Brent Lollis, Ph.D.
AIC Executive Director

On Tuesday January 20th, Barak Obama will be sworn into office as the 44th President of the United States. Joseph R. Biden, formerly the senior senator from Delaware and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will also be sworn in as Vice-President. The Obama-Biden Administration will likely demonstrate a decisive break from the past on a range of domestic and foreign policy issues. Although domestic policy will represent the most immediate and serious challenge to the new Administration, foreign policy will necessarily require substantial attention. Certain countries will represent major challenges, including: Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran. Certain key issues will also represent fundamental challenges, especially: global warming, energy, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation. Given these immediate and serious challenges, the new Administration will have little time to design and initiate its new policies. At the same time, major policy mistakes will need to be avoided as they will result in exacerbating the present dangers.

It is important to note that President-elect Obama's key campaign values were "hope" and "change." After having repeated and utilized these two abstract values so frequently, it will be important for the Administration to be able to argue by the time of the next presidential election that "hope" and "change" can be found in a substantial number of U.S. domestic and foreign policy areas. If four years elapse, and these values do not seem to be adequately reflected in policies, then the claim will be made that these campaign values were simply hollow. The question, therefore, is not whether they will be reflected, but in what ways and to what degrees. With respect to the Middle East, and Iran in particular, it will be a challenge to design and initiate new policies that will enhance the safety, security and well-being of the region. Will "hope" and "change" be meaningful values with respect to U.S. foreign policy? Will they be meaningful to U.S. citizens and to Iranian citizens?