DamnYankee
No Neg Policy
- Apr 2, 2009
- 4,516
- 441
- 48
[excerpt]
But what actual achievements does all this admiration put in the new American president's hands to take back home?
For one, he and Medvedev launched talks to further reduce the two biggest nuclear arsenals on the planet.
Those talks if successful, and this is a big if could have an even bigger payoff by actually pushing the "reset button" everyone talks about in U.S.-Russia relations and laying the groundwork for cooperation in important areas of disagreement, such as Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program.
The 20-nation global economic summit in London didn't yield what Obama most wanted, big new outlays of stimulus spending by other nations.
European wariness toward rising debt is one reason. There's also a reservoir of anger here toward America that euphoria about the election of the first black man to the U.S. presidency can't erase as expressed by huge protests in London. Many Europeans blame the recession that's enveloping them on the U.S. its reckless ways and global dominance.
This resentment and the recession's weakening of the U.S. had Obama confronting multiple and previously unheard-of questions about America's global standing, particularly after Brown declared that "the old Washington consensus is over."
Got to wait and see
However, Obama managed to keep out of the final communique some potentially problematic items, most notably a global superregulator with authority inside individual nations' financial systems. And on a range of smaller priorities, the agreement among wealthy and developing nations tracked Obama's goals, providing significant boosts to less-well-off countries and tightening regulation over risky financial products and institutions.
While praising the final agreement, Obama delivered a noncommittal bottom-line verdict: "We've got to wait and see."
Here in Strasbourg, the main agenda item was Afghanistan, in Obama's conversations with the French and German leaders and, even more prominently, at Saturday's NATO summit.
Analysis: Cheers but mixed bag for Obama - White House- msnbc.com
So for all the preliminary sentiment expressing favor over GWB, who really knows whether Obama will handle these affairs favorably in the end?
But what actual achievements does all this admiration put in the new American president's hands to take back home?
For one, he and Medvedev launched talks to further reduce the two biggest nuclear arsenals on the planet.
Those talks if successful, and this is a big if could have an even bigger payoff by actually pushing the "reset button" everyone talks about in U.S.-Russia relations and laying the groundwork for cooperation in important areas of disagreement, such as Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program.
The 20-nation global economic summit in London didn't yield what Obama most wanted, big new outlays of stimulus spending by other nations.
European wariness toward rising debt is one reason. There's also a reservoir of anger here toward America that euphoria about the election of the first black man to the U.S. presidency can't erase as expressed by huge protests in London. Many Europeans blame the recession that's enveloping them on the U.S. its reckless ways and global dominance.
This resentment and the recession's weakening of the U.S. had Obama confronting multiple and previously unheard-of questions about America's global standing, particularly after Brown declared that "the old Washington consensus is over."
Got to wait and see
However, Obama managed to keep out of the final communique some potentially problematic items, most notably a global superregulator with authority inside individual nations' financial systems. And on a range of smaller priorities, the agreement among wealthy and developing nations tracked Obama's goals, providing significant boosts to less-well-off countries and tightening regulation over risky financial products and institutions.
While praising the final agreement, Obama delivered a noncommittal bottom-line verdict: "We've got to wait and see."
Here in Strasbourg, the main agenda item was Afghanistan, in Obama's conversations with the French and German leaders and, even more prominently, at Saturday's NATO summit.
Analysis: Cheers but mixed bag for Obama - White House- msnbc.com
So for all the preliminary sentiment expressing favor over GWB, who really knows whether Obama will handle these affairs favorably in the end?
