Spencer Ackerman’s done the legwork and interviewed a slew of Obama’s foreign policy advisors to get a sense of his administration’s direction and priorities. Spencer’s thrilled, I’m less so.

This is why, Obama’s advisers argue, national security depends in large part on dignity promotion. Without it, the U.S. will never be able to destroy al-Qaeda. Extremists will forever be able to demagogue conditions of misery, making continued U.S. involvement in asymmetric warfare an increasingly counterproductive exercise—because killing one terrorist creates five more in his place.

Dignity promotion sounds like something USAID or the World Bank should be doing. It’s a valid goal, one which an Obama’s administration ought to pursue by generously funding agencies tasked with achieving it. And as a means of fighting terrorist organizations, it makes far more sense than the balls-out military approach which has been so spectacularly failing these past 7 years.

But in his drive to transcend the mindset that got us into Iraq, Obama seems to be staking far too much on this new approach. We should be thinking about our relationships with China and Russia, about the extent of our commitment to Taiwan, Georgia and the Ukraine, and about energy security for us and our allies in the face of rising competitors. Dignity promotion gives short shrift to big picture geostrategic thinking by promoting nebulous notions of global welfare above those of individual state actors. We ignore the fact that China and Russia are playing a zero-sum self-aggrandizing game at our own peril.