Bush Faces a Challenging Year: The Turn From War to Peace :Robin Wright

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46213-2003Dec31.html



Bush Faces a Challenging Year: The Turn From War to Peace


By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 1, 2004; Page A18


George W. Bush faces the most daunting diplomatic challenges of his presidency in 2004, a year when his administration will be out to prove that his daring and controversial foreign policy was able to achieve its goals. After three years of waging war, much of this year will be spent in a frantic search for peace.

The difficulty of Bush's election-year agenda is reflected in its breadth: Re-creating an entire nation in Iraq, transforming beleaguered Afghanistan, defusing the nuclear crisis with North Korea, pursuing the elusive Middle East peace and ending the world's longest civil war in Sudan while helping to rebuild war-torn Liberia.


The success or failure of Bush's diplomacy in 2004 will shape the world well beyond America's borders and will heavily influence global events for the next decade, U.S. foreign policy experts say.

"Not since the height of the Cold War has an American president faced so many foreign policy challenges -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Pakistan, the Arab-Israeli conflict and Iran. Simply managing these problems is going to test the capability of the Bush administration," said Walter Russell Mead, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow.


How the United States fares abroad may also be the biggest single factor in determining whether Bush wins a second term, according to some analysts.