With his speech to the Muslim world at Cairo University on Thursday, Barack Obama put a new face on American foreign policy, or at least a face that the world has not seen since the 1970s. This is America’s penitent, humbled and even sycophantic face.

President Obama seeks a “new beginning” to US-Muslim relations through frank self-examination and mutual respect. The US is locked in a battle for the hearts and minds of Muslims, whether it likes it or not. Self-examination can be a sign of strength. But we should not delude ourselves that the Muslim world sees it as such. The Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks for many when he says that it is “the power of Muslims which [has] made the new US administration try to portray a new image”. And there is another problem: the politics of national self-abasement, from Jimmy Carter to Mikhail Gorbachev, is not popular with voters. It cannot be practised for long because it entails a huge – usually fatal – drawing down of political capital.