Farewell Dubya. Now to undo the damage done ...

Farewell President Bush. Goodbye "Axis of Evil". From Tehran to Toledo, the people of the world are yearning for the end of eight years of a Bush administration that sacrificed America’s reputation on the altar of the "war on terror".

International polls have consistently shown that if the rest of the world had a vote, there was no question of anything but a landslide for Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate. The world expects change – change it can believe in. But leading analysts say that now elected as president, Mr Obama will inevitably lower expectations in terms of the huge hopes raised globally by yesterday’s historic election.

A poll carried out in 21 countries last week gauged international opinion and concluded that more than |80 per cent believe the US is most to blame for the current economic crisis. Positive perception and trust of the superpower in the twilight of the Bush presidency were also very low, among the majority of the 10,392 people surveyed in the independent poll commissioned by Porter Novelli. As the 44th president moves to restore America’s bruised and battered reputation, the mooted closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba looms large. Mr Obama has pledged to close the camp. Guantanamo, like the Iraqi prisoner humiliation at Abu Ghraib, became a potent symbol of the abuse of international law by the Bush administration. But, according to a US official quoted in The Washington Post, “the new president will gnash his teeth and beat his head against the wall when he realises how complicated it is to close Guantanamo”.

Related articles

• What the world wants from its president
• Now the real test begins for Obama
• Obama must hit the ground running
• Why Kenya's pride in Obama victory is tempered
• Hamish McRae: The new President has a huge challenge ahead of him
• The upstart with a dream
• Leading article: The pendulum has swung - and America has changed
• Rupert Cornwell: How Bush's toxic legacy did for his party
• Richard Schiff: I've waited my whole life for change
• Tom Sutcliffe: They all called it: this was definitely historic
• States that delivered for Obama
• The world stops to watch as drama unfolds in America
• The campaign in cartoons
• Mark Steel: It's not about great men, but those who put them there
• Elections that changed America
• US election diary: No room on the electoral roll for Robbins
• Madelyn Dunham: Grandmother of Barack Obama
• Search the news archive for more stories

Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the British legal-action charity Reprieve, points out that among the hurdles in closing a facility that holds 250 alleged terrorists is the fact that, “Eighty to 100 are refugees and would risk being tortured if returned home”. Although Senator Obama has said he would bring the prisoners to America for trial, the evidence would need to be sifted, which would bring torture allegations into sharp focus through the courts.

Mr Stafford Smith added that the real problem was that of the 27,000 “ghost prisoners” – held by the US in countries ranging from Iraq to |Djibouti. “There are less than 1 per cent of these in Guantanamo ? So there’s been a diversionary strategy in the war on terror. Not one of the 27,000 has ever seen a lawyer,” he said. The risk for the next president, because of the perception in America that the majority of alleged terrorists are guilty, would be to appear to be soft on terror. A major attack by the al-Qa’ida network could test his mettle early on, as the vice president-elect, Joseph Biden unwisely warned publicly during the campaign.

Although it is generally expected that Mr Obama will take a more multilateral approach than his predecessor, who had no time for the United Nations, the change could be “not as much as people think”, said Constanze Stelzenmüller, the director of the German Marshall Fund’s Berlin office. She noted that both Mr Obama and his Republican rival, Senator John McCain, “are quite close to each other.” From a European perspective, she said, Mr Obama’s statements on working to ending torture and co-operating with Europe on such pressing issues as climate change will be welcomed. But, “as president, the winner will have to think about US national interests. If they have to, they will – including on climate change”. The European Union – under its French presidency – drew up a letter this week for the next president, focusing on the need for multilateral solutions to the world’s problems after the go-it-alone Bush years.

On Iraq and Afghanistan, it will be difficult to spot the difference between the new administration and Bush’s policy in dealing with the twin challenges of ending two wars and reconstructing smashed societies. The same goes for the internationally endorsed goal of a viable two-state solution for Palestinians and Israelis.

Experts said Mr Obama would risk disappointing American public opinion if, for example, he failed to persuade Europe to play a greater military role in Afghanistan. “Mr Obama has said he will deliver the Europeans but might find it harder to do,” said Dana Allin, a transatlantic affairs specialist with the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. Mr Obama faced his first rebuff during his triumphant foreign tour last summer, when the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, pushed back suggestions that Germany should step up its participation in Afghanistan.

His most difficult piece of unfinished business will be how to deal with Iran’s nuclear programme, at a time when its government is continuing to defy the UN by refusing to halt its uranium enrichment programme. The European-led strategy in dealing with Iran’s defiance through the UN Security Council has been on hold pending the outcome of the election. Nowhere has the US response been more fiercely debated than in Israel – currently the sole Middle East nuclear power – which has threatened military strikes against Iranian targets. Dennis Ross, a former Clinton and Bush envoy to the Middle East who now advises Mr Obama, gave the Israeli public a reality check, however. Asked whether Mr Obama would open a direct channel with the firebrand Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who faces an election next June, he responded: “You don’t talk to Ahmadinejad.”

“First of all, he’s not the decision maker,” Mr Ross said in an interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz. “When Senator Obama suggests that he would be prepared to meet with him ... what he means is that you have to co-ordinate with your allies – all your allies. Second, it means you have to check whether you can put together an agenda for a lower-level meeting.

“If it becomes clear that you can’t put together such an agenda, then you don’t hold a meeting at a high level – the presidential level – because it’s not going to lead anywhere. But if you can produce something that you know will lead somewhere, then it’s silly not to do that.”

Relations with Russia and China will also come to the fore after the election, with both nations hoping that the new administration will turn the page on the harsh rhetoric that emanated from US officials over Russia’s summer invasion of Georgia and the Chinese crackdown in Tibet. Mr Obama identified nuclear security as a priority. The outgoing US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates – who may be kept on by the new president if rumours are correct – said last week that he would advise the next US leader to seek a new strategic arms agreement with Russia.

Rose Gottemoeller, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre for International Peace, said the extension of the 1991 Start-I treaty and the thorny issue of Nato enlargement will be an early challenge, because they will have to be addressed next month during the transition period, according to a pre-determined calendar. There could be an opportunity for |47-year-old Obama to forge a personal relationship with the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who is only four years his junior. “They are both post-Cold War and post-baby boom. Both have the potential to break the mould,” Ms Gottemoeller said.

As for the relationship with China, a senior Chinese diplomat said that whatever the outcome of yesterday’s vote, “there is a clear understanding that we have to work together”. America is one of China’s most important relationships.

Time will tell whether America will become more inward-looking and protectionist under the pressure of the worst financial crunch since the Great Depression, which could eclipse foreign policy for a time.

Ms Stelzenmüller, of the German Marshall Fund, said that Europe should be concerned about this. “They will have a protectionist majority in Congress and the Senate,” she warned. Although, she added: “Crises tend to focus people’s minds ? they realise that if we don’t hang together, we’ll hang separately.”

Mr Obama repeated in the last days of the campaign that his presidency would not only change the country, but also the world. But from the global perspective, the big question is whether the world will change President Obama.