The Obama World Tour
JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images
While Americans were fixated on relentless coverage of the Michael Jackson memorial last week, President Barack Obama was shoring up the country’s international stature as he toured in connection with the Group of Eight Summit in Italy.
Global summitry is marked by rigid protocols and orchestrated photo ops, yet some tangible diplomatic progress was made. Incremental progress was reached on global climate change and reduction of nuclear arsenals.
Perhaps the greatest significance of Mr. Obama’s tour was symbolic: America acting more like a partner than an outlier.
The United States asserted itself as a global leader on environmental issues and arms reduction. This, despite deep conflicts among the industrialized powers in the G-8 and rapidly developing countries such as China, India, Brazil and Mexico.
Mr. Obama got a rock-star reception in the nations he visited, but his charisma was less helpful in bridging the divide on climate change issues between developing and industrialized nations.
The entire G-8 (United States, Canada, Russia, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, Japan and Germany) for the first time agreed to limit warming of the Earth to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, a goal that would require massive changes in how energy is generated and used in everything from automobiles and buildings to manufacturing plants.
The G-8 agreed broadly (without specifying how) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050 — that Mr. Obama has yet to persuade Congress to accept that goal. The Obama administration had hoped to convince China, India and other nations to sign onto the plan as well, but that didn’t happen.
Mr. Obama emerged as the point man in the effort to bridge the chasm between industrial and developing nations. On Thursday, he chaired a 17-nation Major Economies Forum that included other countries that are large carbon emitters.
In his speech in L’Aquila, Italy, Mr. Obama said the G-8’s collective effort on climate change was an important start, but that reaching the goals “would not be easy.”
That’s a gigantic understatement. Finding common ground on reducing pollution and creating new alternative energy sources among rich nations and poor ones would be difficult enough if the world economy were booming. Doing so in the teeth of a severe global recession is a jigsaw puzzle of competing geopolitical interests.
Poor nations see no reason to limit the kind of carbon fuel-based industries that are key to their development if wealthier nations won’t do so first. To convince them otherwise might require heavy subsidies that developed nations say they can’t afford.
Before heading to Italy, Mr. Obama met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in an effort to “reset” U.S.-Russia relations. Russia may be less interested in such a reset than the United States, but Mr. Obama did improve dialogue, including an agreement to reduce each country’s nuclear weapons stockpiles by at least one-fourth.
The president ended his trip by promoting farming and financial aid to combat poverty while he visited the West African nation of Ghana over the weekend.
Diplomatic progress often is measured in millimeters, and so it was on this trip. But the G-8’s agreement, however hesitant, on global climate change is important, as is the step toward reducing the world’s nuclear arsenal. Distracted Americans should pause and take note.
“The entire G-8 (United States, Canada, Russia, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, Japan and Germany) for the first time agreed to limit warming of the Earth to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit”
Anyone with even the simplest of logical thinking skills knows this is a load of BS and is impossible to measure. Why don’t just call this what it really is….a cash grab.
Is it bias or dishonesty?
“America acting more like a partner than an outlier”
What would cause the editors to write something this foolish?
Presumably the editors mean sitting through a 50-minute Vladimir Putin lecture makes one a partner.
Just as silently sitting through a Daniel Ortega lecture makes us partners with the Bolivarian Revolutionaries.
Poor, poor Georgia and Ukraine… they’re screwed. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania — you’re next.
And pity the brave Honduran constitutionalists… screwed, too.
And nothing from the Editors about the astonishing lack of leadership shown by President Obama. The world sees him as a weakling.
It could be bias. I think it’s the dishonesty.
Another bombed international concert tour, another drooly, sycophantic review from the Post Dispatch.
Other than the image of Obama ogling a teenage girls behind, no one will remember a single thing he said or did. The only thing Obama takes the lead on is mediocrity.
Please see this link for reasoned analysis:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124744075427029805.html
Selected quotes include:
“It is irresponsible for an American president to go to Moscow and tell a room full of young Russians less than the truth about how the Cold War ended.”
“He proclaims moral equivalence between the U.S. and our adversaries, he readily accepts a false historical narrative, and he refuses to stand up against anti-American lies.”
“Asked at a NATO meeting in France in April whether he believed in American exceptionalism, the president said, “I believe in American Exceptionalism just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” In other words, not so much.”
“Perhaps Mr. Obama thinks he is making America inoffensive to our enemies. In reality, he is emboldening them and weakening us.”
“shoring up the country’s international stature”
“more like a partner than an outlier”
Pfffft. The whole “lost international stature” meme is a dishonest invention of the leftist media here and abroad, first established to aid in the trashing of Bush, and then to serve as “factual” foundation for future propaganda efforts like this one.
The false notion of our “lost stature” (somebody please tell me, which country should be held in higher esteem?) is almost as ridiculous as those of “climate change” and “50 million uninsured,” yet now that they’ve been successfully sold to our largely ignorant populace, they are routinely presented as facts.