Editorial: Obama's Victory

'It's kind of nice to feel good about the United States again."

That comment by a well-wisher after the election of President-elect Barack Obama is noteworthy only because of its source - a shopkeeper in Caracas, Venezuela.

People all over the world were expressing as much joy in Obama's victory as his American supporters.

"Your election raises in France, in Europe, and elsewhere in the world, an immense hope," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad congratulated Obama, the first time anything like that has happened since before that country's 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Of course, against that backdrop of good tidings, one was reminded of the ominous sound bite by Vice President-elect Joe Biden that John McCain's campaign tried to exploit:

"Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama. The world is looking. We're going to have an international crisis . . . to test the mettle of this guy. I guarantee you it's gonna happen," said Biden.

What he also said, but what McCain didn't mention in his ads, is that Biden believes Obama is ready to handle any international challenge that comes his way.

A good summary of the challenges already known and some recommendations to handle them were made in the October issue of the journal Foreign Affairs by Richard Holbrooke, President Clinton's U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

"The next president will inherit a more difficult opening-day set of international problems than any of his predecessors have since at least the end of World War II," said Holbrooke.

The five nations at the center the arc of the crisis are Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their problems are related and their borders are linked, yet they fall within three different regional bureaus of the State Department. Obama must bring coherence to U.S. policy that has struggled to find its bearings under the vague notion of a "global war on terror."

Obama was derided by McCain for saying he is willing to talk to Iran's leaders. But as Holbrooke pointed out, talking to one's adversaries is not a sign of weakness. Churchill did it; so did Eisenhower, Reagan and the first President Bush. Nixon talked to repressive China when it was supporting guerrillas fighting U.S. troops in Southeast Asia.

People all over the world are celebrating America's new president because they expect him to take a new, better approach. Perhaps the best early indication he could provide that it is indeed a new day would be to declare immediately a ban to all torture and close the Guantanamo prison. That will help open doors to other advances in foreign relations.