Saturday, November 7, 2009

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Doubts About Obama

Todd Heisler/THe New York Times

The United states and europe still have tensions over issues like Afghanistan and iran. President obama joined NATo leaders on the French-German border in April.
By STEVEN ERLANGER

T

Marrakesh, Morocco HE ELECTION OF Barack Obama as president of the United States seemed to most Europeans to be unadulterated good news, marking an end to the perceived unilateralism and indifference to allied views of former President George W. Bush. But nine months into Mr. Obama’s presidency, transAtlantic relations are again clouded by doubts. Europe and the United States remain at least partly out of sync on Afghanistan, the Middle East, Iran and climate change. Many Europeans argue that Mr. Obama has not broken clearly enough with Bush administration policies that they dislike, while some Americans argue that the

An initial euphoria after the end of the Bush era gives way to a transAtlantic ‘spiral of dissatisfaction’ . . .
Europeans are too passive, watching Mr. Obama struggle with difficult issues, like Afghanistan and the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, without providing much substantive help. Mr. Obama remains popular with the European public, but a senior European official said that he was worried about an underlying disaffection. “It’s dangerous, because we must not get into a spiral of dissatisfaction on both sides,” he said. These generalizations lack real

substance, he said, but the criticism runs that “the U.S. thinks that Europeans don’t want to do anything to help and the Europeans feel that the U.S. is naïve and not delivering enough.” Another senior European official said that for “all the talk of multilateralism” and the European contribution of aid and NATO troops to the fight against the Taliban, which has brought more than 500 European deaths, Afghanistan remained an American