Declining Stature, or Failed State Department

In a recent Swampland article, Joe Klein details how the United States is becoming increasingly ignored overseas:

[1][T]he Iraqis [are] turning to China and Iran to construct electric power plants. This is particularly significant because America's inability to provide electricity in Iraq has been, for average Iraqis, the most infuriating daily evidence of our ineptitude...[2]Russian President Putin [is] offering a new alliance--and a new idea to resolve the nuclear situation--to the Iranians...[3]Turkey [is] empowering its army to move against the Kurdish guerrillas[.]

One of the commenters adds:

I recently heard Byron Wein speak. He contrasted a visit to China this year with a visit two or three years ago. On his previous visit, everyone he met wanted to talk about America; it was almost always the first topic of conversation. On his recent visit, America came up a bit, but less than Europe--despite the fact they were talking to an American. In his words, America has become "just another country". Americans still believe in American exceptionalism and in his judgement, Europeans and Asians did until recently, but that is rapidly fading.

Turkey Causes Trouble, or It's Hard Not to Put a Pun Here

This from the Swampland blog over at Time.com:

Over the summer, I took an informal poll of Iraq analysts at various US intelligence agencies about how and whether the Iraq war would spill over into neighboring countries....The near unanimous opinion was...that the border to watch was Turkey-Kurdistan. The mega-fear is that the Turks will move in to "protect" the local Turkmen population if the Kurds take over Kirkuk (and the adjacent oil fields). The more likely scenario was that the Turks would cross the border to take action against the PKK guerrillas, who have been causing real trouble in the Kurdish areas of Turkey for years. Now the Turkish parliament has approved cross-border military action against the PKK. I'm not sure that this is anything more than a warning flare--or an acknowledgement of the sort of raids that have already been taking place on both sides. But it's not very good....

Add this to Turkey threatening to prevent the U.S. from shipping supplies to Iraq through Turkey (70% of all air cargo headed to Iraq goes through Turkey) if the House passes a resolution condemning the Ottoman Empire's WWI-era slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians as an act of genocide, and you can see how Turkey is ruffling a few feathers in the Mid-East. (I'm sorry, I had to.)