President Barack Obama will soon be sitting with his team to prioritise his to-do-list for his legacy that will be intertwined with how he handles his country’s strategic and national concerns.

Domestically, the most important issue would be the ‘fiscal cliff’, where President Obama’s climb up the hill is being constantly hobbled by the belligerent Republicans. The economic crisis in the US is deeper than one would normally want to admit but 2013 is going to be a difficult year for the US and consequently for the world as well. Externally, the Afghan quagmire continues, the deep seas of the Western Pacific have an assertive China, the bloodied sands of the Middle East provide neither solution nor solace, where the Arab Spring seems to have gone all wrong with the Salafists and Sunni Radicals of various hues beginning to take control from Tunisia to Syria. Of these, the two issues that will affect India most closely both in 2013 and later are the US economy and the manner and aftermath of US exit from Afghanistan.