America & the world: challenges for the new president: a guide from the foreign policy association.

• Author: Dillen, Mark

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[1] IRAQ

What should determine the pace of withdrawal of American troops from Iraq?

Until the meltdown on Wall Street in the fall sent the economy to the top of the list of voter concerns, the war in Iraq was one of the most important issues in the presidential campaign. And however the economy fares in the months ahead, Iraq, along with Afghanistan, will certainly be among President-elect Obama's most critical challenges.

Since the war began in March 2003, more than 4,100 American troops have died and more than 30,000 have been wounded The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the war has cost more than $1 trillion so far, or more than $200 million a day.

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During the campaign for the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama scored points against his rivals by being able to say that he had publicly opposed the war from the beginning. (They responded that since he wasn't in the Senate in 2003, he didn't have to actually vote on it.)

But with the election over, the discussion now is about the best strategy for ending, or at least winding down, U.S. involvement in the war. The key question: When can 151,000 U.S. troops--or at least the majority of them--leave Iraq?

Obama has argued that setting a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops would give the Iraqi government an incentive to take on more of the fighting and security tasks on its own, as well as force the Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish leaders to reach agreement on critical political, social, and economic questions that have been unresolved for years.

In Obama's view, a lower level of violence in Iraq is not enough; there must be "real political accommodation" on the part of the Iraqis. He believes that a "responsible pace of redeployment" of U.S. troops will encourage that process.

Under Obama's plan, most U.S. troops would be withdrawn within 16 months of his inauguration, and money from the war effort could be redirected to domestic needs.

There's wide agreement that last year's troop surge--the addition of about 30,000 U.S. troops to Iraq--helped stabilize the situation, with attacks on American troops and casualties dramatically lower in recent months. But there's also a consensus that the U.S. cannot sustain those higher troop levels in Iraq and also boost its forces in Afghanistan where the situation has been deteriorating.

Along with the surge, a shift to a counter-insurgency strategy focused on protecting Iraqi civilians from sectarian violence has also has had a significant impact.

But counterinsurgency efforts take time, and that's why some U.S. military officers foresee a continued need for U.S. combat troops, and a more gradual shift of responsibilities to Iraqi forces, than Obama has discussed.

The surge has enabled U.S. and Iraqi forces to deal significant blows to AI Qaeda in Iraq and related Sunni insurgent groups, and to break the power of Shiite militias like the Mehdi Army.

The momentum has been bolstered by the emergence of local Sunni groups, like the Sons of Iraq, that have turned against the insurgents and helped drive them out. Most of these Sunni fighters had previously fought against U.S. forces; now many of them receive funds from the U.S. military in exchange for their support.

But the largely Shiite government in Baghdad remains mistrustful of these former insurgents. It's a critical example of the ethnic and religious divisions in Iraq that must be addressed for there to be a lasting peace, regardless of the presence or the withdrawal of American forces.

[2] AFGHANISTAN

What should the U.S. and NATO do to ensure that the gains in this key front in the war against terrorism are not lost?

In the last two years, there have been increasing signs that the progress Afghanistan has made since the Taliban's ouster in 2001 is at risk. Indeed, as American casualties have decreased in Iraq in recent months, they've been on the rise in Afghanistan. Resurgent Taliban fighters, using suicide bombers and roadside bombs, have stepped up attacks against U.S. and NATO forces throughout the country, taking advantage of the mountainous and largely uncontrolled area on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border for sanctuary.

In the three-month period from August to October, 102 U.S. and coalition forces died in Afghanistan, the highest number for any equivalent period since the conflict began in late 2001. The total number of U.S. and coalition forces killed in Afghanistan is now approaching 1,000.

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At the same time, tensions between the United States and Pakistan have increased over U.S. pursuit of Taliban fighters on the Pakistan side of the border.

The new Pakistani government recently said that it would itself attack U.S. forces if they came across the border in pursuit of Al Qaeda or Taliban fighters. The warning came in the wake of a U.S. missile attack just inside Pakistan that killed 17 civilians as well as insurgents. Washington dispatched a senior military officer to Pakistan to try to resolve the tensions and work out a way to cooperate in the fight against this common threat.

During the campaign, President-elect Barack Obama said that he wants to increase the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, where he says the American war effort has suffered from the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq. Obama believes that this area is the front line in the war against terrorism, and that the war in Iraq diverted resources from this area, making it harder to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, and to prevent future attacks.

"We're going to need more troops in Afghanistan, but we're also going to need more effective [international] cooperation," Obama says. "If we can get more support ... those are fewer troops that we have to send."

It's been seven years since a U.S.-led coalition toppled the Taliban, the radical Muslim regime that controlled Afghanistan. The Taliban had given sanctuary to AI Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and its refusal to hand him over after 9/11 prompted Washington and its allies to invade in November 2001. Within a month, the Taliban was defeated, and U.S. troops have remained to help stabilize the country. There are now 18,000 U.S. troops and 13,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Led by the country's first democratically elected President, Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan has seen significant improvements in health care, education, the economy, and the quality of life in the cities. It has also adopted a new constitution and elected a parliament. But the most dramatic changes have been for Afghanistan's women, who were severely repressed under the Taliban, including a ban on going to school.

Some experts say that if the United States had sent more troops to Afghanistan early on, the insurgency would have been halted and bin Laden captured. Now the situation is less clear. Taliban forces continue to occupy a large portion of more remote parts of the country, and some NATO countries have restricted the deployment of their forces to more secure areas. It's clearly a major challenge for the new administration in Washington.

[3] ENERGY

Higher oil prices demonstrate the danger of continued American dependence on unreliable sources of foreign oil.

The United States is the world's largest economy and the world's largest consumer of energy. For most of the 20th century, the fact that the U.S. was also a major producer of energy--coal, oil, and natural gas--insulated Americans from concerns about being dependent upon foreign sources of energy.

This began to change about 35 years ago, as American demand for energy--oil, in particular--outpaced growth in U.S. domestic oil production. At the same time, oil-exporting countries banded together to boost prices and to use oil exports as an economic and political tool to exert pressure on countries to change policies that...