Not since former President Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933 in the middle of the Great Depression has any president faced as many problems as President Barack Obama and his administration, said a New York Times reporter.

David Sanger, The New York Times’ chief Washington correspondent, spoke Monday at the Foreign Policy Conference in a lecture and discussion titled “The Architecture of American Foreign Policy,” moderated by Vice Provost of International Programs Zach Messitte and Associate Director of International Programs Suzette Grillot and featuring questions from the audience.

Among Sanger’s other qualifications are two Pulitzer Prizes, the Weintal Prize, the Aldo Beckman prize and two Merriman Smith Memorial Awards. He also is the writer of the New York Times’ bestseller “The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power” and is a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Aspen Strategy Group.

“While the Iraq War had many costs — 4,000 Americans killed and wounded and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis —I think that its biggest effect on American history is that it distracted the U.S. from many bigger threats and some big opportunities that we could have exploited and did not and this came about in part because the Bush administration believed that this was going to be a six-month war,” Sanger said, citing North Korea and Iran as primary examples.

Although, he said, the Chinese were the big winner of the Iraq War.

“They used the moment to sign up exclusive oil deals throughout South America and Africa,” Sanger said. “They used the moment to do very brilliantly what we did in the ’50s and ’60s, which is aid programs to spread their influence in southeast Asia.”

Focusing on Iran, Sanger expressed his concern that the Obama administration has not firmly established “red lines” over which the Iranian nuclear program will step before their patience ends.

“If you don’t answer that question you wake up one day, as we did with North Korea, to find a nuclear test happens,” he said.

Sanger said he was pleasantly surprised by Obama’s diplomatic relationship building with Pakistan, noting Pakistani assistance in taking down both the Pakistani and Afghani Taliban, though he is uncertain if this is a fundamental shift in Pakistan foreign policy, or if they are merely dealing with a threat to themselves. He said Pakistan is more important than Afghanistan, emphasizing its nuclear arsenal and larger population.

Although Sanger said Washington has focused disproportionately on Afghanistan, he did mention a $100-million program in which the U.S. helped to secure Pakistan’s nuclear stockpiles, though Pakistan will still not give the U.S. intelligence on the locations and safeguards of each. Sanger said he considers this potentially to be a case of justified paranoia.

Also with regard to nuclear proliferation, Sanger said “while there is no evidence that [North Korea] has sold nuclear materials to terrorists, there is evidence that they have sold nuclear technology to other states.”

Perhaps even more concerning, Sanger said “unlike Iran, the South Koreans have nothing else to sell.”

About Obama’s foreign policy in general, Sanger praised its pragmatism, while mentioning its compromises on human rights, such as women’s rights in Afghanistan, but said the administration is only now coming to terms with the limits of the strategy of diplomatic engagement, as evidenced by Iran’s total lack of engagement and China’s selectiveness therein.

“I think when we all look back on the Obama Administration, for all that we are focused now on Afghanistan, on Pakistan and on Iran, my guess is that how he manages the China relationship will end up being what his foreign policy is or is not remembered for,” Sanger said.