With the 2015 State of the Union address showing a rejuvenated and confident Barack Obama, a panel of experts met at the Frontline Club on Wednesday 21 January to debate his legacy, the partisan nature of US politics and whether racial divides have been healed by the nation’s first black president.

l-r: Robert Carolina, Xenia Wickett, Matt Frei, Kim Ghattas, Michael Goldfarb

Chair Matt Frei, former Washington correspondent and current Europe editor for Channel 4 News, began by asking the panel what they thought Obama’s legacy would be.

Xenia Wickett, formerly of the US State Department and now at Chatham House, replied: “His legacy is going to be economic. President Obama came in in 2009 after the great recession, and if you listened to his state of the union, [now] America is strong, the economy is strong.”

Kim Ghattas, BBC correspondent based in Washington, offered her view of Obama as “the president who always struggled to convince people in the US and abroad that he was a good president, that he did a good job, because the narrative of him being a reluctant president stuck, no matter what he achieved.”

To kick off @mattfrei challenges tonight’s panel to give Obama’s legacy in a minute and a half – live now pic.twitter.com/htmL7vKMKM

— Frontline Club (@frontlineclub) January 21, 2015

The panel also discussed the difficult situations Obama has found himself in throughout his presidency. Veteran journalist and broadcaster Michael Goldfarb said: “He was a president at a time when no-one was really in charge, the world was in a terrible state of drift.”

Frei questioned whether “Obama’s legacy is a legacy of absences – the absence of a war that he started, the absence of an economic calamity. Preventing economic calamity is more difficult to get brownie points for than actually causing a great economic success.”

However, as chair of Democrats Abroad UK Robert Carolina pointed out: “Coming back from economic collapse was by no means assured.”

One of the biggest difficulties that Obama has faced as president has been a deeply partisan Republican congress. The panel wondered whether America’s finely-tuned system of checks and balances is unable to cope with such partisan politics. “If it’s trench warfare, it’s not checks and balances,” said Frei.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Democrat Robert Carolina laid the blame with the Republican party for this state of affairs. He said: “They have become a party whose governing philosophy is almost nihilistic. A failure to achieve anything is almost a victory.”

A member of the audience highlighted Obama’s historic status as the first African-American President of the United States. Xenia Wickett commented:

“The greatest achievement in that respect is that you have five people here and that isn’t what we’d put as his legacy. In terms of a statement about where America is today, I think that’s a huge statement.”

With recent events in Ferguson exposing the ongoing deep racial divides that exist in the United States, Ghattas said: “the only people who talk about America as a post-racial society are white.”

Goldfarb added: “He decided, as many successful African-Americans do, ‘I’m not going to make a thing of my race, I’m not going to play that card’. He chose to downplay it.”

The panel also debated whether Obama had gained or lost international respect for his handling of US foreign policy. “What you get from world leaders today is that there is a failure of leadership and Obama is missing in action,” said Ghattas.

Wickett closed the discussion with a comment on the factors that have most hindered Obama’s presidency:

“He’s in a fundamental dilemma. Everybody wants American leadership, everybody wants America to use its leadership to keep sea lanes open, Middle Eastern energy flowing, the Chinese in their box, Europe safe through NATO. But the trouble is they only want it when it’s their way and they all want something slightly different. He cannot win!”

Watch and listen back below:

Monday 8 April

US Secretary of State John Kerry continues his visit to Israel and the Palestinian Territories on Monday (and Tuesday) where he is holding talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, meanwhile, will meet on Monday with his Spanish counterpart Mariano Rajoy in Madrid.

In Chile, a team of investigators will exhume the body of Pablo Neruda to verify whether the poet did, in fact, die from cancer in 1973, or whether he was assassinated, as some claim.

Finally, US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew will be in Brussels for talks with key EU officials, at which the crisis in Cyprus and its potential impact on economic stability of Europe is likely to be discussed.

Tuesday 9 April

On Tuesday, Jacob Lew is scheduled to continue his travel in Europe, with stops in Berlin and Paris for talks with his counterparts Wolfgang Schauble and Pierre Moscovici.

In New York, the UN Security Council is scheduled to discuss the situation in the Central African Republic after the Seleka rebels took the capital Bangui, deposing President Francois Bozize.

Iran will celebrate its National Day of Nuclear Technology.

Wednesday 10 April

Meanwhile, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague will host his G8 counterparts for a two-day meeting in London.

Finally, back in New York, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde is scheduled to deliver a major address in New York City.

Thursday 11 April

Capital controls imposed in Cyprus in the wake of the bailout agreement and designed to prevent a catastrophic bank run are scheduled to be lifted on Thursday, after they were extended by a week. Most analysts expect them to be extended again.

Italy, meanwhile, is scheduled to hold a sovereign debt auction, which will provide an opportunity to see whether the continuing political gridlock inside Italy and developments outside are rattling markets’ confidence in Europe’s fourth largest economy.

Separately, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Martin Dempsey are testifying at Senate hearing on Thursday.

Friday 12 April

On Friday, the nine South African police officers charged in connection with the death of a Mozambican taxi driver who was filmed being dragged behind a police van are due back in court.

John Kerry will be in Seoul for talks with counterparts as he begins the Asian-leg of his seven-nation trip. Once again, North Korea will dominate.

Lastly, in Dublin, Eurogroup finance ministers are due to meet, with Cyprus and the Memorandum of Understanding on the bailout agreement top of the agenda. Finance Ministers from all 27 EU member-states will meet that afternoon and on Saturday.

Saturday 13 April

North Korea will again be on the agenda when John Kerry pays his first visit to Beijing since taking over from Hillary Clinton.

Sunday 14 April

Venezuelans will on Sunday return to the polls to elect their President in the wake of Hugo Chavez’s passing on March 5. His appointed successor, former bus driver Nicolas Maduro is expected to defeat opposition candidate Henrique Capriles.

John Kerry will wrap up his Asia visit with a stop in Tokyo where he meets his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida

In Cameroon, for the first time there will be an election for 70 members of the country’s 100-member Senate, with the remainder selected by President Paul Biya.

On Sunday, Canada’s opposition Liberal Party is scheduled to appoint its new leader. There has been much excitement about the candidacy of Justin Trudeau.

EXTERNAL EVENT HELD AT THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS, SHEIKH ZAYED THEATRE

As he is about to embark on his second term, President Barack Obama’s relationship with Israel is already being tested. But while all eyes are on events in Gaza, Obama is facing major decisions that could lead to the beginning of a new conflict.

Israel’s threat of military action against Iran has already raised tensions in the Middle East and in the summer of 2013, the US and its allies will decide whether or not to attack Iran’s nuclear sites and if Israel should be given the go ahead to start a war.

While leaders of these countries continue their brinkmanship, recent and increasingly biting sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union have had a significant impact, choking the country’s economy and provoking growing unrest on the streets. Iranians are facing ever increasing hardship as a result of the devaluation of the currency, food shortages and lack of medical supplies.

Join us to discuss what the future holds for relations between Iran, Israel and the US in the year ahead.

Chaired by Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow.

With:

Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian – Israeli Middle East analyst. He teaches the contemporary Iranian politics course at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya. He is also the co-author of president Ahmadinejad’s biography The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran and a regular contributor to The Diplomat, Al Monitor, as well as BBC Persian.

Azadeh Moaveni, a former Middle East correspondent for Time magazine, and has reported on Iran since 1999. She is the author of Lipstick Jihad, Honeymoon in Tehran, and co-author, with Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi, of Iran Awakening. She writes widely on Iran and the Middle East for Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, and other publications.

Scott Peterson, the Istanbul Bureau Chief for The Christian Science Monitor, a photographer for Getty Images and author of Let the Swords Encircle Me: Iran – A Journey Behind the Headlines. He has reported and photographed conflict and human narratives across three continents for more than two decades, which include thirty extended reporting trips to Iran since 1996.

Abdel Bari Atwan, the editor of London-based al-Quds al-Arabi, an independent, pan-Arab daily newspaper since 1989. He is the author of The Secret History of al-Qa’ida, A Country of Words, his memoir and his new book Al-Qa’ida, the Next Generation. He was born in Gaza but has lived in London since 1979.