Obama's whirlwind tour of Europe

All eyes are on President Obama this week as he embarks on his first major foreign trip. What's on the itinerary? Just the G20 economic forum in London; meetings with key European leaders, not to mention his first sit-down with Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev; and then a quick hop over to Istanbul where he’ll make good on a campaign promise - giving a policy speech in an Islamic country during his first 100 days as President. So all in all it’s just another week at the office...

The G20 meeting could provide a rough start to the trip for Obama. There’s a widespread feeling around the globe that the American economic model is to blame for the current global economic crisis. Obama wants the developed nations to spend more on stimulus plans to help get the world out of its financial doldrums, a move some European leaders, like Germany’s Angela Merkel, are dead set against. The Europeans will likely use the forum to propose a sweeping set of international economic regulations, something Wall Street doesn’t like. The developing nations are calling for aid to prevent economic-fueled catastrophes in countries across Africa and Asia; and then there’s China, which is the wildcard at the G20.

And according to a report in Germany's Der Spiegel Obamamania, at least among Europe’s heads of state, is waning. A lot of it seems to boil down to their feeling that the Obama Administration isn’t taking Europe (in their opinion) seriously enough, though frankly, there also seems to be a measure of hurt feelings among the Europeans because Obama has recognized that Asia is starting to surpass Europe in terms of power and importance (as witnessed by Hillary Clinton’s choice of Asia rather than Europe for her first trip abroad as Secretary of State).

Then there’s the meeting with Medvedev, which will be closely watched since Obama has made such a point of saying he wants to ‘reset’ US-Russian relations. While both presidents have talked about wanting better relations they keep getting hung up on the same issues - missile defense, Iran and NATO expansion. And to make matters worse, not everyone on the US side seems to have gotten the reset memo.

Gen. John Craddock, NATO’s top commander and chief of U.S. forces in Europe, doesn’t seem to be in a compromise state of mind. Craddock said that relations with Russia were “turned upside down” by Russia's invasion of Georgia last August. The General seems to have missed this story last week, which provides more evidence that the Georgians actually started the conflict with their attack on South Ossetia.

This is the corner that we seem to have painted ourselves into in US/Russian relations - the Russians are dead set against having Georgia and Ukraine become members of NATO, feeling that it will threaten their security; while the US has staked so much in backing their membership that to not continue down that path would look like a sign of weakness, or if you believe the New York Times piece, the death of NATO itself.

It’s quite an agenda of issues, ones that have the potential to shape global politics and economics for years to come. Instead of Obama, maybe sending King Solomon would be a better choice.