Campaign promises difficult to fulfil

IT WAS an auspicious start to President Barack Obama’s new world order. By his second week in office he’d directed military leaders to end the war in Iraq, ordered the closing of Guantanamo Bay and witnessed Iraqi prime minister Nouri Maliki’s resounding victory that made it look like a 16-month exit plan is in the offing.

The administration then rolled out the big guns and dispatched Vice-President Joe Biden to the 45th Munich security conference this weekend where he exploited an opportunity to unveil a new foreign policy vision. In his keynote address, he announced business is no longer as usual in Obama’s multilateral world of diplomacy and co-operation.

While Biden tried to thaw frosty relations with Russia and Afghanistan, it became apparent that the new administration isn’t fighting a two-front war; it’s facing a multi-front quagmire. The impending crisis that Biden warned would test Obama’s mettle had arrived in the form of whole host of interdependent international problems that prove campaign promises are easily made but much harder to keep.