History beckons Barack Obama. He has a clear four years to leave his imprint on a world that may seem too fractured for one nation to dominate like before and yet desperately needs a leader who can show the way forward in increasingly complex times.
If he decides to get more insular and abandons America’s watchdog role because of bitter past experiences, he might end up the lesser for it.
The compulsions to focus on the domestic scene and first tackle the difficult economic issues, beginning with the yawning fiscal deficit, may point overwhelmingly to a less ambitious global role for a superpower. The withdrawal from Iraq and a similar plan for Afghanistan are already indicators of where American foreign policy dictates may be driving its President.
Obama may not have delivered too much of the transformative change package he had promised at his first inaugural four years ago. A bruising contest for the White House and the changing demographics of a pluralistic society at home, where he got re-elected on the strength of a rainbow coalition of people of diverse ethnicity, may have sobered him to the reality of throwing his strengths into finding a better life for his fellow Americans.
It is already being hinted that Obama would play a more subtle global role with the US tending to look more towards China and the Pacific than the awkward arc from Pakistan and Afghanistan through West Asia to North Africa. America’s first black President stands at the crossroads; whichever direction he chooses will be fraught with interest.