Obama UNGA

President Barack Obama in his election campaign promised a new course of US foreign policy. He promised to withdraw American soldiers from Iraq and pointed out Afghanistan as the main field to fight against Al-Qaida and Taliban type of Islamist terrorism. He argued that the diversion of US attention toward Iraq gave the Al Qaida and Taliban insurgents an opportunity to reorganize and fight against the joint forces of US led NATO and Afghan soldiers. The situation in Afghanistan has turned critical.

Besides Afghanistan, President Obama’s efforts to jumpstart the stalled peace talks in the Middle East has not shown any success yet. America’s European allies are not showing any interest to send additional soldiers to Afghanistan. Iran and North Korea’s nuclear and missile issues are still unresolved. In addition to all these, the issue of Climate Change stands one of the foreign policy priorities of President Obama.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Though America’s image in outer world has improved, yet nine months of Obama administration got limited substantial success in foreign policy. Many more important international issues are still unresolved. This is the subject of discussion in the Hello Washington program of this week. Our listeners have asked questions on these issues and the panel of distinguished guests answered the questions. The guests included Dr. Ali Riaz, Professor and Chair, Dept. of Politics and Government, Illinois State University and Dr, Anindya Majumder, Prof. Dept. of International Relations, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India.