L-r: Jonathan Freedland, Norma Percy, Paul Mitchell. Photo: Tolly Robinson

The first of the four-part series looks at the initial two years of Obama’s administration, during which he passed the largest stimulus in American history; pledged – ultimately unsuccessfully – to close Guantanamo Bay; bailed out Michigan’s automotive industry; and crashed a meeting at the 2009 Copenhagen climate change summit to secure a deal between the United States and China.

The documentary, which took three years to make, is comprised of interviews with key figures within the administration, as well as previously unseen archive footage from the White House.

Jonathan Freedland. Photo: Tolly Robinson

Chair Jonathan Freedland asked if the structure of the documentary – focusing on a few, defining points of the administration – risked dramatising rather than documenting Obama’s years in the White House, creating a ‘West Wing’ narrative of events at the cost of accuracy.

In fact, Percy said, what surprised her most about making the documentary was “how much real politics is like the West Wing.” She added that Gene Spurling, who is interviewed in the first programme, was a consultant to The West Wing.

Norma Percy. Photo: Tolly Robinson

“What we try and do is show what it’s like inside the room when the big decisions are made. So what were the big decisions? What were the key meetings?” Percy said.

“Sometimes, trivial stories can be much more revealing than big ones,” she said. Obama dressing down Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner after a shambolic press conference, for example, or one economic adviser failing to invite a rival adviser to a crucial meeting – both of which feature in the first episode.

Mitchell said that the programme was not considered dramatic by the BBC when it was pitched. “If you think that getting three economic stories in a row in an hour of BBC primetime TV is considered dramatic – well, you have no idea what that was like. They weren’t keen at all [initially].”

“There’s absolutely no way in two hours that you can do an encyclopedia. What you really want to do is three or four stories, and do them really well. You want to pick the right ones – the ones which are consequential,” Mitchell said.

Paul Mitchell. Photo: Tolly Robinson.

Nearing the end of his presidency, Obama is now beginning to address that question of consequence, and legacy. This is reflected by the fact that the production team were able to secure an interview with the President through a newly appointed “legacy team” of press officers.

“Obama’s legacy will only continue to grow,” Percy said. “He did some amazing things: bringing healthcare to the American people, opening up relations with Cuba, and Iran [the US deal which ensured Iran would not obtain nuclear weapons].”

Mitchell added that determining Obama’s legacy would be a long-term project. “He set out to transform America, to move it in a progressive way. I think part of his legacy is going to be the degree to which he’s done that. It’s going to take a long, long time to understand where he succeeded and where he failed.”

The next episode of Inside Obama’s White House will be broadcast on Tuesday 22 March 2016 at 9PM on BBC2.

Once a year, the world’s leaders descend on New York for the UN’s blue ribbon event, the cumbersomely-titled UN General Assembly’s General Debate.

This year, the build-up has been dominated by the Palestinian Authority’s planned bid to become the 194th member of the UN, following South Sudan’s incorporation earlier in the year.

Notwithstanding any last minute deals, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will personally submit the application to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday, September 23, after Abbas has delivered his speech to assembled leaders.

Indeed, Friday’s session is set to be a cracker, since it also features Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s speech, in which he must surely address the issue. And yet while the Palestinian membership-issue is grabbing all the headlines, there’s plenty of other highlights.

Ahead of the formal UNGA opening today, there was a high-level meeting on Libya yesterday, the first since the UN formally recognised the Transitional National Council as the official representative of Libya last Friday. 

US President Barack Obama met privately for the first time with TNC Chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil, and held separate summits with President Hamid Karzai before he returned to Aghanistan to join the mourning of the assassinated leader Burhanuddin Rabbani.

Tuesday also saw French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe host a ministerial-level meeting of the so-called Deauville Partnership, a G20-offshoot dedicated to supporting fledgling Arab democracies.

The Debate kicks off today with an address by the Brazilian President, the first for Dilma Rousseff since she took office in January and no doubt a welcome relief from domestic troubles.

A notable absence, though, is Russian leader Dmitry Mevedev, who has chosen to delegate responsibilities this year to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

In the afternoon South Africa’s Jacob Zuma will be speaking. On Thursday morning, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gives his traditionally polemical speech (who can forget last year, when he alluded to the 9/11 attacks being a conspiracy). British Prime Minister David Cameron also speaks that session.

Highlights from the afternoon session on Thursday include an inaugural address by newly-elected Peruvian President Ollanta Humala, an address from ageing despot Robert Mugabe, and also remarks from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose star is in the ascendancy amid Turkey’s role in the Arab Spring.

On the sidelines that day, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is hosting a UN High-Level Meeting on Nuclear Safety and Security, likely to focus significantly on lessons to be learned from the crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant back in March. Friday, as we’ve seen, is all about the Palestinian-membership issue.

But in the morning there is also a first-time address from new Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda , who is expected to put in appearance also at the nuclear safety meeting. That afternoon South Sudanese President Salva Kiir – who meets one on one with President Obama earlier in the week – will give his country’s address for the first time since it became member number 193 last July

Sadly, one of the traditionally more entertaining speakers – Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez – is not expected to make the journey to New York this time, as he is recovering from a fourth round of chemotherapy for cancer discovered earlier in the year.

By Nicole Hunt

Anders Behring Breivik, the man who admitted to setting off the 22 July bomb in Oslo, killing eight people, before killing 69 people on the island of Utoya, makes his first public appearance at Oslo City Court on Monday. On 12 September, the court rejected a police request for another closed door hearing, meaning media and victims’ families will be able to attend.

In Geneva, the UN Global Fund releases the findings of a four-month independent review into its financial safeguards, following accusations of mismanagement of funds in recipient countries.

Monday is also the six month anniversary of the beginning of military action in Libya. Forces from the US, the UK, France, Canada, UAE and Qatar began enforcing the no-fly zone authorised by UN Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973 on 19 March.

The trial of seven Italian scientists charged with manslaughter for failing to predict the April 2009 earthquake that killed over 300 people kicks off in L’Aquila on Tuesday. The scientists, who made up the city’s Great Risks Commission, are accused of failing to warn people of the potential risk of an earthquake and convincing people not to leave town a week before the earthquake struck.

In a Paris court, former News of the World chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck and representatives for News Group Newspapers appear charged with breaching France’s privacy and defamation laws in relation to a 2008 story about former FIA president Max Mosley. Mosley was awarded £60,000 in damages by the UK High Court in 2008, but the European Court of Human Rights rejected an application by Mosley in May that would have required media to inform a person before publishing a story containing their private information.

Amid concerns of potential post-election violence, Zambians go to the polls to elect their president and members of the National Assembly. Levy Mwanawasa won the 2006 election, but died in August 2008 and was replaced by Rupiah Banda, who is seeking his first full term.

The UN General Assembly general debate opens in New York on Wednesday, with all eyes on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who, barring last-minute diplomatic developments, is expected to seek a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood.

On Thursday, a verdict is expected in the first case brought in under France’s ‘burka ban’ laws. Two women in the town of Meaux were arrested for wearing the niqab veil in May, with one of them banned from attending the last hearing because her face was still covered.

At the UN General Assembly, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe are both scheduled to speak. Ahmadinejad’s past speeches have prompted walkouts from some delegations, while Mugabe’s have typically been anti-western. British Prime Minister David Cameron, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ivorian President Alassane Ouatarra are also on the bill.

The week draws to a close with some high-profile court hearings and elections. Closing arguments are set to begin in Amanda Knox’s murder appeal in Perugia on Friday, while Egyptian courts are busy with the testimony of ruling military council member Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi at former President Hosni Mubarak’s trial on Saturday in Cairo, as well as the verdict in the Khaled Said murder trial in Alexandria. Two policemen are on trial for Said’s June 2010 death, which prompted widespread protests in Egypt at a time when police were rarely prosecuted.

In Bahrain, by-elections are held to replace 11 opposition lawmakers who resigned in March over government crackdowns on anti-regime protesters.

French Senate elections take place on Sunday, with half of the 346 seats up for grabs. Party performances will be closely watched ahead of next year’s presidential elections.

In Freiburg, Pope Benedict XVI wraps up a four-day visit to Germany to celebrate the 60th anniversary of his ordination as a priest

Watch event here.

If you want to take part in further discussion about the impact of the War on Terror on our world today and how it might shape our future, come along to our FIRST WEDNESDAY SPECIAL: Changing world – conflict, culture and terrorism in the 21st century on Wednesday, 7 September.

The purpose of the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 in the wake of the 9/11 attacks was ill-defined from the beginning, according to panelists taking part in a discussion last night that gave little grounds for optimism about the country’s future.

Asked by David Loyn, the BBC’s international development correspondent who was chairing the event when it was that the mistakes were made after the attacks on the Unites States of 11 September, 2001, the answer from Jean MacKenzie, senior correspondent for GlobalPost was: “September 12,”

The former programme director for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting in Kabul, said the major problem with the operation in Afghanistan was a lack of definition about what it was setting out to achieve:

“I think when we went into Afghanistan, the major problem with our invasion, or intervention, was that it was ill-defined as to scope, ill-defined as to purpose and we really had no clue what we were trying to accomplish there. The people who carried out the attack on the United States were not the Taliban and those who did, namely al Quaeda and Osama bin Laden had left by November 2001, said MacKenzie.

“They’re gone, we’re still there and we’re fighting [without knowing] who the enemy is, we don’t know how to define the enemy and we don’t know what the enemy is fighting us about, and I think our central mistake is to get involved with a war with a country that we don’t understand, with a goal that we never bothered to define.”

Malte Roschinski, a security consultant, political analyst and author who is based in Germany, said the “players” who drew up the December 2001 Bonn Agreement on the future of Afghanistan were not representative of the country because the Taleban were left out.

“We might not have liked them but they were the decisive actors in Afghanistan at that time,” said Roschinski, who as a journalist with AFP news agency reported from post-Taliban Afghanistan in late 2001.

He was also critical of the way that different countries took responsibility for different areas and of the German approach of institution building at the cost of providing security for the people:

“The international community never got around to creating a unity of action, which is obviously very important if you want to be successful. If eventually 44 countries are playing single ball games then you will not really come to decisive conclusion because you have 44 different strategies, as well as the civilian players, the development agencies.”

Frank Ledwidge, author of Losing Small Wars said it was “a matter of record” that it was “right within the purview” of al-Quaeda operators and Osama bin Laden that western governments, and the United States in particular, be drawn into wars in the Islamic world that they could not win.

Discussing Britain’s presence in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, Ledwidge said a “very well informed” Helmand Plan put together by the SAS and well-placed Afghan civilians might have been successful, but had never been implemented:

“We went there looking to create a Belgium in Asia and right now, the truth is we’d be lucky to get a Bangladesh,” said Ledwidge, whose military record includes serving in the the Balkans conflict.

“Success and failure has to be measured against cost and the cost that we’ve sustained, the very least of which is national reputation, then military reputation, then the lives and limbs of our own soldiers and of Afghans and the money, I simply can’t draw a success from that.”

To come: What difference have counterinsurgency strategies made to the life of the Afghan people and in Iraq?