HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — Before coming up to Canada’s Atlantic provinces, where the nicest people in this nice country are said to live, I found myself seated next to Henry Kissinger at a New York dinner and asked him how he thought President Barack Obama was doing.

Roger Cohen

“He reminds me of a chess grandmaster who has played his opening in six simultaneous games,” Kissinger said. “But he hasn’t completed a single game and I’d like to see him finish one.”

I thought that wasn’t a bad image for Obama’s international gambits, and then here, at the first Halifax International Security Forum, I heard a similar observation from one participant: “We’ve had the set-up, but is there a...