Obama's Challenges

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Barack Obama faces the most awesome challenges of any president taking office since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the thirties. As A. Wess Mitchell, co-founder and director of research at the Center for European Policy Analysis , writes:

When Barack Obama enters the Oval Office as commander in chief for the first time in January, it's not hard to imagine him walking to the globe beside the window, giving it a good spin and running in his mind through the list of global burdens he has inherited from his predecessor. What he will see is unlike anything any American statesman has ever had to confront. Two simultaneous land wars; a rapidly arming Iran; an atomic, post-Musharraf Pakistan; a resurgent, energy-rich Russia; a China that holds 10% of U.S. currency; a $10-trillion public debt; the worst recession since World War II; and a weak dollar.