By John J. Metzler
UNITED NATIONS ― As we enter the new year, it's time to predict, hypothesize, and simply guess what 2008 may hold in store for our troubled world on the foreign policy front. Whoever wins the marathon U.S. presidential election race in November stands to inherit real-world policy challenges.
First there is some good news, or at least less bad news in Iraq and the Middle East. After a terrible and violent start in 2007, the American military troop surge seems to have turned the corner and tipped the balance away from the terrorists.
While the conflict is far from won, the surge appears to have disrupted the momentum of the militants and significantly sapped their political propaganda gains. The lull in violence has given Iraqis an opportunity for a hard won peace.
Despite cheap grandstanding and the drumbeat of doom by the Democratic-led Congress, the Bush Administration seems to have ridden the wave of reversals.
Still it's up to the freely elected Baghdad government to get its political act together, promote reconciliation, and stop relying on Allied coalition troops. Any precipitous American pullout will embolden the radicals and ensure wider Mideast instability.
Pakistan enters a particularly dangerous period as Islamic jihadi forces try to derail or decapitate the democratic electoral process; the terrorist assassination of Benazir Bhutto threatens to put the country on the road to chaos.
Afghanistan sadly has seen a spike in Islamic Taliban insurgency and tiny Lebanon is again the crosshairs of Syrian ambitions. As for U.S. national intelligence estimates that the Islamic Republic of Iran has put its nuclear weapons development on hold, may I ask, ``Would you really trust Teheran's Atomic Ayatollahs?''
There is a massive political sea change in South Korea.
Conservative opposition candidate Lee Myung-bak won the Dec. 19 presidential election by a landslide.
The increasingly anti-American rhetoric coming from Seoul in the past few years and the optimistically unrealistic South Korean policies toward communist North Korea will undergo a thoughtful and realistic policy reassessment. Seoul-Washington relations will improve.
Presidential election is on the horizon in the Republic of China, or Taiwan, too. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is under assault for pressing a provocative political agenda ― promoting Taiwan's independence ― with all the trappings.
Such a path which would disrupt the status quo across the Taiwan Straits, has needlessly alienated Washington, and could provoke the Chinese communists thus risking an East Asian conflict.
The March vote will likely provide a last opportunity to redirect Taipei's policies from the path of possible confrontation with Mainland China to protecting Taiwan's hard won de facto independence, freedom and prosperity.
The Beijing Olympics loom on the summer horizon in August. While the People's Republic will turn the games into a propaganda bonanza, the real geopolitical dangers commence after the Olympic torch leaves China.
In the past few years, the People's Republic has played Mr. Nice Guy, even toward Taiwan. This can change like a typhoon front from late 2008 and into 2010.
The past year has witnessed a significant shift from leftist governments who were hyper-critical of the United States to a more realistic posture underscoring the common ground in trans-Atlantic relations.
France elected a maverick conservative Nicholas Sarkozy and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel's centrist coalition government is usually on the same page with Washington.
The Balkan land of Kosovo will most likely gain full independence from Serbia and shall move under the wing and largesse of the European Union switching from the United Nations. NATO's military units will provide the protection for the process.
The increasingly assertive Russian bear can complicate things. President Vladimir Putin has brought muscular geopolitics back into the Kremlin's leitmotif and deployed new missile systems financed with the rush of petrodollars.
The threat of Islamic militant sponsored terrorism will not significantly recede but EU police agencies will usually be one step ahead of the militants.
The dependence on imported energy supplies remains a lurking danger to Western economies. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez grip on massive petroleum reserves and exports to the U.S. poses serious risks.
One year into the tenure of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. gears up for its largest global mission ― Darfur. The long-suffering region in Sudan will finally get the U.N. peacekeeping forces deployment. Finally, it's too little, too late.
John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent. He is the author of ``Divided Dynamism ― The Diplomacy of Separated Nations; Germany, Korea China'' (University Press 2001). He can be reached at jjmetzler@earthlink.net".