By Victor Davis Hanson

In the coming year plenty of our chickens will be coming home to roost. Take foreign relations. In 2009 the new administration assumed that George W. Bush was largely responsible for global tensions. As a remedy we loudly reached out to our foes and those with whom we had uneasy relationships. They play the part of the pushy class bully we the whiny nerd. But so far these leaders -- like Irans Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Venezuelas Hugo Chavez and Russias Vladimir Putin -- have only interpreted Barack Obamas serial goodwill gestures as weaknesses to be exploited.
In the waning days of 2009 Iran has announced it has no intention of dismantling its nuclear facilities and ignored the latest Obama deadline to cease. Theres no reason not to expect the theocracy to make significant strides in its nuclear program in 2010 while continuing without rebuke to beat and murder democratic dissidents in its streets.
Russia has announced plans to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons - and scoffed at our polite suggestions that it should pressure Iran to stop its nuclear development.
Venezuela brags of its own similar program to come -- an act that could threaten all the neighboring democracies in the region.

The administration courted China on a much-heralded Asian tour. President Obama even has said he would be our first Pacific president.
Unfortunately China was not impressed. It declined our advice about reducing its carbon footprint and instead reminded Americans that we owe the Chinese people nearly $1 trillion. Expect much more of that hectoring in 2010 as our debt to China grows.
Consider also the threat of Islamic terrorism. In 2009 some in the Obama administration decided war on terror was too provocative a label for what might be better dubbed overseas contingency operations. Apparently they were thinking a kinder gentler image would discourage terrorists.
Accordingly the self-confessed architect of Sept. 11 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was promised a civil trial in New York rather than a military tribunal normally accorded to out-of-uniform murderous terrorists. Expect a lot of soapbox speechmaking about Americas sins during his testimony in 2010.
As part of our efforts to break with the Bush anti-terrorism past President Obama also vowed he would close the facility at Guantanamo Bay by Jan. 22 2010 - another deadline that wont be met.
But as 2009 ended we were reminded that radical Islamic terrorists still want to kill us for who we are and what we represent rather than any particular thing we do.
Maj. Nidal Hasan nursed on radical Islamic doctrine murdered 12 fellow soldiers and one civilian at Ford Hood Texas. Five would-be terrorists with U.S.

citizenship were arrested in Pakistan on their way to link up with Islamist militant groups.
And Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was stopped in flight from Amsterdam before he could blow up an American passenger jet.
Note that all these recent terrorists were not poor lived in the hospitable West - and cared little that the Obama administration has been critical of the U.S.s prior war-on-terror policies.
So while we assured the world in 2009 that we wouldnt be overzealous in our various efforts to stop terrorists the terrorists proved they most certainly would be in theirs to kill us.
Meanwhile at home we operated on the same naive assumptions. The Obama administration inherited a $500 billion deficit and expanded it threefold. Its planned mega-deficits may well grow the aggregate national debt over the next decade to over $20 trillion.
But the administrations 2009 calculations on how to service the growing red ink are based on continued cheap interest. Yet in 2010 it is likely we will see rising inflation rising interest rates - and rising costs to the continual self-destructive borrowing.

We were given a financial break on energy prices in 2009. The worldwide recession sent oil down to about $50 a barrel.
But America did little during the years reprieve to rush into production newly discovered domestic gas and oil fields to tap existing finds in Alaska or to license new nuclear plants.
By years end oil was creeping back up to $80. If the economic upswing continues in 2010 it may near its old high of nearly $150 a barrel. Soon we will wish we had done something concrete in 2009 rather than offering more stale rhetoric about wind and solar power.
In other words 2009 may seem to have ended relatively quietly. But in our foreign relations in the war against terror in our massive borrowing and in our energy policies we created chickens that soon will come home to roost in 2010.
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution Stanford University and author most recently of A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.