As President Barack Obama takes office, as part of a special feature Woodrow Wilson School faculty offer the new administration guidance on some of the key policy challenges facing the nation. School faculty address a number issues, including the economy, foreign policy, immigration, and human health and bioterrorism.

Trade Policy - Gene Grossman, Professor of Economics and International Affairs

First, do no harm.  Tremendous strides have been made in recent decades toward a rules-based system based on principles of non-discrimination. The success of the trading system can be seen in the dramatically enhanced integration of national economies. The current economic crisis threatens that progress while raising the specter of beggar-thy-neighbor protectionism that would lengthen and deepen the global recession.  The Obama administration should reaffirm U.S. commitments to open world markets and resist temptations to blame our economic woes on trading partners.

With ongoing global imbalances, some of the jobs that the U.S. stimulus package will create will spill abroad.  Calls for policies that would bring those jobs back home are bound to intensify.  But lessons learned the hard way during the Great Depression should not be forgotten, even in the heat of frustration and anxiety.  A protectionist response in the United States would likely be emulated abroad, with dire consequences for world demand and recovery.

Protectionism can come in many forms.  Congress might attempt to punish China for its large trade surpluses and weak renminbi. American firms might see “dumping” wherever they look and attempt to invoke the rules of “fair” trade. Multinational corporations might be punished with increased taxes for “exporting jobs” via offshoring and direct foreign investment. To help resist these temptations at home and dissuade those abroad, the administration should seek a monitoring authority within the World Trade Organization to “name and shame” countries that invoke new barriers to trade, even those that are consistent with the current rules of the trading system, until world economic conditions improve.

Second, the administration should work to close the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations and lock in the benefits that are readily achievable.  The Doha process has not been as successful as many would have liked, but progress has been made and an agreement is close at hand.  A closing of the round would secure modest but important gains in agriculture, reaffirm countries’ commitment to the multilateral process and clear the stage for new approaches to liberalization in agriculture, services, and elsewhere.  An agreement would also require cuts to farm subsidies, which would allow the government to redeploy funds to where they could be more productively spent.

In the medium run, the administration needs to address the unequal distribution of the benefits from trade and put in place mechanisms to ensure shared gains. Such measures might include wage insurance for displaced workers and improved training and re-training programs.

Arab-Israeli Conflict - Daniel Kurtzer, S. Daniel Abraham Professor of Middle East Policy Studies, former U.S. ambassador to Egypt and Israel

The Arab-Israeli conflict, of which the war in Gaza is the latest violent manifestation, is but one of several high priority conflict situations with which President Obama will have to cope.

As with previous Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, the war in Gaza is unlikely to produce a decisive victor or clear outcome.  After Hamas’ victory in the 2006 parliamentary elections, Hamas sought to demonstrate its capacity to govern while continuing to brandish its resistance credentials.  In contrast, Israel sought to weaken Hamas, using trade and economic pressures as levers to undermine Hamas’ standing.  Israel also sought to undermine Hamas’ capacity to act violently against Israel, especially in light of Hamas’ non-stop arms smuggling activities that introduced longer-range and more accurate rockets and missiles into Hamas’ arsenal.

Hamas used the June-December 2008 ceasefire to rearm and train, but it could not reopen the border crossings or reduce Israeli economic pressures.  Hamas also fired rockets sporadically throughout the ceasefire.  For its part, Israel continued the economic pressure, but had no answer for the rocket fire or the flow of more sophisticated weaponry into Gaza.

At the end of this round of confrontation, Israel will have degraded Hamas’ military capabilities, killed many Hamas fighters, set back Hamas’ rocket-making capabilities, and gotten the world’s attention on the issue of smuggling.  Hamas will have survived, likely with enough weaponry intact to show off its ability to launch missiles at Israel.  The Palestinian Authority will not be able to reassert control over Gaza, and Egypt will not be able to stop the smuggling of arms into Gaza.  Gaza humanitarian and reconstruction activities will absorb significant Western resources and attention.

It will be all too easy for the new administration to focus so much attention on the proximate issues surrounding the Gaza war as to lose sight of the larger imperative and urgency of dealing with the underlying conflict.  After all, U.S. policymakers have only so much time/attention to devote to foreign policy issues, and the Gaza aftermath will be absorbing.  If this happens, however, the real outcome of Gaza will not only be indecisive on its own terms, but will also set back further chances to arrive at a two-state solution.

Indeed, there is strong reason to argue for an early, ambitious push by the new administration in the direction of an end-of-conflict peace settlement.  Without such a U.S.-led effort – despite the long odds and very tough issues to resolve – the Middle East will find itself again shortly on the road to the next Gaza-type war.

Epidemics and Bioterrorism - Laura Kahn, M.D., WWS Program on Science and Global Security

In December 2008, a bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism published a report concluding that bioterrorism is a serious threat.  The previous administration had built up large numbers of high containment laboratories and increased the number of researchers working on select agents with minimal government oversight.  This response had the paradoxical effect of increasing the risk of a domestic bioterrorist attack by increasing the opportunities for insiders to do harm.  In addition, the U.S. disengaged from its international partners by withdrawing its support of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) protocol for increasing transparency and cooperation.

At the same time bioterrorism threatens national security, emerging infectious diseases threaten domestic and global public health. Diseases such as HIV/AIDS, avian influenza (H5N1), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), West Nile virus, Nipah and Ebola viruses have emerged.  The HIV/AIDS pandemic created immunosuppressed populations which helped fuel the resurgence of tuberculosis, which in some cases, is now multi-drug resistant and fatal. 

The Obama administration can do much to address both of these threats.  First, there should be a national assessment as to how many high containment laboratories the nation really needs, and of those facilities deemed essential, there should be increased government oversight.  Scientists should be educated about these issues, and the U.S. should re-engage with its international partners by helping to strengthen the BWC. 

There is considerable overlap between bioterrorism and emerging infectious diseases. Both predominantly involve zoonotic diseases: pathogens of animals that can infect humans.  With the exception of smallpox, most bioterrorist agents such as anthrax, plague, tularemia, and viral hemorrhagic fevers are zoonotic diseases.  Similarly, most newly emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic diseases. For example, a veterinarian at the Bronx Zoo played a key role in identifying West Nile virus during the 1999 outbreak in New York City, the first time it appeared in the Western Hemisphere.

No single federal agency oversees the health of all animals.

One Health is a strategy to increase communication and collaboration between human and animal health professionals.  Since the mid-20th century, increasing specialization created walls hindering creative inter-disciplinary efforts.

To address both bioterrorism and emerging epidemics, the Obama Administration should embrace the One Health concept by supporting cross disciplinary activities in health care, public health, environmental health, and biomedical research.  A One Health commission should be established to facilitate implementing the One Health strategy nationwide.

Labor and the Workforce - Beth English, Lecturer in History, Research Scholar, WWS Liechtenstein Insitute on Self-Determination

While campaigning for president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt called for “plans . . . that build from the bottom up and not from the top down.”  Today pundits, politicians, and the public have looked to the Great Depression and FDR’s New Deal as a touchstone to understand the nation’s current economic woes, and to judge economic recovery proposals forwarded by the incoming Obama administration.  As President-elect Obama prepares to take office, protecting the rights of working people to organize should be a focal point in the crafting of the new administration’s broader domestic economic agenda.

With the passage of the landmark National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1935 and simultaneous grassroots union organizing, labor unions became one of the most important vehicles for boosting wages and living standards for millions of U.S. workers, and for helping to create and sustain a robust middle class after World War II.  During the past three decades, however, enforcement of workplace protections for employees seeking to organize unions has eroded; illegal corporate behavior toward pro-union workers has gone largely unpoliced; and workers seeking to organize and secure union contracts in their workplaces – especially in the low-wage service sector, where unions have struggled to make substantial gains but where jobs are often difficult or impossible to outsource – find themselves fighting a decidedly up-hill battle.

If history is any guide, it would well serve the incoming administration to consider not only the role that unions have historically played in building a middle class from the bottom up, but also the importance of the relationship between worker mobilization and action by the federal government in this process.  Section 7(a) of the New Deal’s 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act recognized the right of workers to bargain collectively and helped spur grassroots organizing throughout the nation.  Subsequent labor militancy underpinned the eventual passage and implementation of NLRA.    

Now, as then, workers must themselves undertake the task of organizing.  But now, as then, the federal government should act in a meaningful way to level the playing field between employers and employees in the process.  An important first step would be the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).  Though much-maligned by the business community and considered an imperfect bill by some labor activists, EFCA has the potential to bolster the ability of workers to form unions, negotiate union contracts, and thereby secure higher wages, improved safety standards, protections for basic rights, and benefits from their employers.  At the very least, by voting and signing EFCA in to law, Congress and Mr. Obama would send a clear message of change America’s wage workers can believe in. 

Immigration Policy - Douglas Massey, Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs

Of all the spectacular policy failures in recent years, one of the biggest is U.S. immigration policy.  Since the mid-1980s, its explicit goal has been to limit legal immigration and stop illegal migration from Latin America, especially Mexico.  To accomplish these goals, we have progressively militarized the Mexico-U.S. border and raised deportations to record levels while reducing the number of visas for immediate relatives of legal immigrants, increasing the income required for them to sponsor immigrant family members, and restricting their eligibility for public services.

The militarization of the border did not reduce the rate of undocumented in-migration from Mexico so much as lower the rate of out-migration.  Once undocumented migrants had run the gauntlet at the border, they hunkered down and stayed rather than going home to face the costs and risks again.  As a result, the net rate of illegal migration doubled and the unauthorized population grew to a record 12 million persons.

The crux of this dramatic failure is our policy toward Mexico, by far the largest source of both legal and illegal migrants and the object of a fundamental contradiction that is unsustainable.  On the one hand, we have moved rapidly toward economic integration with our southern neighbor by implementing a treaty to facilitate cross-border movements of goods, capital, information, services, commodities, and many kinds of people. On the other hand, we refuse to make any provision for the movement of labor within the otherwise integrated North American economy we are creating, and to finesse the contradiction we militarized the border with a country that poses no conceivable security threat to the United States and is in fact an ally and one of our largest trading partners.

To rectify this situation, the new administration must shift from a strategy of immigration repression to one of immigration management, bringing the flows above board and supervising them in ways that serve the interests of all concerned. This shift can easily be accomplished by enacting reforms that have been on the table for years: expanding numerical quotas for immigrants from Mexico; offering temporary visas to Mexicans that carry full labor rights and free mobility; and regularizing those currently in undocumented status in one of three ways.  Those brought into the country as minors should be granted an immediate an unconditional amnesty in the absence of a criminal record, and those who entered as adults would be offered either a temporary work visas or temporary protected status and a pathway to earn legalization over time.

Our model here is to copy the process by which the European Union successfully integrated much poor nations in the south such as Spain and Portugal, and by which it is presently integrating even poorer nations in the east, such as Poland and Romania.  If the Europeans can successfully integrate 25 countries speaking a dozen languages, surely we Americans can successfully incorporate three nations with just three languages between them.

Climate Change Policy - Michael Oppenheimer, Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs; Director, program on Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy

Despite the existence and partial success of the Kyoto Protocol, the world will not go any further in solving the climate change problem until the U.S. takes serious domestic action. The first environmental objective of the Obama administration should be to reduce U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.  Recently, Obama forcefully called for reduction of emissions by the year 2020 to 1990 levels – about a 15 percent cut from current levels, implemented via a variety of regulations within a cap-and-trade framework.  He envisioned a further cut to 80% below current levels by 2050. This is a tall order but it can be done. 

Furthermore, as part of his economic recovery program, Obama has proposed building a new energy infrastructure, including a power grid that can easily adapt to renewable energy sources, and critically, investing in developing renewable energy technologies, including advanced electric or hybrid vehicles.  If Congress agrees, such investments would become part of the economic recovery problem as well as solving the climate problem. 

Obama should devote attention to this problem right from the start; if he delays efforts to explicitly cap and reduce emissions to his second, third, or fourth year in office, serious action may never happen, and the rest of the world might lose interest in doing anything at all. Parties to the Kyoto Protocol are proposing to put in place a new post-Kyoto framework for emissions reductions by the end of 2009. While it is unlikely that the U.S. Congress will adopt a new regulatory regime by then, many expect Congress to do so during 2010 - and at that point, and only then, the U.S. would be in a good position to agree to new international limits.

The bottom line is this: we are at the beginning of a far-reaching and enduring program which may eventually wean the U.S. from our heavy dependence on fossil fuels, and which will modernize our energy system, bringing us new and more efficient ways of using energy both at home and at work.  The Obama administration could delay action on the problem, increasing the risk that Earth’s climate would go over a cliff; or it could immediately resume America’s leadership in the world on environmental problems by grappling with global warming. The financial crisis creates an opportunity rather than an obstacle to doing the latter, because these are two objectives that can be combined.

Education Policy - Hugh Price, John L.Weinberg/Goldman Sachs Visiting Professor of Public and International Affairs; former President, National Urban League

A principal challenge for the Obama administration is to help the American people understand that in the so-called “knowledge economy,” the nation’s children are the most vital infrastructure upon which the economy will depend in the future.  In the current environment, the president will have to focus on rescuing the beleaguered economy and on attempting to deliver on major campaign promises such as universal healthcare - all of which are hugely important, but all of which may make it difficult in the next few years to significantly increase the federal investment in education.

Today a very large percentage of low-income children and children of color lag behind their peers academically. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, more than 50 percent of black children in the fourth grade are reading below grade level, and the numbers for underperforming Latino children are also quite high. The proportion of black youth who are dropping out of high school exceeds 50 percent, and the percentages of Latino children and Native American children dropping out are also alarmingly high. Yet these are the very segments of the American population that will comprise a growing proportion of the nation’s future workforce.  So in order to strengthen our human infrastructure, we’ve got to improve the caliber of education that our children receive.

How should we invest? One way is to dramatically increase investment in high-quality pre-school education, which will get children off to a much stronger start in terms of literacy. Another key is recruiting better teachers, especially for youngsters who are lagging behind.  We should continue to invest in innovative schools, since one size doesn’t fit all children. 

In addition, we need to identify new approaches to focus on the development as well as the education of children. A lot of youngsters who are having a very hard time in school have huge developmental voids in their lives. In other words, there are things going on outside of school that make it difficult for them to concentrate on achieving in school. Therefore, we need new kinds on interventions to try and retrieve young people who have dialed out or dropped out of school, but who can still be reached and steered back onto the right path.

Moreover, the new president must strive to make higher education more affordable – not only at four-year colleges and universities, but also two-year colleges, and for sophisticated job training for good paying jobs.

In addition, the president, as a former community organizer himself, would be well served by convening a leadership summit of the nation’s educators and community-based organizations, including faith-based groups, to spark grassroots initiatives that will engage parents, educators, churches and community groups to collaborative efforts aimed at motivating students to achieve.

U.S. Policy Toward Africa - Jennifer Widner, Professor of Politics and International Affairs; Director, Institutions for Fragile States

Africa embraces a big share of the seventy countries or territories around the globe that are “fragile states,” low-income countries with weak governmental institutions.  The news is not all bad, however.  Since the mid-1990s a number of African countries have experienced turnarounds in government performance and economic growth. It is important to support and strengthen these success stories.  At the same time, the new administration will have to find creative ways to address the challenges that the continent’s less stable countries pose to their better-situated neighbors. 

Where can the administration take advantage of opportunities and have an impact?

Natural resource wealth is curse, not a blessing, in countries with weak institutions.  Too often the revenues from oil, mining, and timber find their way not into social programs to benefit citizens but into individual pockets or weapons purchases. Unsurprisingly, the continent’s major conflict zones center on mineral deposits. Recent oil discoveries in places like Uganda have expanded the list of places vulnerable to the resource curse. 

The administration may face a unique, short-run opportunity to help make natural resource a blessing, instead of a curse.  Improving transparency and accountability in royalty payments and resource use requires collective action on the part of companies and countries.  The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative was created several years ago to help facilitate agreement on rules, procedures, and oversight.  It is increasingly in the interest of all to know what is being spent by whom and on what.  Also, the U.S. government now has a potential say in the policies of private banks and should use its clout to prevent money laundering.  Now is the time to move ahead boldly with this initiative, and to bring China and India on board.

Both Clinton and Bush administrations inaugurated substantial investment in addressing HIV/AIDs.  The Gates Foundation has rightly expanded the focus to malaria. However, the administration should take steps to ensure that the approaches it advocates have a real impact and that HIV/AIDs does not displace primary health care and immunization against preventable childhood diseases.

The administration must think creatively about ways to transform zones of war and lawlessness into zones of relative peace.  The conflicts in the Niger Delta, the Sudan, the DRC, Zimbabwe, and Somalia threaten neighbors that have experienced turnarounds.  These are very tough problems that will require some unpleasant decisions, including finding more effective ways to freeze the assets and opportunities of bad actors, redefining U.N. rules of engagement, using international patrols in key waterways, and perhaps promoting regional customs organizations that can stem the issue of illegal import certificates.

It is vitally important to sustain hope in countries that have experienced turnarounds but now face tough times because of the world’s economic meltdown.  Measured, concentrated investment in one very visible policy area of particular social importance may help people focus on the future.  In most countries, these projects will probably focus on roads or education, depending on local conditions.  High transparency, extensive public engagement, and clear measurement of results should be the hallmark.

Technology Policy - Edward Felten, Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs; Director, Center for Information Technology Policy

Digital technologies can make government more effective, open and transparent, and can make the economy as a whole more flexible and efficient. They can also endanger privacy, disrupt markets, and open the door to cyberterrorism and cyberespionage. In this crowded field of risks and opportunities, it makes sense for the Obama administration to focus on four main challenges.

The first challenge is cybersecurity. Government must safeguard its own mission critical systems, and it must protect privately owned critical infrastructures such as the power grid and communications network. But it won't be enough to focus only on a few high priority, centralized systems. Much of digital technology's value—and, today, many of the threats—come from ordinary home and office systems. Government can use its purchasing power to nudge the private sector toward products that are more secure and reliable; it can convene standards discussions; and it can educate the public about basic cybersecurity practices.

The second challenge is transparency. We can harness the potential of digital technology to make government more open, leading toward a better informed and more participatory civic life. Some parts of government are already making exciting progress, and need high-level support; others need to be pushed in the right direction. One key is to ensure that data is published in ways that foster reuse, to support an active marketplace of ideas in which companies, nonprofits, and individuals can find the best ways to analyze, visualize, and "mash up" government information.

The third challenge is to maintain and increase America's global lead in information technology, which is vital to our prosperity and our role in the world. While recommitting to our traditional strengths, we must work to broaden the reach of technology. We must bring broadband Internet connections to more Americans, by encouraging private-sector investment in high-speed network infrastructure. We must provide better education in information technology, no less than in science or math, to all students. Government cannot solve these problems alone, but can be a catalyst for progress.

The final challenge is to close the culture gap between politicians and technology leaders. The time for humorous anecdotes about politicians who "don't get" technology, or engineers who are blind to the subtleties of Washington, is over. Working together, we can translate technological progress into smarter government and a more vibrant, dynamic private sector.

Redefining U.S. Foreign Policy - Amb. Barbara Bodine, Diplomat-in-Residence; Director, Scholars in the Nation's Service Initiative

Our roads, bridges and concrete infrastructure are in desperate need of repair and rebuilding. Our national security and foreign policy infrastructure is equally ragged, equally neglected and equally in need of rebuilding.  While not an invention of the Bush administration, there has been qualitative change in the nature of our foreign policy, of the face we present to the world, which cuts across region and issue – the militarization of foreign policy coupled with an unattractive and unproductive narcissism. 

National security policy was redefined within the narrowest definitions of “security.” With that came an increasing imbalance of resources among agencies, or more precisely between the U.S. Department of Defense and the civilian actors on the national security team, most notably but not solely the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. As resources were increasingly skewed, missions and mandates began to follow, an inversion of budget and policy making.   In the process, the civilian side of the equation was abandoned and looks as forlorn as a vacant lot.

There were the beginnings of a righting of the scales with the arrival of former and future Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, but President Obama’s success at redirecting U.S. policy, rebuilding America’s credibility and influence, and reinvigorating U.S. bilateral and multilateral relationships will take more than wise policies and the most inspiring of new rhetoric (although both are essential). 

The president and his team will need to make a concerted effort to rebuild the machinery of national policy - transparent and accountable policy processes, a new generation of diplomats, and a redefinition and reaffirmation of the missions, mandates and authorities of all players.  And, it needs to be all three. Like a stool, absence or imbalance will be inherently unstable and unworkable.

To those who say we cannot afford this, we cannot afford not to. The costs to our budget can be minimal.  It is a question of rationalizing current resources. Of having resources follow missions and mandates, not the reverse.  Secretary Gates understands this.  Diplomacy and development’s partner, defense – the uniformed military – understand this. Incoming Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, with her call for “smart power,” understands this.  The question will be whether Congress will step up to plate, will move beyond committees’ territorial imperatives, and provide the support, the funding for the rebuilding of our national security, foreign policy infrastructure, our roads and bridges to the rest of the world.

Click here to view Christopher Chyba on nonproliferation; Mickey Edwards on presidential power and Constitutionality; Amb. Robert Finn on U.S.-Afghanistan policy; and Adel Mahmoud on global health policy.