Shaping a response to Russia will be a high-stakes test for Obama
President Obama's trip will be a plunge into American leadership in Europe after years of shifting U.S. policy away from the Old World.
President Obama, at the Andrews Air Force Base golf course in Maryland, will visit Europe this week. (Mandel Ngan / AFP/Getty Images / March 22, 2014)
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WASHINGTON — Planned as a springtime tour with a modest itinerary — affording time to chat with the pope, admire the Rembrandts and take in the Colosseum — President Obama's weeklong trip to Europe instead has become a high-stakes test of whether he can move the continent's leaders into a tougher response to Russia's annexation of Crimea.
Obama will huddle Monday in Amsterdam with other members of the G-7, seeking a strategy against what many see as the most threatening European land grab since World War II. He will have to navigate disagreements among the European nations over how far to go, and the price they are willing to pay, to sanction Russia for seizing the peninsula from Ukraine.
And he will have to reassure Russia's nervous neighbors that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is prepared to uphold its promises to defend them.
It's a retro role for the president, as well as for Western Europe, which has been snapped back into its pivotal place in global geopolitics. And it's not one that Obama — who has spent his presidency talking about shifting U.S. policy away from the Old World — is likely to have anticipated.
Some say he has not prepared for this challenge.
"It's going to require an enormous amount of American leadership in Europe, which we have not seen for the last five years," said Heather Conley, director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. "We've got a lot of making up to do."
Much of Europe welcomed the election of Obama after the go-it-alone style of President George W. Bush. But many diplomats since have come to view the U.S. administration as dismissive and disengaged. And that was before a top American official was caught on tape several weeks ago, rudely brushing off the European Union's views on the growing unrest in Ukraine.
On Obama's itinerary Wednesday will be his first visit as president to Brussels, the seat of the 28-member European Union. The EU-U.S. summit there, following a meeting on nuclear security at The Hague earlier in the week, will be the first such get-together since 2011.
The president's role in strategizing with his European counterparts also is complicated by revelations last year of U.S. spying on European heads of state and of bulk collection of phone data. The scandal has touched a nerve, particularly in Germany.
For the rest, see:
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-obama-europe-20140323,0,5743042.story#axzz2wndrNjrU
And he will have to reassure Russia's nervous neighbors that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is prepared to uphold its promises to defend them.
It's a retro role for the president, as well as for Western Europe, which has been snapped back into its pivotal place in global geopolitics. And it's not one that Obama — who has spent his presidency talking about shifting U.S. policy away from the Old World — is likely to have anticipated.
Some say he has not prepared for this challenge.
"It's going to require an enormous amount of American leadership in Europe, which we have not seen for the last five years," said Heather Conley, director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. "We've got a lot of making up to do."
Much of Europe welcomed the election of Obama after the go-it-alone style of President George W. Bush. But many diplomats since have come to view the U.S. administration as dismissive and disengaged. And that was before a top American official was caught on tape several weeks ago, rudely brushing off the European Union's views on the growing unrest in Ukraine.
On Obama's itinerary Wednesday will be his first visit as president to Brussels, the seat of the 28-member European Union. The EU-U.S. summit there, following a meeting on nuclear security at The Hague earlier in the week, will be the first such get-together since 2011.
The president's role in strategizing with his European counterparts also is complicated by revelations last year of U.S. spying on European heads of state and of bulk collection of phone data. The scandal has touched a nerve, particularly in Germany.
For the rest, see:
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-obama-europe-20140323,0,5743042.story#axzz2wndrNjrU
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