KEY POINTS:
Farewell President Bush. Goodbye "Axis of Evil". From Tehran to Toledo, the people of the world are yearning for the end of eight years of a Bush administration that sacrificed America's reputation on the altar of the "war on terror".
International polls have consistently shown that if the rest of the world had a vote, there was no question of anything but a landslide for Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate. The world expects change - change it can believe in. But leading analysts say that the next president will inevitably lower expectations in terms of the huge hopes raised globally by yesterday's historic election.
A poll carried out in 21 countries last week gauged international opinion and concluded that more than 80 per cent believe the US is most to blame for the current economic crisis. Positive perception and trust of the superpower in the twilight of the Bush presidency were also very low, among the majority of the 10,392 people surveyed in the independent poll commissioned by Porter Novelli.
As the 44th president moves to restore America's bruised and battered reputation, the mooted closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba looms large. Both Barack Obama and his Republican rival, Senator John McCain, have pledged to close the camp.
Guantanamo, like the Iraqi prisoner humiliation at Abu Ghraib, became a potent symbol of the abuse of international law by the Bush administration. But according to a US official quoted in The Washington Post, "the new president will gnash his teeth and beat his head against the wall when he realises how complicated it is to close Guantanamo".
Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the British legal-action charity Reprieve, points out that among the hurdles in closing a facility that holds 250 alleged terrorists is the fact that "80 to 100 are refugees and would risk being tortured if returned home".
Although the next president would bring the prisoners to America for trial, the evidence would need to be sifted, which would bring torture allegations into sharp focus through the courts. Mr Stafford Smith added that the real problem was that of the 27,000 "ghost prisoners" - held by the US in countries ranging from Iraq to Djibouti, according to Reprieve. "There are less than 1 per cent of these in Guantanamo...
So there's been a diversionary strategy in the war on terror. Not one of the 27,000 has ever seen a lawyer," he said. The risk for the next president, because of the perception in America that the majority of alleged terrorists are guilty, would be to appear to be soft on terror.
A major attack by the al Qaeda network could test his mettle early on. As Mr McCain stressed his war credentials in the election campaign as the next "commander in chief", so the Democratic candidate toughened his own rhetoric, telling a television interviewer last week not to expect "any sudden lurches to the left... I don't think we're going to have time to engage in a bunch of crazy things that people, the McCain campaign specifically, has suggested we might."
Although it is generally expected that the next White House incumbent will take a more multilateral approach than his predecessor, who had no time for the United Nations, the change could be "not as much as people think", says Constanze Stelzenmller, the director of the German Marshall Fund's Berlin office. "Both McCain and Obama are quite close to each other."
From a European perspective, she says, the statements by both senators on working to ending torture and co-operating with Europe on such pressing issues as climate change will be welcomed. But "as president, the winner will have to think about US national interests. If they have to, they will - including on climate change".
The European Union n under its French presidency - drew up a letter this week for the next president, pointedly focusing on the need for multilateral solutions to the world's problems after the go-it-alone Bush years. On Iraq and Afghanistan, it will be difficult to spot the difference between the new administration and Bush's policy in dealing with the twin challenges of ending two wars and reconstructing smashed societies. The same goes for the internationally endorsed goal of a viable two-state solution for Palestinians and Israelis.
Experts said Mr Obama would risk disappointing American public opinion if, for example, he failed to persuade Europe to play a greater military role in Afghanistan.
During his triumphant European tour last summer, and in an unusual break with protocol, he was practically endorsed by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, but rebuffed by the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, as he probed German willingness to step up participation in Afghanistan. "Mr Obama has said he will deliver the Europeans but might find it harder to do," commented Dana Allin, a transatlantic affairs specialist with the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The most difficult piece of unfinished business will be how to deal with Iran's nuclear programme, at a time when its government is continuing to defy the United Nations by refusing to halt its uranium enrichment programme. This is the process that could lead to production of fuel for a nuclear weapon n and a military showdown with the West. But Iran insists that its intentions are peaceful.
The European-led strategy in dealing with Iran's defiance through the UN Security Council has been on hold pending the outcome of the American election.
Nowhere has the Iranian threat been more fiercely debated than in Israel - currently the sole Middle East nuclear power - which sees Iran as an existential threat and has threatened military strikes against Iranian targets.
The French President was quoted in the Israeli press last week as saying that he feared that if elected to the presidency Mr Obama might "arrogantly" ignore his European partners and open a direct dialogue with Iran without preconditions. If Mr Obama changed US policy, that could be "very problematic", according to the French leader n who may be reflecting concerns in other European capitals.
Dennis Ross, a former Clinton and Bush envoy to the Middle East who now advises Mr Obama, gave the Israeli public a reality check, however. Asked whether Mr Obama would open a direct channel with the firebrand Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who faces a re-election challenge next June, he responded: "You don't talk to Ahmadinejad."
"First of all, he's not the decision maker," Mr Ross said in an interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz. "When Senator Obama suggests that he would be prepared to meet with him, he says such a meeting first has to be prepared. What he means is that you have to co-ordinate with your allies n all your allies. Second, it means you have to check whether you can put together an agenda for a lower-level meeting. If it becomes clear that you can't put together such an agenda, then you don't hold a meeting at a high level n the presidential level n because it's not going to lead anywhere. But if you can produce something that you know will lead somewhere, then it's silly not to do that."
Relations with Russia and China will also come to the fore after the election, with both nations hoping that the new administration will turn the page on the harsh rhetoric that emanated from US officials over Russia's summer invasion of Georgia and the Chinese crackdown in Tibet. Both presidential candidates identified nuclear security as a priority.
The outgoing US defence secretary, Robert Gates n who may be kept on by the next President if rumours in Washington are correct n said last week that he would advise the next American leader to seek a new strategic arms agreement with Russia. Rose Gottemoeller, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre for International Peace, said that the extension of the 1991 Start-I treaty and the thorny issue of Nato enlargement will be an early challenge, because they will have to be addressed next month during the transition period, according to a pre-determined calendar.
In the case of an Obama presidency, she said there was an opportunity for the 47-year-old to forge a personal relationship with the Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, who is only four years his junior, in order to move beyond the Cold War framework that has bedevilled relations between the two world powers. "They are both post-Cold War and post-baby boom. Both have the potential to break the mould," Ms Gottemoeller said.
As for Mr McCain, whose response to the Russian military crackdown in Georgia was that of a Cold War warrior, the Republican faces questions about his apparent plans to contain both Russia and China through a proposed "League of Democracies", which would undermine the UN. America is one of China's most important relationships.
A senior Chinese diplomat said that whatever the outcome of yesterday's vote, in the US-Sino relationship "there are far more common interests than differences. There is a clear understanding that we have to work together".
Time will tell whether America will become more inward-looking and protectionist under the pressure of the worst financial crunch since the Great Depression, which could eclipse foreign policy for a time. Ms Stelzenmller, the German expert, said that Europe should be concerned about this. "They will have a protectionist majority in Congress and the Senate," she warned. She added, however: "Crises tend to focus people's minds n but at such times they don't seek pointless crises. They realise that if we don't hang together, we'll hang separately."
But from the global perspective, at least one thing is certain from today. As Mr Allin put it: "There will be a huge advantage for the next President - not being George Bush."
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