The ascension.

• Author: Burns, R. Nicholas
• Position: On Barack Obama

When Barack Obama steps into the Oval Office for the first time as president, he will be in the unique position of having earned the support not just of Americans who chose him in a historic and dramatic election but of millions around the world who would have voted for him if they could have. It has been widely observed that on November 4 the United States held the first-ever world election and Obama was the clear winner.

No other American president in memory will have started in office with such broad public support overseas. His international star power will help to recover some of America's credibility and trust lost during the past decade due to Iraq, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. And, it will allow Obama and his team to more easily negotiate the treacherous foreign-policy waters ahead in their first months in office.

Obama will surely need that capital. Obama mania is so fervent in many parts of the world that expectations for what he might do to transform America's international standing are absurdly high and, in some countries, wildly distorted. German Social Democrats will undoubtedly be disappointed that Obama does not recreate in the United States their version of the welfare state. Arabs and Pakistanis will find that an Obama administration continues to exercise power diplomacy in their regions. Hugo Chavez will undoubtedly discover that a summit in Caracas is not the first step Obama will take in our own hemisphere.

His beginning in office will be unique in another regard. He faces the most difficult and daunting set of domestic- and foreign-policy challenges since at least Franklin D. Roosevelt's own inauguration in 1933. When the postmortems are written on his presidency four to eight years from now, will he have succeeded in constructing, as Woodrow Wilson and FDR before him, a new U.S.-led global order to meet the complex challenges of our time? Or, will America retrace the fate of the British Empire of a century ago and begin a long, gradual slide from world power? Obama faces no less of a test than this: Can America once again reinvent both its future and the international system and thus change history itself?

It will be on Obama's watch that the United States will respond to perhaps the most vital challenge we face how to guide the American people toward a new type of international leadership in a changing, globalized world. With the cold war long past and America's unipolar moment over, Obama's high-wire balancing act will be to both repair the cracks in America's dominant global position and reach out to others--at home and abroad--bringing them into a more cooperative, collegial and collaborative virtual governing board of the world. Obama's America will need to lead as the strongest global player but do so more consciously with others, especially rising powers China, India and Brazil.

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Becoming a more effective global leader requires the Obama team to meet two rather straightforward tests. First, whether President Obama's rhetoric conveys a convincing sense that the U.S. global agenda will benefit people around the world on the issues they care about most. When American rhetoric is heard overseas as "it's my way or the highway," and "you're either with us or against us," it is not a winning message.

If, instead, Obama continues his more inclusive campaign language of using the global "we"--of what the people of the world can accomplish together--he will be much more likely to earn the kind of international support that any great power requires to be successful in its international strategy.

A second test will be whether Obama can convey a sense of confidence and optimism to Americans and the rest of the world that the awesome global challenges we face--such as climate change and terrorism-can be overcome by a united international effort. In short, can he inspire hope around the world in American leadership and not fear?

Despite the conventional gloom and doom about America's current standing in the world, Obama will actually begin his presidency with some rather significant advantages. As he sits down with Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Bob Gates and Jim Jones to assess the basic health of U.S. foreign policy, they will undoubtedly note the strengths of America's international position, and not just the weaknesses.

To start with, the United States is still the single, strongest global power. It will remain so for decades to come. Consider American power by any metric.

Militarily, Commander in Chief Obama can count on the continued supremacy of U.S. forces worldwide. During his time in office, we will still spend more on our national defense than the next ten countries combined. We will still be the only country capable of projecting force on a global basis and sustaining troops in faraway theaters for years at a time. We will remain the only country that leads powerful multinational military alliances in both Europe and Asia--a crucial underpinning of America's global power. And, we will retain the remarkable capacity of our armed forces that have demonstrated their quality and competence in the interventions of the last fifteen years in Bosnia and Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Politically, the United States shall remain, as Madeleine Albright said during her tenure as secretary of state, the world's "indispensable country." While anti-Americanism is pervasive in many parts of the globe, foreign governments still count on us to lead on the toughest problems.

In the Middle East, Palestinians and Israelis still see Washington as the crucial intermediary for peace. In South Asia, we hold, for better or worse, the key to the future of Afghanistan. In Africa, the United States is well respected and many governments desire more American involvement on their continent, not less. In Europe, the United States is still considered by most as the one continental power critical to preserving and safeguarding the peace--a role that has taken on renewed importance with the resurgence of an aggressive Russia. In Asia, we find ourselves called upon to referee tensions between China and Taiwan, and to lead the multinational effort to deal with rogue regimes such as Burma. In our own hemisphere, we are the hub of an axis of market...