President Obama inherits a world of troubles

The problems that will confront Barack Obama beyond the United States make a nonsense of the metaphor of an in-tray. That suggests bureaucratic neatness, a stack of problems waiting for attention that can be dispatched one after the other.

Instead, he will inherit a worldwide map of problems that demand more time, military commitment and money than America can possibly deploy. It is wrong to lay all of those problems at the door of George W. Bush. Many were there before his presidency – Iran, North Korea, the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock, to name just three.

But it is still true that President-elect Obama will take on a challenge different in nature from recent predecessors. The US is engaged in two live wars and Afghanistan is getting worse just as Iraq gets better. More than that, he takes over at a point when US leadership is questioned. In the US’s foreign policy, it has suffered the greatest blow since Vietnam to its reputation for military success and its claim to legitimacy. In economic policy, its recent decisions and even its principles of economic organisation have been challenged.

No president since before Barack Obama was born has ascended to the Oval Office confronted by the accumulation of seismic challenges awaiting him. Historians grasping for parallels point to Abraham Lincon taking office as the nation was collapsing into Civil War, or Franklin D. Roosevelt arriving in Washington in the throes of the Great Depression