President-elect Barack Obama announced yesterday he was restoring the post of UN Ambassador to a cabinet level position in his administration. The move is yet another sign of the new era in international relations coming to United States foreign policy following the disastrous Bush Administration.

Obama also announced his appointment of Susan Rice, a longtime advisor on foreign policy and fierce opponent of the Iraq War, to be his Ambassador to the United Nations. Rice’s appointment sends a strong signal to diplomats throughout both the UN and around the world that America is back on track in terms of a deliberative, multilateral approach regarding foreign affairs.

Obama was quoted as saying about the appointment and new approach to the UN, “Susan knows the global challenges we face demand global institutions that work. She shares my belief that the U.N. is an indispensable and imperfect forum.” In order to gain a little perspective on how far that thinking is from that of the Bush Administration, get a load of this quote from one of Bush’s, non-Cabinet level, UN Ambassadors, John Bolton, “There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States.”

You can takepart in keeping current on international policy issues by checking out Foreign Affairs online.

LINKS:

WaPo: Nomination of Rice for UN Post Indicates a Shift Toward Multilateralism

USA Today: Susan Rice’s task as UN Ambassador to mend fences

AP: Susan Rice Biography