Next US president will have 'a lot' to deal with

The Peninsula, Nation, October 25, 2007

DOHA • The next president of the US, whether Republican or Democrat, a he or a she, will have plenty to deal with after George W Bush makes way for his successor.

At a seminar entitled America and the Middle East After the Bush Presidency: The View from the Outside' organised by the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar's Centre for International and Regional Studies, several speakers said that once Bush steps down, his successor will have a full plate to deal with.

While foreign policy will be an issue needing to be addressed, domestic matters may even be more pressing. Casimir A Yost, director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University in the US, said: "The new president will have to address the downside of globalisation, accommodating the emerging powers and meeting the needs of fragile nations."

Yost said of the downsides of globalisation: "Terrorists and bankers are in power by globalisation. Without the Internet, Bin Laden would be just a thug in a cave in Waziristan. The downside would also include rising income disparities, which can be seen in the difference between the urban areas and interiors of China."

There has been escalating protectionism in the US due to globalisation. "When a call centre worker in India gets a job, someone in the US loses one. This has led to protectionism, mostly by the Democratic Party."

Countries like Pakistan, Myanmar and Zimbabwe would fall into the category of fragile states. "States can be made fragile by HIV/Aids, corruption, bad government and ethnic and religious divisions. The next president will have to develop a sustainable policy for fragile states. The US should think globally. If it is consumed by affairs in the Middle East, US global interests will suffer."

In the end, it is the president who calls the shots, said Chester A Crocker, James R Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies at Georgetown. "If we have a strong vice-president in the system, it is what the president chose to have or allowed to happen. What happens in the Departments of Defence, Treasury, State and the CIA has a lot to do with what the president chooses to happen."

Stating Bush has pursued what Crocker called a "daredevil foreign policy," he added: "The US is not capable of running the world. But it used to be a nation of institution and alliance builders."