The election of Barack Obama this month was a historic moment not just for the United States but for much of the world, as well. Polls taken in other countries prior to the election showed that Obama was an overwhelming favorite for much of the world's population. After eight years of the George Bush's presidency, there is a strong national and international consensus for a change in U.S. foreign policy. In many ways, Obama will be able to deliver on this promise. But as the president-elect himself has emphasized, the expectations for radical change must be realistic. They will be tempered by the nature of the presidency and by Obama's own policy positions.

After Democrats won majorities in the Senate and the House of Representatives in 2006, there was a great hope among many party members that the foreign policy shortfalls of the Bush administration could be quickly fixed or reversed. These hopes went largely unfulfilled—the United States did not withdraw from Iraq, the situation in Afghanistan continued to deteriorate, and little progress was made to adopt a global policy to address climate change. Part of this disappointment was preordained. Many Democratic congressional candidates took advantage of the unpopularity of the Iraq war by vociferously opposing it. Once elected, however, all that a single congressman could do was cast a lone vote or lend his individual voice in support of the various bills that would have cut funding for the occupation. These individual legislators were single pieces of a much larger deliberative body, and even when operating collectively as a legislative majority, they only possessed a crude and indirect means to affect foreign policy. Of course, campaigning on such a message would not have served their purposes, and in many other respects, the Democratic Congress has made its influence felt. But it has not shifted the course of U.S. foreign policy in the manner that many had expected or hoped

Although Congress' role in foreign policy is important, it is not nearly as indispensable as the president's. Even before the Democratic victories in 2006, it was clear that major foreign policy changes could only be implemented with a change in presidential administration (for more, see Capitol Watch, August 2006. President Obama will find many opportunities to immediately and directly change U.S. foreign policy. At the most immediate level, he can appoint the diplomatic corps of his choosing, from Secretary of State, to Undersecretaries, to ambassadors. The change of administration will also attract thousands of experts and analysts who are ideologically aligned with Obama but who had spurned government service during the Bush years. Through this network of new appointments and through his own offices, Obama can set the tone for U.S. diplomacy. If he wants to engage Iran in a more direct form of negotiation over its nuclear program, he can do so, with little interference.

It is in the realm of national security policy that Obama may be able to best deliver on some of his more popular campaign promises. One of Obama's greatest attributes during the campaign was his record of early opposition to the invasion of Iraq and his proposal to withdraw most U.S. combat troops from that country within 16 months. As the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, President Obama will be able to accomplish this simply by ordering it. Likewise, he can order additional troops to deploy to Afghanistan, as he has promised, and direct the immediate closure of the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay.

In issuing such orders, he will also likely face major constraints, many of which will be beyond his control. The U.S. military is greatly over-stretched. Managing a simultaneous withdrawal of forces from Iraq and a build-up of forces in Afghanistan may not be feasible logistically in the timeframe that Obama desires. Foreign allies may be reticent to support some of Obama's policies; despite his international popularity, Obama is still an American president, and the United States will always have interests that differ from much of the rest of the world. And as much as he may wish to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities, he will still face a vexing question: what to do with the detainees? (for more, see Capitol Watch, June 2006)

Obama will also face constraints of perception. These will not necessarily limit his freedom of action, but they may lead many of his supporters to be disappointed in his emerging presidency. It is true that Obama's early opposition to the Iraq invasion distinguished him during the election, even among his opponents in the Democratic primary. But despite attempts by supporters and opponents alike to use this opposition to define him as a left-wing partisan, Obama has never been particularly ideological in his policy positions. He has consistently emphasized his preference for pragmatism over ideology, especially in terms of foreign policy (for more, see Election Watch, August 2007. He supports a withdrawal from Iraq, but he also wants to expand the size of the military and deploy more troops to Afghanistan. He is strongly opposed to the prison at Guantanamo Bay, but he voted in favor of the controversial FISA bill this summer that granted retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies. Voters expecting a radical, liberal change in U.S. foreign policy will find themselves disappointed, but part of the fault will lie with them. Obama may not always be the president these voters expected to receive, but he will likely be the one that he campaigned to be.

Regardless of his own positions, there will be many policies that Obama will not be able to change on his own. Many of his high-level appointments will require Senate confirmation, and anything that requires money (which is essentially everything) will require the consent of Congress, at the very least. Legislators will certainly have a role to play. But as we have seen over the past two years, the legislature is clearly the inferior branch of government in terms of foreign policy. This is, of course, by design. No single branch has exclusive control of any policy domain. Near the end of the presidential campaign, as Obama's victory became more certain, many Republicans began campaigning on the virtue of divided government, in which different parties would control the different branches of government. Essentially, they argued that an Obama presidency must be balanced by a Republican Congress, or at least by a barely-Democratic one. In this manner, the inherent, institutional constraints on the federal government would be amplified by partisan divisiveness. Divided government has a long history in the United States, but this year, it was overwhelmed by the wave of support for Obama and popular opposition to the Bush administration.

The single party control of the presidency and Congress created by this election will be particularly robust. In the Senate, Democrats will be very close to the all-important 60 vote threshold, which is the tally needed in order to end debate and scuttle opposition filibusters. In a sense, the situation is the nearest the United States could ever come to a parliamentary system, in which the executive, by definition, is determined by the majority party in the legislature. Single party control, of course, is not enough, and the interests of the president and of 535 individual legislators will never be in perfect alignment. The president and Congress each has their own institutional prerogatives to protect, and these prerogatives exist independent of political party. Presidents Carter, Clinton, and Bush each presided over congressional majorities of their own party, and each found legislators to be frustratingly independent on many occasions, if not consistently. For President Obama, much will depend on his artfulness in dealing with Congress, and on the congressional leadership's willingness to collaborate on the president's agenda.

What may really determine the effectiveness of President Obama on the global stage, even more than single-party control of Congress, is timing. There is a general consensus among most policymakers and politicians that the United States is facing its most severe economic crisis in decades and that any solution will need to be global in nature. Although the situation in Iraq has improved recently, over 100,000 U.S. troops remain in that country; their future, and the timing and nature of their eventual withdrawal, will need to be managed carefully. The deteriorating situation in Afghanistan demands a new U.S. strategy. An increasingly assertive Russia will become even less inclined to consent to U.S. interests; the growing influence of China will need to be managed artfully.

Essentially, the problems that will face President Obama on January 20 will be so profound that the pressure to act boldly to solve them may outweigh the inherent constraints that typically prevent significant policy change. That Obama himself has already become a historic figure will only add to the sense of urgency once he takes office—it will take fairly strong policy convictions for a legislator to stand in the way of history. In short, the question of how effective Obama can be in the realm of foreign policy will pit the urgency of the moment and the unique nature of this president, on one hand, against the entrenched institutional prerogatives and an inherent tendency for inaction, on the other. We will know the answer soon enough.

Daniel Widome is a San Francisco-based writer and foreign policy analyst. He can be reached at daniel.widome@gmail.com