secure, it would settle. The same is true with the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The only way that the mullahs retain power in Iran is because of the American threat, used as a bogey-man. Finally, there is the question of oil, which got the U.S. involved in the first place. World War Two was the last moment in world history when nations thought they had to conquer space to secure resources. My advice: buy the oil on global markets, if you need to.