The basic principles of Obama's actions were not new with him. In my reading, they seem to have emerged as defaults with the Atlantic Charter in 1942, when the US took over the British Empire (and associated regimes) and have been followed most of the time ever since. By 1945 the US was effectively the last man standing and could do as it pleased with the world, and it is the memory of that quasi-omnipotence which the US r.c. keeps looking back to, although the material conditions associated with it have long since passed away. In any case, Obama was not unique (nor, for the most part, have been his predecessors and successors).