German Assessment of Obama

Is it not interesting that the world sees what we do not. The blinders need to come off and we, as a republic must arise to foil the movement of the Obama administration.

German Assessment of Obama's Pacific Trip.....
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662822,00.html

Obama's Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage
By Gabor Steingart

AP
US President Barack Obama is back in the US after an Asian trip that
produced few results.

When he entered office, US President Barack Obama promised to inject US
foreign policy with a new tone of respect and diplomacy. His recent trip to
Asia, however, showed that it's not working. A shift to Bush-style bluntness
may be coming.

There were only a few hours left before Air Force One was scheduled to
depart for the flight home. US President Barack Obama trip through Asia had
already seen him travel 24,000 kilometers, sit through a dozen state
banquets, climb the Great Wall of China and shake hands with Korean
children. It was high time to take stock of the trip.

Barack Obama looked tired on Thursday, as he stood in the Blue House in
Seoul, the official residence of the South Korean president. He also seemed
irritable and even slightly forlorn. The CNN cameras had already been set
up. But then Obama decided not to play along, and not to answer the question
he had already been asked several times on his trip: what did he plan to
take home with him? Instead, he simply said "thank you, guys," and
disappeared. David Axelrod, senior advisor to the president, fielded the
journalists' questions in the hallway of the Blue House instead, telling
them that the public's expectations had been "too high."

The mood in Obama's foreign policy team is tense following an extended Asia
trip that produced no palpable results. The "first Pacific president," as
Obama called himself, came as a friend and returned as a stranger. The
Asians smiled but made no concessions.

Lost Some Stature

Upon taking office, Obama said that he wanted to listen to the world,
promising respect instead of arrogance. But Obama's currency isn't as strong
as he had believed. Everyone wants respect, but hardly anyone is willing to
pay for it. Interests, not emotions, dominate the world of realpolitik. The
Asia trip revealed the limits of Washington's new foreign policy: Although
Obama did not lose face in China and Japan, he did appear to have lost some
of his initial stature.

In Tokyo, the new center-left government even pulled out of its
participation in a mission which saw the Japanese navy refueling US warships
in the Indian Ocean as part of the Afghanistan campaign. In Beijing, Obama
failed to achieve any important concessions whatsoever. There will be no
binding commitments from China to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A
revaluation of the Chinese currency, which is kept artificially weak, has
been postponed. Sanctions against Iran? Not a chance. Nuclear disarmament?
Not an issue for the Chinese.

The White House did not even stand up for itself when it came to the
question of human rights in China. The president, who had said only a few
days earlier that freedom of expression is a universal right, was coerced
into attending a joint press conference with Chinese President Hu Jintao, at
which questions were forbidden. Former US President George W. Bush had
always managed to avoid such press conferences.

Relatively Unsuccessful

A look back in time reveals the differences. When former President Bill
Clinton went to China in June 1998, Beijing wanted to impress the Americans.
A press conference in the Great Hall of the People, broadcast on television
as a 70-minute live discussion, became a sensation the world over. Clinton
mentioned the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when the government used tanks
against protestors. But then President Jiang Zemin defended the tough
approach taken by the Chinese Communists. At the end of the exchange, the
Chinese president praised the debate and said: "I believe this is
democracy!"

Obama visited a new China, an economic power that is now making its own
demands. America should clean up its government finances, and the weak
dollar is unacceptable, the head of the Chinese banking authority said, just
as Obama's plane was about to land.

Obama's new foreign policy has also been relatively unsuccessful elsewhere,
with even friends like Israel leaving him high and dry. For the government
of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, peace is only conceivable under
its terms. Netanyahu has rejected Obama's call for a complete moratorium on
the construction of settlements. As a result, Obama has nothing to offer the
Palestinians and the Syrians. "We thought we had some leverage," says Martin
Indyk, a former ambassador to Israel under the Clinton administration and
now an advisor to Obama. "But that proved to be an illusion."

Even the president seems to have lost his faith in a genial foreign policy.
The approach that was being used in Afghanistan this spring, with its strong
emphasis on civilian reconstruction, is already being changed. "We're
searching for an exit strategy," said a staff member with the National
Security Council on the sidelines of the Asia trip.

'A Lot Like Jimmy Carter'

An end to diplomacy is also taking shape in Washington's policy toward
Tehran. It is now up to Iran, Obama said, to convince the world that its
nuclear power is peaceful. While in Asia, Obama mentioned "consequences"
unless it followed his advice. This puts the president, in his tenth month
in office, where Bush began -- with threats. "Time is running out," Obama
said in Korea. It was the same phrase Bush used against former Iraqi
dictator Saddam Hussein, shortly before he sent in the bombers.

There are many indications that the man in charge at the White House will
take a tougher stance in the future. Obama's advisors fear a comparison with
former Democratic President Jimmy Carter, even more than with Bush.
Prominent Republicans have already tried to liken Obama to the humanitarian
from Georgia, who lost in his bid to win a second term, because voters felt
that he was too soft. "Carter tried weakness and the world got tougher and
tougher because the predators, the aggressors, the anti-Americans, the
dictators, when they sense weakness, they all start pushing ahead," Newt
Gingrich, the former Republican speaker in the House of Representatives,
recently said. And then he added: "This does look a lot like Jimmy Carter."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan