EDITOR’S NOTE
This month's issue of Current History considers potential new directions in American foreign policy after George W. Bush leaves office. The contributing authors are not members of the US foreign policy community. Nor do they presume to predict what the next administration's policies will be. Instead, writing from the perspectives of the world's various regions, they assess policy challenges that will confront the next US president no matter who it is.
A few common themes emerge. One is the need to clean up, or at least manage, an assortment of messes the Bush administration will leave behind, prominently in the Middle East, but also elsewhere. Another is the need to revisit abiding problems that will remain unresolved come January 2009. Above all, the essays argue for a clean break with Washington's adverse posture in the world. The international community, it would seem, yearns for the United States to try fresh strategies and test previously ignored possibilities, especially in the diplomatic realm.
Will the coming impulse to put behind all things Bush produce more follies of a different kind? One author worries about an idea embraced by Republican candidate John McCain: a league of democracies that would, among other things, eject Russia from Western clubs. A more urgent concern may be that, in reaction to Bush's bungling of democracy promotion, trade liberalization, collective security, and oversight of financial markets, the next administration will fail to make the case assertively enough that, in a globalized world, America's success depends on the success of others.