Frances G. Burwell
Vice President and Director of Transatlantic Programs and Studies
Young Atlanticist Program, Atlantic Council of the United States
Economics will be driving topic of Obama’s policy during next year.
Ms. Burwell, what is the primary threat that the new president of the United States Barack Obama is going to deal with?
The primary threat that any new president will have to deal with - particularly given, that it was the economic crisis that was largely bringing voters around to his side at the end. It will definitely be economy. I think Americans, just like the Europeans, will be focused on the difficulties of their daily lives, their mortgages, their health care costs, their jobs. So for any new president, he is going to have a year and a half before we get set for the midterm election in which he is going to have to make a case that his government is going to do something about the economic crisis in which we are right now.
Obama’s election creates extensive space for revitalizing transatlantic relations.
In what way do you think Barack Obama will bring change to U.S.-world relations and especially to U.S.-EU relations?
First of - I have been enormously impressed with the optimism here in Europe about Obama election. And I think that it gives us a big opening to rejuvenating transatlantic relations. But as I already said, his initial focus is undoubtly going to be economy. The first meeting is going to be economic summit - not the one we are going to have this weekend but the one that is supposed to be in late January. He will be inaugurated late January, so it will come almost immediately. I think that he will also have to deal with Afghanistan. He has made a big deal about Afghanistan throughout his campaign. This is a difficult issue for some European countries. I would expect that although there is good feeling about this (in America as well) and although there is a desire to work with our long standing partners in addressing some of the global issues, we need to also understand across the Atlantic that for the USA Afghanistan has become very important issue. We are now seeing more pessimism about the war in Afghanistan. There will be an effort in the next half year or a year to reverse what is seen as the beginning of military difficulties and we will work both to increase our own contribution there and also looking to our allies to contribute more militarily and on the civilian side.
Afghanistan will remain key issue for international focus but we will see more effort also on Africa and China as well.
Can we expect profound change in American relations with African and Asian countries and if yes, in which ways?
I think there will be more attention to Africa than has been the case in past US administrations. I say this not only because Barrack Obama himself had a Kenyan father. One of the places that seems to be even more delighted with this election than Europe was Kenya; if you watched the news reports. Also because of the number of his advisors such as Susan Rice - she was a former assistant Secretary of State for the African affairs and was quite outspoken about the Darfur issue. We will see more effort put on addressing some of the issues of conflict that are difficult on that continent. I would also say that any president, no matter what else is going on, will have a hard time on that level dealing with more than a few foreign policy issues that require presidential level attention. I think that Afghanistan will be the major international focus for a while along with the international economy. As there is more time we will see more emphasis on Africa and China as well.
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