Events from Iraq to Ukraine call into focus Barack Obama's world view

The week began with the breaking of the siege of Mount Sinjar in Iraq, thanks to US bombing, and ended with the public beheading of journalist James Foley in Syria and renewed Russian aggression in Ukraine.

The juxtaposition of military success and public human failure has caused a sense of whiplash around US President Barack Obama's foreign policy and further stoked the debate about his world view.

Obama's detractors revived criticism that his foreign policy was based on retreat from the world, typified by the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq three years ago, a lack of direct action in Syria and an economics-first approach to driving Russia's military back from Ukraine.

His supporters argue his approach has been consistent with his strategy of returning the US to a foreign policy built around economic engagement rather than military intervention. The question is whether he is contradicting his pledge in his 2009 Nobel Prize lecture "to face the world as it is", not as he would like it to be.

"He thought he could change the tenor more easily than he could, and I think he thought the world would be more responsive to his desires than the world has proven to be," said Jon Alterman, senior vice-president of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. "Now he faces the criticism that … he embarks on a series of skirmishes that are reactive and not of his choosing."

In place of large military deployments, Obama has relied on smaller operations to manage, rather than resolve, many of the conflicts that have arisen. The attempted rescue of Foley earlier this year from a camp deep inside Syria stands as the most recent example of that approach.