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Obama to Seek Global Re-engagement, But How Much?
(...) Obama has repeatedly stressed the importance of multilateralism and diplomatic re-engagement with the world, including long-time U.S. adversaries such as Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, as a contrast to the unilateralist and militarised approach of the incumbent, President George W. Bush.
(...) [M]ost of his advisers are veterans of the administration of President Bill Clinton whose own brand of liberal interventionism - including the circumvention of the United Nations in the Balkans, Sudan, and Iraq and reluctance to press Israel to make key concessions in negotiations with its Arab neighbours - and notion that the U.S. was the "indispensable nation" helped lay the foundation for the eight years that followed. (...)
(...) Obama will clearly present a far different image of the United States to the rest of the world than his immediate predecessor, or any other, for that matter. (...)
But that image, as well the foreign policy commitments he made during the campaign - assuming that he holds to them - may not be sufficient to ensure the kind of sweeping change in course that much of the world and many voters who cast their ballots for him here expect.
Obama will almost certainly make good within a relatively short time on his promises to close the Guantanamo detention facility, rejoin global efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming, and open direct dialogues with Syria and Iran, that will cheer Democrats and Washington's European allies.
But, despite Democratic gains in Congress, he may be less inclined to expend political capital on more controversial issues that will require substantial bipartisan support, such as ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty or the Rome Protocol for the International Criminal Court and amending the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to strengthen labour rights and environmental provisions.
With the U.S. economy engulfed in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Obama is not likely to have nearly as much time to focus on foreign policy than he had thought even two months ago.(...)
Consistent with interventionists like Biden, he has endorsed the imposition of no-fly zones, unilaterally if necessary, over Darfur in Sudan to stop what they call the "genocide" there. At the same time, his emphasis on engaging enemies diplomatically, regardless of their human rights record, reflects a more realist tendency. In fact, he may well try to achieve a balance between the two poles in his appointments.
Thus, it is believed that his first choice to head the Pentagon is the Republican incumbent, Robert Gates, who, along with Powell's successor, Condoleezza Rice, is given much of the credit for steering U.S. policy on a less unilateralist and hawkish course since he joined the administration two years ago. (...)
