It was already becoming clear that Soviet expansionism was going to be a problem, so the main foreign policy problem would be carefully managing the rebuilding and political renewal of Eastern Europe, Balkan, and Mediterranean nations. In Asia, the clash between Nationalists and Communists in a newly free China would present a similar problem. There was the thorny question of whether DeGaulle's reanimated France should just pick up where prewar France had left off with Indochina and North Africa. And the question of a Jewish homeland was looming. FDR was anxious to set up the kind of international organization—the United Nations—that could prevent future wars, a goal he'd seen elude Wilson after World War I.

Domestically, he'd called for a new economic bill of rights. But he knew the next really big issue was civil rights. Some argue that FDR had been too slow on this issue, but Conrad Black's biography of FDR suggests that he was carefully positioning the country to undertake the needed transformation, just as he'd skillfully maneuvered the country from wholesale isolationism to full engagement in World War II.