Last week, an appeals “court” in Cuba rejected the request of an American citizen, Alan Gross, to be freed from the 15-year sentence he was given in March of this year after being convicted of subversion. The 61-year-old Gross, a tourist who worked as a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), was arrested in March of 2009 after bringing communications equipment to a small Jewish community on the communist island. The paranoid government sees these openings to the outside world as subversive and punishes them with prison terms long enough to be death sentences.

Throughout Gross’s imprisonment, the Obama administration has attempted quietly, through backdoor channels, to secure his release. After two American journalists were captured in North Korea two years ago, the Obama administration sent former President Bill Clinton to secure their release. With Gross, they tried something similar, sending President Jimmy Carter, but this time the former president came home empty-handed.

The incarceration of Gross sends a message to dictators everywhere: If you capture our citizens, we might send an aging former president to get them back, but if we don’t succeed–c’est la vie. While the use of soft negotiation techniques and bribes might have worked on Kim Jong Il, it clearly has not on Castro or Ahmadinejad (who is currently holding two American hikers captive in Iran).

What happened to the president who ordered the Navy to aim sniper rifles at pirates who captured Americans off the Somali coast? When media attention isn’t focused sharply on Obama, travelers should know that their U.S. passport doesn’t carry nearly as much protection as it used to. When faced with a lack of public outcry, our president will stand idly by as foreign dictators hold American citizens in nightmarish prisons to be tortured, or worse.

We are no longer respected or feared by others worldwide. Since President Obama has taken office, the United States has undergone a downgrade in more ways than one.