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SINCE his first day in office, US President Barack Obama’s foreign policy has rested on outreach: Resetting ties with Russia, building a partnership with China, and offering a fresh start with antagonistic leaders from Iran to Venezuela.

But the global travels of former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden highlight the limits of that approach. Leaders Obama has wooed — and recently met — were willing to snub the American president.

The cocky defiance by so-called non-state actors — Snowden himself and the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks — completes the picture of a world less willing than ever to bend to US prescriptions of right and wrong.