HOW has Barack Obama done as US president so far? Clearly many Pakistanis have a less than positive view — though interestingly, Pakistani expectations for Obama were never as high as in much of the rest of the world.

But as we begin a presidential campaign in the US, and debate the future of the US-Pakistan relationship in both countries, it is perhaps a good moment to consider the question anew.

A new book on Obama’s foreign policy by Martin Indyk, Ken Lieberthal, and myself attempts to contribute constructively to this debate. It is entitled Bending History: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy after the famous Martin Luther King quote that Obama uses so much — to the effect that history’s arc is long but that it also bends in the direction of justice.

This title conjures up the high hopes Obama conveyed to the world back in the heady days of 2007 and 2008 and early 2009, and surely held himself at some level, about what his presidency could accomplish.

However, on the big subjects where Obama had transformative aspirations — repairing relations with the Islamic world, moving towards a nuclear-weapons-free planet, restructuring the architecture and membership of institutions like the UN, reducing global poverty, mitigating climate change — his efforts have been largely frustrated.

He has not fundamentally failed, in the sense that these intractable issues have been around a long time and will remain around for him and his successors to go after again. And on some, he’s made modest progress. But on balance, for these matters, the grade has to be incomplete at best.

On Pakistan, Obama truly tried a bigger and bolder approach. He tried hard to support Pakistan’s new civilian government, to show seriousness in regard to Afghanistan (attempting to mitigate Pakistani fears of another premature US withdrawal from the region), to increase aid, to intensify the personal diplomacy among top government leaders.

Yet 2011, including the raid on Abbottabad and the November tragedy near the Afghan-Pakistan border, show that on balance this has been a frustrating endeavour for leaders and publics in both countries.

More generally, a fuller review of this president’s overall track record, as we attempt in the book, leads to the conclusion that he has been a pragmatic, disciplined, and moderately successful president on many core matters of war and peace, and on the crucial subject of preventing a global economic meltdown during his first year in office as well.

Specifically: as seen in the nation’s wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan and against Al Qaeda globally, Obama has been strong, pragmatic, and non-ideological — not an apologist for the country, not weak and not naïve as many Republicans assert in the American political debate.

Obama also toughened his initial approach toward the rogue states of Iran and North Korea. After offering to reach out his hand should they unclench their own fists, in his inaugural address, by the summer of 2009 he had concluded in both cases that such efforts were pointless and pivoted to much tougher approaches.

Having tried and failed to improve relations, he was well positioned to convince other countries to tighten sanctions thereafter — arguably becoming more effective than George W. Bush in pursuing much of the core Bush agenda. Of course, sanctions are not an end in themselves, and Obama has not been any more successful than previous presidents in rolling back either the North Korean or Iranian nuclear programmes.

He has done best on the major foreign policy problems: beyond Al Qaeda and the rogue states, also ‘Russia reset’ policy, progress towards a realistic and balanced partnership with China, further improvement in relations and India (building on the work of Clinton and Bush), and relations with most major allies. His nuclear nonproliferation record and defence records are good so far as well.

President Obama been generally prudent with the Arab awakenings including in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Libya — not because he wished to ‘lead from behind’ but because he sought to work with coalitions and let others step up where American vital interests were less engaged or where US influence was inherently limited. Clearly, Syria remains a work in progress.

There have been major mistakes beyond those noted above, most notably in his handling of the Arab-Israeli peace process. His efforts to lead on climate change via adoption of cap-and-trade legislation at home failed abjectly. While his Afghanistan policy was well thought through, execution has been marred by inconsistent approaches by members of the Obama team — and this has been noticed in Pakistan too, we realise.

Although the financial crisis of 2008-09 was managed competently, the American economy is still in such a perilous place that repairing it has become the top priority for the president. Importantly, the US cannot sustain a role of global leader without shoring up its economic foundations. The world still very much wonders if it can accomplish that. On matters such as deficit reduction, Obama has not yet been successful. Relatedly, partisan acrimony has not been mitigated on his watch as he had hoped either.

Overall, this is a better foreign policy record than most presidents have attained at their three-year marks. Generally speaking, it represents the triumph of pragmatism over ideology and reflects a reluctant realism that this president has come to personify in office.

Still, one senses that it is not what Obama expected exactly out of his time in office, and that it leaves him feeling unsatisfied in many ways. Because of the enduring economic crisis, it also leaves the country weaker in some ways, though the cause here has hardly been entirely Obama’s doing.

Clearly, economic recovery will be crucial in the months and years ahead, for whoever is president. So will repairing the relationship with Pakistan. As frustrated as Americans as well as Pakistanis are with the partnership, on balance we need each other — and have enough common interests and sensibilities that repair should be feasible.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Washington D.C.