Challenges to the United States in the Greater Middle East

Along with the presidency of the United States, Barack Obama inherited from his predecessor the most serious economic crisis facing the country since the Great Depression of the 1930s. But while confronting that crisis was his most urgent priority, Obama, unlike Franklin Delano Roosevelt, did not initially confine himself to the economy to the exclusion of almost all else. Of course, this was not just a matter of arbitrary preference. The world has changed beyond recognition since 1932. Roosevelt assumed the leadership of a potential great power but one that was at peace and determined to remain there, largely by isolating itself from the rest of the world (at least outside the Western Hemisphere). Obama’s America, by contrast, functioned in a much more globalized and interdependent economy and was, moreover, the undisputable superpower of the international system – notwithstanding the increasingly fashionable discourse of “declinism.” Even more to the point, it was actively fighting two foreign wars and prosecuting an ongoing struggle against international terrorism.