At the Truman event today, top Obama adviser and former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry said that Barack Obama considers four foreign policy challenges to be his top priorities:

1. Rebuilding the American military and ground forces
2. Stopping a New Cold War from developing between the U.S. and Russia
3. Preventing nuclear terrorism
4. Dealing with global warming and developing alternative sources of energy, since America's oil dependency has become a legitimate national security threat

Perry said that the Bush-McCain policy of isolating Russia won't work because the U.S. needs to cooperate and communicate with Russia in order to achieve vital national security goals. Like it or not, Perry said, the U.S. must work with Russia to deal with Iran, fight international terrorism, and secure vulnerable fissile material that could be used by terrorists to build nuclear weapons.

This is the exact same point that Council for a Livable World executive director John Isaacs made when he appeared on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer last week to discuss U.S. missile defense in Europe.

To address the threat posed by climate change, Perry said that Obama plans to invest $150 billion in alternative energy. Besides saving the environment, moving towards alternative energy will mean that the U.S. is no longer subject to the whims of oil producing nations like Iran, Russia, and Venezuela. These countries all too often use their enormous oil wealth to militarize and threaten their neighbors.

-- Travis