I’m reading another review of President Obama’s trip to Europe, this one by Michael Shear and Kevin Sullivan writing in The Washington Post. I would recommend it for the casual reader, it’s balanced (noting comments from the both sides of the political spectrum) and it summarizes the highlights of the trip, allowing the reader to gain a quick recap of what happened on the way from London to Baghdad.
I’m starting to get the sense that the trip was a great success for Obama personally and for the image of the U.S. abroad, but it was something of a draw in terms of the substance of the trip. In the win column I would note that the U.S. was able to reboot the Bretton Woods-era financial institutions to deal with the global economic crisis rather than creating a new international financial regulatory system as France and Germany wanted; deflected talk of creating a new international reserve currency to replace the dollar, as suggested by Russia and China; announced plans with Russia to renegotiate key arms control treaties and then announced the lofty goal of working towards a world free of nuclear weapons (though, to be fair, other presidents have set this as an aspirational goal, the logical endpoint of the arms control treaties); announced new initiatives aimed at fostering closer ties with China; and, finally, continued to leverage Obama’s indecision on European missile defense to gain goodwill from both Russia and Eastern European countries (particularly impressed with the diplomatic finesse demonstrated here).
In the loss column I’d have to note that the U.S. failed to gain support from the G20 for a additional stimulus spending; and, at the NATO summit, the U.S. failed to gain allied support for additional combat troops for Afghanistan. I see that last item as the most glaring failure. I can’t help wonder how future historians will characterize this first presidential trip. If we call it a success are we being blinded by all the outstanding photo ops and demonstrations of Obama’s great personal popularity? If we note the failure to gain more combat troops from NATO and say this signaled a watershed for both NATO and the war in Afghanistan, are we being too pessimistic? Perhaps it is enough to say that the trip went well, there were no major mistakes and the U.S. scored a few wins and a few losses, but on balance it was a good trip for the new president.
