Obama's early choices will affect how world views U.S.

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As President George W. Bush marks the final X’s on his presidential calendar, experts said President-elect Barack Obama’s Oval Office entrance could improve the country’s international image and help the United States push its foreign policy objectives.

Bush’s foreign policy has been marked by inconsistencies, said Hayes Brown, president of the MSU International Relations Organization. He said Bush has honored some international governance organizations while ignoring others and started his first term with a unilateral approach but eventually opened up to multilateral talks with North Korea and Iran. Obama, though, will be more open to dialogue with the international community, he said.

Rita Kiki Edozie, an assistant international relations professor in James Madison College, said citizens of other nations had been excited for months about a potential Obama presidency.

She said people found that his African heritage and international affairs education at Columbia University made him “the commonwealth president,” and his popularity has some world leaders willing to grant Obama a two-year honeymoon period.

“It’s clear that people around the world thought that a Barack Obama presidency would enhance and change the very negative values non-Americans have of Americans,” she said.

Some of these same people, however, expressed some concern about Obama’s inexperience, Edozie said.

She said Obama doesn’t have a strong history of foreign policy knowledge, and people such as Pakistani citizens have been especially troubled by some of his solutions to international problems.

Edozie and Matt Zierler, an assistant international relations professor in James Madison College, said Obama’s inexperience will be offset by the people he chooses for his advisers. But that doesn’t mean Obama can rely too heavily on his team, Zierler said.

“He has to start making choices — hard choices,” he said. “Those decisions he makes will give us the best indication of how the world views us. He has an opportunity, an opening, but at the end of the day it’s his actions.”

Zierler said he doesn’t expect radical foreign policy changes early in Obama’s term, aside from issues such as more action in Afghanistan and changing practices at Guantanamo Bay. He said most of Obama’s foreign policy attention will rest with pressing needs in the Middle East.

Despite the Middle East’s direct interest to foreign policy considering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Brown said he would like to see a more global approach to foreign policy instead of a regional basis. He said problems such as terrorism have roots in all continents and being too fine in scope will not produce the best results.

Brown and Edozie said Obama’s election has already made a global impact by enhancing the U.S.‘s soft power, which is the ability to affect other nations through things such as culture and values. This will give the U.S. a more willing and attentive audience in the international community, they said.

“In terms of soft power, everybody should be more willing to listen to us now,” Brown said. “It’s shown we have given a chance to everyone. To be completely frank, I think it will allow us to push our foreign policy much better in other nations now.”

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