Obama has got off to a good start, analysts said, by naming Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, General James Jones as national security advisor, Robert Gates as defense secretary and Susan Rice as ambassador to the United Nations.

But it remains to be seen how well they will gel as a team and how closely they will toe the Obama foreign policy line, they added.

"On paper they have all the necessary attributes: the pragmatism, the experience, the smarts," according to Aaron David Miller, a former adviser to both Republican and Democratic secretaries of state.

"I think what you'll see is a smart balance between the limitations of American power and its advantages," Miller told AFP. "Retrenchment is not so bad, if in picking your spots, you don't overreach."

So, citing information from his contacts, he expected the Obama team to abandon Bush's ideas of overthrowing dictatorships but retain the notion that pre-emptive military action may at times be required to defend US interests.

He also expected it to promote soft power -- the use of economic, diplomatic and cultural clout to influence the world rather than brute military force -- and be ready to engage US enemies "in tough and pragmatic negotiations."

During the campaign, Obama spoke of engaging with Iran, North Korea, and Cuba.

In unveiling his team in Chicago, Obama also sent a clear signal to US foes that his well known opposition to the Iraq war would not mean he would hesitate to commit military force if US interests were threatened.

"To ensure prosperity here at home and peace abroad, we all share the belief we have to maintain the strongest military on the planet," Obama said.

Analysts took this is stride.

Obama "demonstrated that he is not naive, and understood that you have to exercise power to keep the world peaceful or stabilize it," said George Perkovich, a top analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"It struck me as about right," Perkovich added.

Washington's European allies, he said, still look to the United States to be the world's dominant military power, as long as it wields its might wisely.

"I think it's an impressive team and I think they are astute choices," Perkovich said.

Perkovich as well as Miller particularly liked Obama's decision to appoint Jones and keep Gates, whom Bush named to replace Donald Rumsfeld, an architect of the unpopular war in Iraq.

Jones received kudos for his blend of military and diplomatic experience and Gates for his innovative work on difficult US military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Miller praised both Clinton's intelligence and toughness, but said it was important that Obama's formal rival for the Democratic Party presidential nomination be seen to be pursuing the White House policy rather than her own.

If not, he warned, foreign governments will try to exploit any divisions.

Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear non-proliferation expert as president of the Ploughshares Fund, hailed Obama's choices as "smart, experienced, credible" but feared Gates might resist Obama's calls for nuclear warheads reductions.

He said the new team agrees however on removing US troops from Iraq, refocusing military efforts on Afghanistan, restoring US moral authority worldwide and abandoning some high-tech weapons programs.

Unlike the other analysts interviewed, however, Cirincione suspected the Obama team was weighted to the center right.

Michael O'Hanlon, a national security analyst at the Brookings Institution, said that, depending on the issues, Gates and Jones are center to center-right while Clinton and Rice are center-left.

"I would say it is a centrist team," O'Hanlon told AFP.

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