The growing bloodshed in Iraq and Syria is being watched as keenly in China as anywhere else in the world. Indeed, the greater Middle East is becoming an ever greater focus of Chinese foreign policy.

Boko Haram’s horrifying abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls in Nigeria ignited universal calls for help to “bring back our girls.” President Barack Obama responded with urgency, but lost in the story is that one tool the United States would like to have at our disposal is hampered by the absence of U.S. ambassadors in neighboring Cameroon and Niger.

U.S. foreign policy is failing.  Russia is pushing into Ukraine and threatening Eastern Europe; China is bullying Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam in the East and South China seas; and terrorist groups in the Middle East and Africa are displaced from one place, only to multiply and create more lethal threats in others.

Those who had expected the Modi foreign policy doctrine to be defined by a new muscularity will probably be disappointed. Instead, it suggests a thoughtful understanding of smart power, an integrated approach that will best serve India in a complex, interdependent world.

President Barack Obama wants America’s friends and allies not only to remain tightly tied together, but to grow the group in order to make sure shared democratic values and open markets are defended and promoted. Most importantly, he wants to make sure America and her collective is unbreakable. What we are witnessing is the end of “big-stick” policy. This is the era of bundled “little-stick” politics.