Al Jazeera America NewsDaily

US faces new and old foreign policy challenges in the year ahead

Relations with Cuba among issues likely to form large part of Obama’s policy agenda in the coming year

January 5, 2015 10:18AM ET

by Ashe Reardon

As 2015 gets underway, the United States has a wide range of foreign policy issues on the horizon.

During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Thomas Drayton spoke with a panel of experts to assess foreign policy challenges for 2015. He was joined by Andrew Bartoli, a dean at Seton Hall University; Ali Wyne, a contributing analyst for Wikistrat; and Kenneth Katzman, a specialist in Middle East affairs.

In 2014, NATO ended its mission in Afghanistan just as the U.S. took up the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The rise of ISIL, a product of a shifting insurgency in Iraq and Syria, poses a particular difficulty, members of the panel said.

Katzman said the U.S. has a very clear focus on what to do regarding ISIL in Iraq. “On Syria, however, it’s a very mixed, muddy, complicated situation. The U.S. doesn’t really have anyone on the ground it’s supporting right now,” he said. “There is no real organized ground effort in Syria.”

Regarding Iran, Katzman said there are signs the U.S. and Tehran are working toward more cooperation. “The U.S. and Iran see the Middle East region less differently than they used to,” he said. He cited among the points of commonality the fight against ISIL in Iraq. On Syria, however, they are opposed. Iran wants to see Assad continue in power, while the U.S. wants him out.

Russia is likely to be another pivot point this year, as the U.S. tries to counter President Vladimir Putin’s moves in Ukraine. After Putin’s push to annex Crimea, the U.S. targeted top Russian officials and imposed harsh sanctions. Wyne said the sanctions are taking a toll, pointing to the decline in the Russian currency and the exit of foreign investment. “Putin is going to be interesting this year,” Bartoli said. “I don’t think he will be more aggressive this year. To the contrary.”

Relations with China will also take up a large part of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy agenda. In 2014, China knocked the U.S. off the top spot to become the world’s largest economy, according to the International Monetary Fund. “That is where the future is going to be,” Bartoli said. “I think President Obama would be well-pressed in reinforcing the personal relationship” with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he said. “The key to the Chinese-U.S. relationship must take into account the fundamental leadership structure that is going to be the way ahead.”

The coming year is shaping up to be a key one in relations with Cuba. Last month Obama announced plans to normalize relations with the island nation after more than 50 years. The move followed months of secret negotiations. Much of the international community welcomed the news of the thaw.

Bartoli said the Cuba development will have an impact on both domestic and foreign policy. “It really repositioned the president in relation to Congress … in relation to the electorate,” he said. “It is very clearly a political move.”

Wyne said Obama’s Cuba move would reverberate beyond the Americas and into Asia. The “overture to Cuba is part of a policy of integration and openness with Latin America that poses a welcome counterbalance to Chinese influence in the region,” he said.