Obama faces raft of foreign policy trials

A full dossier of national security challenges will confront US president-elect Barack Obama when he takes office in January at the age of 47, with little formal experience in defence and foreign affairs.

His credentials were repeatedly called into question by Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries and by Republican rival John McCain during the election campaign, which concluded on 4 November with a decisive win by the junior senator from Illinois and his vice-president-elect Joe Biden, a foreign policy veteran after decades in the US Senate.

The Obama administration will face the challenges of protecting the United States' interests in the context of Iraq and Afghanistan; the continuing fight against global terrorism, including Al-Qaeda's presence on the Afghan-Pakistani border; and the stalling of democratic progress in Russia, the Middle East and Latin America.

What role the US should play in resolving crises in Africa - including those in Sudan's Darfur region and the current resurgence of violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo - will also figure largely on his national security agenda.

In addition, Obama will have to handle the rise of assertive national powers such as Russia; emerging, potentially nuclear-armed adversaries; the interrelated challenges of climate change and energy competition; and the reality of a US military that is overstretched and in dire need of rest and repair - set against the fiscal reality of a defence budget that will likely need serious review. 238 of 755 words