Challenges Facing the Obama Administration

The US currently faces a number of substantial challenges that are primarily not of President Obama’s making. When President Obama took office he had to confront a set of challenges that were without precedent, certainly since the Second World War and probably even before. Not only was he confronted with two wars that were not particularly successful, but he also had to deal with the collapse of the financial system and with a raging domestic economic crisis. At the same time, the president was also faced with the rise of a whole network of Islamic extremism and terror, as well as with the specific issue of Iran and its role in the Middle East. Concomitantly, he had to deal with the question of peace in the Middle East and to deliver on a promise he had made to the American people: namely to change the United States’ approach to foreign policy, focusing more on diplomacy and engagement and less on military conflict.