Dilemma over Syria policy threatens to undermine Barack Obama Designed as a call to arms, Barack Obama's nationally televised address about the need to strike against Syria had turned into a plea for diplomacy by the time he strode to the podium at the White House on Tuesday evening. Caught between demanding military action and pushing talks at the same time as he is struggling to impose his authority both in Washington and overseas, Mr Obama and his presidency seemed as stranded as his Syria policy by the speech's close. Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, said that Mr Obama's wavering about whether to take military action against Syria will have a big impact on the credibility of US foreign policy. "US allies are going to be concerned about the commitments America has made to them," he said. In his Tuesday night speech, Mr Obama attempted to weave between showing resolve and promising to avoid another Middle East quagmire. He insisted that the "United States military does not do pinpricks" and warned that "failure to stand against the use of chemical weapons would . . . embolden Assad's ally Iran." But he also claimed that any military action would be a "limited strike." "I don't think we should remove another dictator with force," he said. We learnt from Iraq that doing so makes us responsible for all that comes next. The military would retain is current posture of being prepared to launch air strikes, but for the time-being the US would "pursue this diplomatic path." Ever since he announced in St Petersburg on the sidelines of the G20 meeting last week that he would rally the nation on Syria, Mr Obama has been undermined by the rapidly shifting political landscape at home and abroad. Support in Congress for a Syria strike began to evaporate among Republicans and Democrats, and Russia threw the president's plans further off course by injecting an unexpected diplomatic initiative into the equation, to secure the Arab nation's chemical weapons. At a moment when Mr Obama's power is already reaching the point of inevitable decline that any second-term president faces, the danger is that his inability to execute a coherent and effective Syria policy will undermine his authority across the board. Mr Obama's much-touted pivot to Asia in foreign policy has again been overwhelmed by upheaval in the Middle East, where Washington's leverage has been diminishing since the so-called Arab Spring in 2011. The need for day-to-day crisis management of the Middle East could have substantial repercussions for Asia policy, at a time when China was expanding its naval power in the Asia-Pacific, according to Mr Bremmer. While Japan was firmly committed to its alliance with the US, other allies such as Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore could "start to hedge and to shore up their long-term relations with China because of what they have seen over the last few days." At home, the Syria crisis has coincided with the run-up to what have become Washington's regular and rancorous budget battles, typified by a stand-off between the White House and the Republicans in Congress. Congress must pass both a new budget by September 30, or at least a short-term extension, and also lift the country's borrowing limits, to allow the government to keep spending, by around mid-October. Into an already noxious political mix is Mr Obama's signature health reform, or "Obamacare." Passed in 2010, some Republicans are still fighting the law and are pushing to shut down the government to prevent the measure being funded. What had promised to be the signature legislative reform of his second term, rewriting America's immigration laws to give an estimated 11m undocumented migrants the chance to legalise their status, has been for the moment pushed aside. Although the issues of the budget and Syria are separate, a defeat on foreign policy could hang over the rest of his presidency. "Winners win," said Norm Ornstein, of the American Enterprise Institute, citing how Ronald Reagan's popularity helped him prevail against an often hostile Democratic Congress. Instead of the press narrative, that Obama is fighting a bunch of Republicans on the budget who will do anything to oppose him, it could become, a weakened president takes the nation over the edge. Against such an impression of uncertainty and indecision, however, the long-term impact of Mr Obama's handling of the Syrian crisis might turn out to be less significant than it seems in the middle of such fast-moving events. Jeremy Shapiro, a former senior state department official now at the Brookings Institution, said it was a mistake to focus too closely on the link between military strikes in Syria and US credibility, "a questionable idea that gave us the Vietnam war." "Rather than being seen as timid, the US has gained a reputation over the last 10 years or so for being reckless in our use of force," he said. Establishing a reputation for prudence is much more important for the US now than demonstrating that we are still willing to shoot from the hip. The Chinese, for instance, "see our Middle Eastern adventures as an episode where we got distracted by peripheral issues from focusing on critical issues facing the world." It is not clear that US wavering on Syria will have any impact on one issue which the administration has been citing to win support for a punitive strike - Iran's calculations over whether to make a final push for a nuclear weapon. Tehran has been developing its nuclear programme for decades and its plans are based on considerations that go well beyond the current debate about Syria. Some observers even suggest that the use of military force against Syria could encourage Iran to speed up its nuclear programme, because it would see a greater need to develop its own deterrent and because it might start to feel more encircled.