Obama's Poland Jaunt: Low Marks Overall

See the latest op-ed published by yours truly at atlantic-community.org on US President Barack Obama's recent trip to Europe and specifically his jaunt in Poland. 

Obama started strong just by virtue of being in Europe, and stopping in Poland helped provide a badly needed shot in the arm for US public diplomacy and strategic relations in the former Communist bloc. 

But he flailed on Israel -- a poignant subject for Poland, the home of Auschwitz, in which masses of Jews perished at the hands of the Nazis -- offering a dubious "I will always be there for Israel" in response to a question from a concerned Polish Jew. Obama's statement would have been more convincing if he hadn't just been snubbed big-time during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington, who called Obama's plan to return to Israel's 1967 borders "indefensible."

Nor did Obama do much better on the military dossier. He highlighted plans to house a squadron of US fighter jets in Poland in 2013, which did generate some positive echo in the national and regional press. Yet the US squadron's presence in the country would have been more significant had these same arrangements not been already scheduled, well in advance of the President's trip.

For these reasons and more, Obama's European tour was more style than substance. 

Bin Laden Reported Dead

From Al Jazeera: 

"US president Barack Obama is due to make a statement shortly in which he is expected to announce the death of Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda. [...]
 

"Qais Azimy, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Kabul, said that Afghan officials have confirmed that Bin Laden had died and that his body was with the United States.

"Officials would not confirm whether he had been killed in Afghanistan or Pakistan, and said that the death of the al-Qaeda leader was more of a "symbolic victory", as he was no longer directly connected to the group's field operations, Azimy reported."

*

The Washington Post posits that this was a CIA operation. It comes on the heels of an already white-hot controversy involving CIA operative Raymond Davis, who was working undercover in Pakistan when he shot and killed two Pakistanis who allegedly tried to rob him. 

Late the night of Sunday, May 1, US President Barack Obama made an address from the White House -- after a delay of over an hour -- replete with imagery of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and an unabashedly pro-American, surprisingly hawkish stance on the breaking news. 

"Justice has been done," Obama declared. The US president also stressed that "we must remain vigilant," and that the operation against Bin Laden was not an act within a larger war against Islam. Importantly, Obama made explicit reference to the fact that this claim was originally made by former US President George W. Bush.

"We will be relentless in defense of our citizens, and our friends and allies," Obama said, with manifest resolution in his voice. 

Crowds spilled into the streets in Washington. Ecstatic chants erupted of "USA! USA!" from crowds that gathered in front of the White House.

*

The questions we transatlantic thinkers must now ask ourselves include:


- How should the US and Europe respond? 

- What are the security implications involved? How might we anticipate the possibility of reprisals, attacks or other violence in the West?

- What are the long-term effects of a killing of this magnitude, whether "symbolic" or real?


Your comments are welcome.

Germany’s Libya Abstention and the World: What Now?

         Germany’s March 17^th decision to abstain from the United Nations vote for a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over Libya has unleashed a firestorm of international criticism – as well as open skepticism on the country’s current and future fitness for leadership on the world stage. The tumultuous last few weeks have observers voicing three primary concerns on whether Germany should (or even could) assume the world leadership position it claims to want: 1) a paradox, both in policy and in image, 2) battered confidence on the part of its foreign partners, and 3) an uncertain future in global leadership.

         Germany’s actions are paradoxical at national, European and international levels. The country long followed draconian foreign-affairs strictures such as “never alone” and “never again Auschwitz,” which guided the country since it emerged, shuddering and ashamed, from its losing role in World War II. After abstention, these tenets seem, at least in the immediate, to have largely been cast aside – with no alternatives proposed to replace them. Equally problematic are the polling results of German opinion on Libya: Reuters reported in April that a whopping 71 percent of Germans support international intervention in the country. According to a contributor at the online Atlantic Community, 65 percent of Germans – essentially, many of the same voters – would disapprove of German participation therein. The country shows a sort of diplomatic allergy to the often ugly business of conflict prevention. Berlin still insists it wants a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, but after its ill-considered abstention, its Western UN allies will surely be loath to grant such a diplomatic trump card to a partner increasingly seen as unreliable.

         The battered confidence in Germany’s recent diplomacy is perhaps best reflected by the United States and France. (...)