Foreign Affairs: Foreign Policy Challenges Facing the Obama Administration

A year ago, Senator Barack Obama first described how he would confront the foreign policy challenges he would inherit if elected president in "Renewing American Leadership." On January 20, he will tackle a range of complex issues while being constrained by the worst financial crisis to emerge since the Great Depression.

Foreign Affairs has compiled a collection of articles that offer policy prescriptions to some of the world’s most pressing problems.

Grand Strategy Articles

Richard Haass on navigating a nonpolar world.

Hillary Clinton on security and opportunity for the twenty-first century.

Bill Richardson on a realistic and principled foreign policy.

Richard Holbrooke on the next president’s daunting agenda.

Issue-Specific Articles

Stephen Sestanovich on how to rebuild U.S-Russia relations.

Barnett Rubin and Ahmed Rashid on ending chaos in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

James Grant on helping the U.S. economy right itself.

Daniel Kurtzer on fixing Washington’s muddled Middle East policy.

Paul Collier on how to solve the global food crisis.

J. Brian Atwood, M. Peter McPherson, and Andrew Natsios on making foreign aid a more effective tool.

Charles Kupchan on why a league of democracies won’t work.

Stephen Biddle, Michael O’Hanlon, and Kenneth Pollack on how to leave a stable Iraq.

Carter Bales and Richard Duke on containing climate change.

Kenneth Roth on why the United States should turn terrorism suspects over to its criminal justice system.

Ivo Daalder and Jan Lodal on how Washington must lead the way to a world without nuclear weapons.

John Ikenberry on the rise of China and the future of the west.

Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh on the costs of containing Iran.

Laurie Garrett on reforming world public health systems.

Andrew Natsios on resolving the north-south conflict in Sudan.

Jorge Castañeda on restoring U.S-Latin America relations.

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Published by the Council on Foreign Relations since 1922, Foreign Affairs is the leading publication on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy. The total paid circulation of Foreign Affairs has reached an all-time high of 160,000 per issue, a 42 percent rise since 2001. The premier business-to-business research firm Erdos & Morgan also ranks the magazine #1 in influence by U.S. opinion leaders in a national study of publications. Inevitably, articles published in Foreign Affairs shape the political dialogue for months and years to come.