After being inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama invoked the Battle of Trenton in his acceptance speech. This was an appropriate historical point to bring up; the battle, like Obama's inauguration, was staged in freezing conditions with a nation needing something to rally round.

The invocation of Trenton also raised a lingering question that has been troubling Jefferson’s "Empire of Liberty" ever since the battle was fought in the winter of 1776 by America’s future first president: how does America reconcile the ideal of liberty with its own security? A more appropriate—although admittedly less glamorous—historical example which Obama could have drawn on was the Whisky Rebellion of the early 1790s, centred in West Virginia. Sparked by the federal government attempting to tax its citizens, the rebellion was a direct challenge to order, and provoked a dilemma over the place liberty would have in the future republic. As one supporter of government, Fisher Ames noted, "elective rulers can scarcely ever employ the physical force of a democracy without turning the moral force, or power of public opinion, against government."

This is as true now as it was in the 1790s. Obama, like Bush before him, is going to need to get the balance right between very real threats to security and American ideals of liberty. Arguably he has already begun this, and it was telling that Obama’s speech mixed a sense of elation with less than honeyed words about the "gathering clouds and raging storms" of the future. Sending a message to countries such as Iran and Russia, he extended a hand of friendship, but only "if you are willing to unclench your fist." He then added—in a statement reminiscent more of Robespierre than Roosevelt—that the world’s dictators were on the "wrong side of History."

Obama did however note, in a swipe at his predecessor, that "we reject as false the choice between our safety and ideals." Stirring indeed, and surely the stuff of Jefferson – but the grim reality behind the soaring rhetoric and semantics is very different.

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George Washington was certainly clearer on matters of force and liberty when crossing the Delaware River. His men—cold, hungry and demoralized—surprised a British station manned by German mercenaries, killing around ninety and capturing many more. This was a victory of tremendous political value and inspired hope in what was by then a dilapidated cause. Conversely America has of late, despite its military muscle, looked like a worn out cause. Guantanamo Bay and neo-conservative unilateralism have done much to dent the ideal of America.

But, unlike at Trenton, the United States now dwarfs Her Majesty’s Forces. Indeed the United States now dwarfs every force that can be amassed against it; it is the most powerful force the world has ever seen. As a result, and in spite of the recent success of Russia in Georgia and comparisons to the British Empire in decline, the United States remains the world’s only "hyperpower." Russia, for example, spends a paltry $50 billion a year on its armed forces. In comparison the American "colossus" spends over $500 billion, employs cutting edge "smart" technology, and has a navy larger than the next 13 combined – 11 of which are US allies.

This is, despite the European centre-left knee-jerk reaction, not a bad thing. In a world of actual tyrants such as Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe or Kim Jong Il in North Korea, we should realise that America has the potential to achieve a great deal of good. Indeed, Obama’s foreign relations, despite his mantra of "change," will necessarily have to remain fairly consistent with many of George W. Bush’s foreign policy decisions. While "peace" in Afghanistan was mentioned in the speech, and a call for dialogue with Islam was invoked, Obama also talked of "nuclear threats" as well as a "global responsibility."

Consequently, the overuse of the word "historic" throughout the last few months is premature in terms of foreign relations. Obama’s inauguration speech will certainly stand out in history, and domestically a great sense of hope and unity has been spread. The next few months assure him a political honeymoon like no other, and will make it next to impossible to read anything bad about the man – Private Eye aside. Indeed, what with the vast sales of Obama mugs, badges, T-shirts, stationery and fridge magnets, one would be forgiven for thinking that, through this alone, America could lift itself out of recession.

But, geopolitically, Obama’s inauguration may not be as earth shattering as has been assumed. Francis Fukayama’s claims regarding the "end of history" marked a false summit. As the recently deceased historian Samuel P. Huntingdon argued, we should look at history not through the prism of ideologies, which are often shifting, fleeting or meaningless. Rather we should consider the deeper roots of global conflict. As Huntingdon argued: "With the end of the Cold War, international politics moves out of its Western phase, and its centrepiece becomes the interaction between the West and non-Western civilizations and among non-Western civilizations." This, Huntingdon argued, merited the term "clash of civilizations," and justified looking into the deeper fault lines in history and beyond mere policy change, ideology or rhetoric.

While there are valid criticisms of Huntingdon's monolithic and static conception of opposing civilisations, his assertion has been, to some extent, played out in present day Russia: despite its move from monarchy to communism to democracy, the state continues to betray many imperialist, centralising and "czarist" characteristics. As a result we should be careful not to expect Obama to turn American foreign policy on its head as deep-rooted global currents continue. Consequently while Obama’s words may warm the hearts of hopeful Americans, it is unlikely these will do much to thaw relations with the likes of Vladimir Putin, or President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. Indeed relations with Russia have declined as Dmitri Medvedev’s administration—far from liberalising as many hoped—continues to interfere aggressively in its neighbours affairs. As one former British diplomat to Moscow noted: "The fall of the Soviet Union did not wipe the slate clean. The Russia that we are dealing with today, with its fear of encirclement, its suspicion of foreigners and natural appetite for autocracy, is as old as the hills, long pre-dating communism."

Added to this, Russian defence spending has continued to grow at a rate of no less than 15 per cent each year since 2005, and the results of this resurgence can be clearly seen in Georgia, and Eastern Europe. On 16 September 2008, Putin announced a 27 per cent increase in spending on “national defence and security” for 2009.

Israel’s recent invasion of Gaza, as well as Iran’s continued development of nuclear weapon, highlight the fact that Obama will need to live up to the responsibility he espoused in his speech. This will often mean using "hard" power, and unpopular decisions. The democratic dilemma about using force abroad has characterised US foreign policy since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The attacks on America in 2001, however, acted as a wake-up call to America that a laissez-faire approach was no longer an option. While this necessitated dialogue with European allies, and had some espousing hopes of a new "multilateralism" to foreign relations and an end to domination by the "hyperpower," far more pertinent was the power of US arms.

Multilateral solutions also opened up the problem of a potential lack of any leadership, with bickering and UN resolutions replacing coherent active measures. This happened in Kosovo when NATO was forced to side-step UN resolutions in order to reimpose order and end ethnic cleansing. There is indeed a danger, as Professor Niall Ferguson has noted, that a lack of a coherent global leader has the potential to lead to an "apolar world," in which no dominant power exists. This contradicts the commonly held view that power, "like nature, abhors a vacuum." This was a view held by Paul Kennedy in his study, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. US decline, he asserted, will be replaced by a stronger Japan or China.

Yet, as Ferguson argues, this is not always the case. In 1919, for example, another President with an Ivy League background went to Europe and was received by ecstatic crowds. Yet President Woodrow Wilson failed to gain support at home for joining the international body of the League of Nations, and the global results were disastrous. Despite Ferguson’s Calvinistic pessimism, the point is well made. International affairs, just as at the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth-century and before, are not self-ordering. Words like "natural" or "vacuum" distort the reality of the situation. Russia’s recent swipe at Georgia highlights this point. Despite the French President, Nicholas Sarkozy, using negotiations to "resolve" the war there was little evidence of a new, "multipolar" world. Indeed, the recent fighting in the Gaza strip helped to show that Hilary Clinton’s recent invocation of "smart" power falls short of the brutal realities of unilateral force. This is morally unfortunate, even repulsive. Yet to consider the issue in moral terms is to distort perspectives. It remains the case that whoever is "right" or "wrong" is subservient to the party with the might of force behind them. As a result no amount of rallying, graffiti or international concern stopped Israel from achieving military objectives in Gaza. Morally dubious or not, the deed has been done.

But America is not Israel and, unlike Israel, it aspires to lead the world, not only militarily but also morally. The United States remains a politically and economically open and tolerant country. If this is not always in absolute terms—Rupert Murdoch, for example, has too much control over television and influence in government—it certainly is in relative terms.

After all, the Russian government has a monopoly on all broadcast TV. And while it may use means which clash with its ideals, it nonetheless still has these ideals. As a result George Bush, who strayed too far from liberty towards security, exits office with one of the lowest approval ratings in US history. States such as Russia and Iran are neither open nor tolerant of political dissent or civil liberties. America, then, is the best of a bad bunch. It is by no means the perfect "Empire of Liberty" that Jefferson dreamed of; a "flawed democratic superpower" may be a better description. Yet it continues to aspire to certain fundamental human and political rights, which remain engrained in its conscious.

The long tradition of American interventionism, as neo-conservative thinker Robert Kagan has recently observed in The Return of History and the End of Dreams, was "not invented by the Bush administration and will not vanish when it departs." Kagan notes that between 1989 and 9/11 the United States intervened with force in foreign lands more frequently than at any time in its history. Obama may be able to end the PR disaster of Guantanamo Bay, although it is doubtful he will be withdrawing American troops from bases in—to name a few—Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Oman, Qatar and the Philippines in the near future. As a result the steely resolve in the speech should come as no surprise. We should not expect a drastic change to the preceding decade of US foreign policy. Like Bush, Obama’s hands are essentially tied over foreign policy, and he will have little option but to continue using "hard" power. Intervention has become less a matter of ideology or choice, however; especially since 2001, it has become a matter of necessity. Indeed, were the US to withdraw from difficult global decisions, as it did in the 1920s, it would do damage not only to the nation’s credibility as a force of moral good, but also to the rest of the world in practical terms – starting with the Middle East.

As a result we should all pause for thought before we jump on the "Obamawagon" and blindly call for "change" to America’s liberal interventionist role abroad. This happened in the wake of the American debacle in Somalia, when Bill Clinton shied away from the crisis of Rwandan genocide a year later. Let’s hope Obama can prevent such a catastrophe happening again, and back up his convictions and ideas with assertive action abroad.