Ironically, important 2008 campaign issues such as Iraq and Afghanistan have faded from political prominence recently. But a new issue has arisen, one where the Bush Administration made its share of mistakes, when it was paying attention at all, and that is Pakistan. The risk of Pakistani instability or, worse, a Taliban takeover, alone or in coalition with other extremists, is far graver than the Taliban returning to power in Afghanistan. No one wants al-Qaeda or other terrorists once again to have safe haven in inaccessible places, but Pakistan in their hands constitutes a nuclear threat. Continued instability could result in the military losing control over several nuclear weapons, thus immediately posing a worldwide terrorist threat. Far worse would be a complete takeover of Pakistan's government by radicals, with its entire nuclear arsenal (estimated in open sources at between 60 and 200 nuclear weapons) at their disposal.

Here, Obama has, to his credit, made Pakistan a far higher US priority, bolstered American assistance to its government, and assigned a Special Envoy on "Af-Pak" issues to highlight their prominence. Here, being the "un-Bush" is a plus, but how long the current Obama approach will continue remains to be seen. As noted above, many Democrats are quite unhappy with his Afghan policy, and the same applies to a tough approach in Pakistan. This is a major question, since of all the "front burner" issues now confronting Obama, Pakistan and its nuclear weapons may turn out to be his greatest and most important test.

Surveying these urgent issues facing the new Administration should not lead inexorably to the conclusion they are the most important. Russia and China, for example, have figured only peripherally in the foregoing discussion, and America's neighbourhood, the Western Hemisphere, not at all. On arms control, Russian and Chinese efforts to expand or consolidate their regional dominance, and China's global stature because of its increasing economic heft, much remains to be seen. Venezuela's Hugo Chávez has upstaged and outmanoeuvred Obama, both on the critical battlefield of photo opportunities in international gatherings, and also on issues like Cuba's place in the hemisphere, where Obama has seemed indifferent, ineffective or both. 

For those concerned with Russian belligerence, as in Georgia, Obama's "above the world" response (in August 2008, calling on both sides of the conflict to exercise "restraint") cannot be comforting. Europe should take note, as Japan has increasingly done, of Obama's lassitude when faced with such affronts as China's call to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency, an idea Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner said casually was worth looking at, until he was, in horror, reeled in by his own bureaucrats shortly thereafter. Of course, when you are Obama, and not Bush, there will be world enough, and time, to deal with these issues in due course, especially if you have endless confidence in your own persuasive powers, a trait shared by Woodrow Wilson, Neville Chamberlain and other "above the world" leaders.

Finally, this essay has only lightly touched on the UN and its role in the Obama pantheon, and with good reason. The UN has played an insignificant role to date in Obama's  foreign policy, even though it is right up there "above the world" with Obama himself. In part, this is because the UN is performing on par, which is to say, not well or effectively. On North Korea, the Security Council manifestly failed, several times, to do what Obama wanted, which at least should have a profoundly disillusioning effect. Equally disillusioning should be Obama's aborted effort to fix the Durban II "anti-racism" conference in Geneva, which turned into just the hateful anti-Israel, and implicitly anti-American, debacle that many had predicted.