REJECTED: European leaders never thought they’d miss George W. Bush.
Recent headlines chronicling the breakdown in U.S.-Israeli affairs and the personal loathing between President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have overshadowed the continuing ructions in Washington’s relations with its traditional allies in Europe.
Josh Rogin at Bloomberg View has reported that Mr. Obama delivered what can only be regarded as an extraordinary slight to Jens Stoltenberg, who became the head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization six months ago. Obama is one of the few Western leaders who has not yet met with Stoltenberg and in fact deliberately passed up an opportunity to see him last week when Stoltenberg was in Washington. Rogin noted that the NATO chief was finally able to secure a last-minute meeting with Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, but that Stoltenberg requested a meeting with Obama well in advance of the visit but never heard back from the White House.
The upshot is that Obama missed a good opportunity to demonstrate NATO solidarity in the face of Moscow’s on-going depredations against Ukraine. As Rogin concluded, “the message Russian President Vladimir Putin will take away is that the White House-NATO relationship is rocky, and he will be right.” Moreover, given that Stoltenberg is a two-time prime minister of Norway, a meeting would have sent a useful message to Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Denmark that are facing increased Russian provocations (here, here and here).
Mr. Obama’s disinterest in America’s European allies is a long-standing story, however. In September 2009, as part of his “reset” of relations with Moscow, he abruptly shelved plans to deploy ballistic missile defenses in eastern Europe that Poland and the Czech Republic had signed on to at considerable political risk. As a Washington Post assessment notes, administration officials “failed to give a heads-up to the Poles and the Czechs, making it appear like a diplomatic snub at their expense.” Characterizing the U.S. consultation process, a senior national security official in Warsaw lamented that “we heard through the media.”
Obama then skipped out on a November 2009 meeting with European Union leaders at the White House, conspicuously assigning the hosting duties to Vice President Joe Biden. Reports (examples here, here and here) were soon circulating that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy – the latter being the most pro-American leader in Paris in decades – felt they were being ignored.
Well. . . .
European leaders, with few exceptions, quite deliberately undermined Bush and promoted Obama. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.