Perspectives and opportunities of the Obama government's security and counterterrorism policy - Chances and ways to more success

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: USA, grade: 1,3, University of Würzburg (Institut für Politikwissenschaft und Sozialforschung), course: Die US-Präsidentschaftswahlen und ihre Auswirkungen auf die Internationale Politik, language: English, abstract: On the 20th of January 2009 Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States of America. This seminar paper deals about the perspectives and opportunities the new president and his government have in security and counterterrorism policy. In the past years these two fields of policy have had a dominant role in the whole US policy. One can expect despite the difficult situation of US economy this status will remain. In consequence the paper's aim is to find out how the Obama government may be able to run a more successful security and counterterrorism policy than the Bush government. For this case an evaluation of the former administrations policy is necessary here. The evaluation will point out the failures of the Bush government and offer the tasks for the future policy guidelines. It will be Barack Obama´s challenge to correct the mistakes of his precursor. In addition to this he has to face the global threats with his own security and counterterrorism policy. Of course Obama knows about his future work in these cases. In his campaign program he offered different statements and solutions for security and counterterrorism policy tasks. An introduction and analysis of the program will provide the informative basis for naming the perspectives and opportunities. The analysis will be completed by an estimate for the policy options and own suggestions on facing the two policy areas. Of course the national and the global economy will have a high priority for Barack Obama. But not only by the cases Afghanistan and Iraq security and counterterrorism policy will be a high-class topic for the new administration. The international community has high expectations on Barack Obama´s policy. George W. Bush has left his successor a mostly negative reputation in the world. The double challenge on Barack Obama will be to rebuild the global reputation of USA by concurrently making security policy and fighting terrorism. The question is if Obama will be able to handle the balancing act of rebuilding the reputation and fighting terrorism. Obama has to find a coherent policy, which brings all the mentioned topics together. In chapter 3 the paper will name and evaluate ways to realize the balancing act into concrete policy. The next years will be asking for many important decisions. Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Israel/Palestine and a lot more crisis issues call for answers by US security and counterterrorism policy.