NEW YORK — In foreign policy, there is one quick way into the history books — make a major mistake. Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush can be sure that, no matter what else is said of them, their decisions leading to military intervention and war will be long discussed. The second path — a big success — is less certain. Richard Nixon’s opening to China was quickly seen as historic. But Harry Truman’s many brilliant and brave decisions — containment, NATO, the Marshall Plan — were not lauded as such at the time.

President Obama has not made a major mistake. He has done a skillful job steering the United States out of the muddy waters he inherited — Iraq, Afghanistan — and resisted plunging the country into another major conflict with all the complications that would inevitably entail. But Obama has been less skillful at the constructive aspects of foreign policy, of building up an edifice of achievements. He still has time to fix this.

The critics claim that the world is now in disarray and geopolitics has returned with a vengeance — witness Ukraine. But the reality is, as Princeton’s John Ikenberry has often pointed out, that the American-led world order, built after World War II, continues to endure seven decades after its creation. It has outlasted challenges from Soviet Russia, Maoist China and — most recently — radical Islam. The Economist magazine this week tallies the world’s 150 largest countries. Ninety-nine of them lean or lean strongly toward the United States; 21 lean against. Washington has about 60 treaty allies. China has one. Russia is not a rising global power seeking to overturn the liberal world order. It is a declining power, terrified that the few countries that still cluster around it are moving inexorably away.

Part of Obama’s problem has been that he has tended to make grand pronouncements on issues where he would not use American power forcefully — Syria and the Arab Spring being the clearest examples. The speech became the substitute for action. And on the issues where America was engaged — Ukraine, Asia — his statements were strangely muted. In his speech to European leaders on Ukraine, Obama struck most of the right notes but also littered the speech with caveats about not acting militarily. It is difficult to stir the world into action, and into following the United States, if the president is telling you what he would not do rather than what he would do.

But the broader problem is that critics want the moral and political satisfaction of a great global struggle. We all accuse Vladimir Putin of Cold War nostalgia, but Washington’s elites — politicians and intellectuals — miss the old days as well. They wish for a world in which the United States was utterly dominant over its friends, where its foes were to be shunned entirely, and where the challenges were stark, moral and vital. Today’s world is messy and complicated. China is one of our biggest trading partners and our looming geopolitical rival. Russia is a surly spoiler but it has a globalized middle class and has created ties in Europe. New regional players such as Turkey and Brazil have minds of their own and will not be easily bossed.

What we need is a set of sophisticated strategies to strengthen the existing global system but also keep the major powers in it. With Ukraine, for example, it is vital that Obama rally the world against Russia’s violation of borders and norms. And yet, the only long-term solution to Ukraine has to involve Russia. Without Moscow’s buy-in, Ukraine cannot be stable and successful — as is now evident. Obama’s strategy of putting pressure on Moscow, using targeted sanctions and rallying support in Europe is the right one — and might even be showing some signs of paying off.

Similarly with China, the challenge is to provide the assurances that other Asian countries want but also to make sure that the pivot does not turn into a containment strategy against the world’s second-largest economic and military power. This would make for a Cold War in Asia that no Asian country wants and would not serve American interests, either.

Obama’s restraint has served him well in avoiding errors. But it has also produced a strangely minimalist approach to his constructive foreign policy agenda. From the Asia pivot to new trade deals to the Russia sanctions, Obama has put forward an agenda that is ambitious and important, but he approaches it cautiously, as if his heart is not in it, seemingly pulled along by events rather than shaping them. Once more, with feeling, Mr. President!

Fareed Zakaria is a columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group.