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No. 44: Obama’s best chance for success is to enlarge the problem.

Last night the American people elected Sen. Barack Obama president of the United States. His presidency comes at a time of one of the most profound shifts in global power and influence in a century, with major problems on several fronts. Yet precisely because of the enormity of the challenges ahead, President Obama will have an opportunity, perhaps a fleeting one, to transcend entrenched positions and rally support around a larger, shared strategic vision of the future. The question is: What exactly should he do with this opportunity?

The long line of pundits, politicians, academics, and advisors is already forming, each clamoring to showcase his or her prescriptions for how the new president should solve the many foreign-policy problems awaiting him at the White House door. There are the obvious ones, such as dealing with instability in Iraq and Afghanistan and countering Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Then there are those that in the long run will be more important to his country’s security and well-being: reforming the global financial system, enhancing energy security, addressing the causes and consequences of climate change, managing a growing antiglobalization backlash around the world, and reforming global institutions that are no longer up to these challenges.

This agenda is not pulled out of thin air, by the way. It springs from a series of strategic dialogues that we conducted during the past two years with key leaders in China, India, Brazil, South Africa, and a dozen other countries around the world. From Paris to Tokyo, New Delhi to Cairo, Beijing to São Paulo, we encountered a shared set of priorities and a desire for the United States to return to a responsible global role in partnership with others.

It might seem logical for President Obama to attack this formidable agenda simply by starting with the biggest and most pressing problems first, and then working through the long list of others. But this piecemeal approach—of tackling problems in isolation from one another—is doomed to fail, because it puts us back in the same ruts where we’ve been stuck for years.

Former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower once advised, “If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.” It is a way of bringing more politically relevant clout to bear and creating opportunities for constructive trade-offs. Most of the challenges we face are interconnected, and the only way for the new administration to tackle them is as part of a coherent overall strategy, a Global Grand Bargain.

How might this bargain actually work? First, it should be stressed that this would not be a bargain in the sense of a single negotiated settlement, but rather a flexible set of reciprocal concessions among a dozen or so key countries—a vision of a way forward that others can join. Nor would it be a “made in USA” solution to all the world’s problems; we have surely learned from the U.S. experience in Iraq that the United States cannot solve global problems on its own.

The Global Grand Bargain would evolve in a sequence of steps, beginning with an early address by President Obama laying out the nature of the challenges as he sees them and indicating what the United States would be willing to do, as a good-faith offer, toward their resolution. This speech would be followed in the spring and early summer with a round of quiet consultations with key partners—the closest European allies (individually as well as collectively through the European Union), our allies in Asia, and other potential partners, including Brazil, India, and China (whose participation or at least tacit agreement will be essential). These consultations would aim at producing a few breakthroughs—some involving the United States, some not—so that by the time of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in the fall, the basic elements of this plan would be in place.

In practice, the Global Grand Bargain would encompass a mixture of treaty and nontreaty measures. In some areas, such as reforming global institutions and creating a global fund for clean and renewable energy development, formal deals might be needed; in others, more flexible approaches may be preferable. So, some scenarios in which uncooperative countries would begin to cooperate—on transnational issues such as the environment, agriculture, and nuclear proliferation—might begin with the United States and Europe offering a new initiative on the Doha round, thereby inducing Brazil and India to follow suit.

On another front, China and India could consider shouldering the economically difficult steps to limit carbon emissions if there were enough encouraging progress in global governance and the world trading system. In the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United States and Europe might give up their cozy agreement to reserve the top jobs for themselves in order to bring China, India, and others into more-responsible leadership roles. And if Russia were to see its international role strengthened, it might finally be compelled to act as a reliable energy provider and promoter of nuclear nonproliferation.