This has been on purpose, too

The planned decline has extended to the world stage:

Mr Obama is talking about his world leadership, and a very odd sort of talk it is. He keeps emphasising how he has chosen not to lead. In 2012, he declared that President Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Syria would be “a red line” for the United States. Assad duly crossed that line, killing hundreds, but then Obama decided to back away from his own threat. “I am very proud of this moment,” he tells his surprised interviewer – proud because he broke with what he calls the foreign-policy establishment “playbook”. None of us much likes foreign-policy establishments, but if their playbook says it is a bad idea to threaten a tyrant with punishment and then not carry out that threat, it might just be right. 

Since then, America has no longer been believed and Assad has been empowered. President Obama, in the Arab spring, compared Middle East demonstrators protesting against Arab dictators with the “patriots of Boston” He called for Assad to “step aside”. But when that dictator, assailed by such people, showed he really meant business, Mr Obama decided to let him off. The United States passed influence on the future of Syria to Vladimir Putin, who doesn’t much mind bombing anyone.

After the Islamist outrages in Paris last autumn, the President upset opinion at home by not talking about them, since he was busy “pivoting to Asia”. “Why can’t we get the bastards?” an exasperated CNN reporter asked him. He didn’t get much of an answer from the President who worries more about xenophobia than terrorism. The later, considered Obama reply to this question seems to be that one must not encourage “tribalism”, which he regards as the root of all evil. Thus he presents a golden political opportunity to the new big white chief of American tribalism, Donald Trump.
As the coasting President looks back, he finds something wrong with all of America’s friends. Mr Cameron gets off relatively lightly (though he is also criticised for speaking out against “radical Islam”). The then President Sarkozy of France is attacked for enjoying photo-opportunities, Israel for intransigence, Saudi Arabia for repression, Turkey for not being his designated bridge between East and West. Poor, loyal King Abdullah of Jordan complains: “I think I believe in American power more than Obama does”. It is not the Blessed Barack who has failed, but everyone else who has disappointed his high ideals.
America’s enemies, by contrast, enjoy the presidential blessing (without offering him any gratitude in return). This is a good time to be a Cuban Communist, and the best moment since 1979 to be an Iranian ayatollah.
One must, of course, add that Mr Obama has been busy fighting climate change. When you are saving the planet, he suggests, there isn’t much time to deal with mere mass murderers, such as Isil. Despite his African heritage, the first black President seems more preoccupied than any other leader by what are known as “First World problems”. 

So, for nearly eight years now, the leader of the free world has not led it – time enough to notice the unfavourable difference this has made to the global balance of power. 

Again, this is not incompetence. This results from the Most Equal Comrade's lifelong view of the United States as being too big for its britches on the world stage.

The Great Leveling Project writ large.