Obama Refuses To Meet With NATO Head

[Busybody]

Obama Refuses To Meet With NATO Head




There’s that flexibility again. He’s leaving the door to Europe open to both Russia and Islamists.

Via Fox News:


President Barack Obama reportedly will not meet with NATO’s new secretary general when he is in Washington this week, despite requests from the alliance chief’s staff for a get-together.

Bloomberg View reported Tuesday that Jens Stoltenberg’s office requested a meeting with Obama in advance of his scheduled visit, but did not receive any response from the White House. Instead, Bloomberg View reported that Stoltenberg had to settle for a last-minute meeting with Defense Secretary Ashton Carter.

Stoltenberg is scheduled to be in Washington through Thursday, primarily so he can attend a strategic brainstorming session involving military officials and experts from the U.S and NATO.

Stoltenberg, who replaced Anders Fogh Rasmussen as head of the world’s largest military alliance in October, was able to meet with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper Monday, the day before Harper announced that Canada would expand its participation in the U.S.-led military campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

The report of Obama’s snub comes amid Russia’s growing willingness to test NATO’s military readiness. On Tuesday, NATO jets were scrambled after four Russian military planes were spotted flying over the Baltic Sea with their transponders turned off. Over the weekend, a Danish newspaper published remarks by the Russian ambassador to Denmark in which he hinted that Russian missiles could target Danish warships if Copenhagen joins NATO’s missile defense system.

But the most far-reaching example of Russian belligerence came Tuesday, when Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported that Moscow was preparing to lease 12 long-range bombers to Argentina in exchange for shipments of beef and wheat. The report comes after a round of rhetoric from Russian officials questioning Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Busybody]

It’s not as if the president doesn’t have the time, as if any prior commitment could supersede the importance of American military preparations on the frontlines of an undeclared war with a revanchist Russia. Obama will host an event aimed at increasing interest in the Affordable Care Act on Wednesday and he will deliver a speech on the economy in Alabama on Thursday. Moreover, as the Wall Street Journal reported, the president has gone out of his way to meet with Google executives on a number of occasions.

Rogin wonders if Obama’s decision to ignore NATO’s ranking official in a brazen display will embolden Moscow, and it probably will. But more worryingly is the prospect that the president’s disregard for the security situation in Europe will dispirit nervous allies in places like Warsaw, Vilnius, Tallinn, and Riga, to name only a handful of European capitals nervously eyeing irredentist elements in the Kremlin. Many foreign affairs observers have speculated that Vladimir Putin’s highest aspiration is not the revitalization of Soviet-era dominance in Europe, but the shattering of the NATO alliance.

Would politicians in London, Washington, and Paris commit to the prospect of a major war over the territorial integrity of Estonia? Many believe that these Western powers would decline to invite the apocalypse over the fate of a minor Baltic state, and the Russians know it. If a military provocation from Russia prompted a NATO member to invoke the treaty’s mutual defense provisions, and that call was met with a limited response – or no response at all – it would convince all NATO members that Atlantic Alliance was effectively dissolved.

If American officials were looking at the threat environment in Eastern Europe and the greater Middle East, flaunting the NATO alliance and isolating a nervous Israel seems like the height of irresponsibility. For Obama, however, minor concerns like war and peace have apparently been subordinated by his anxiety over his political legacy.

 

[miles]

What a schmuck. He is a complete failure as a leader. Just when I think he's run out of stewpid things to do he he comes up with some new kind of douche baggery.

 

[Busybody]

he isn't a failure

he is ANTI AMERICAN

 

[phrodeau]

What a schmuck. He is a complete failure as a leader. Just when I think he's run out of stewpid things to do he he comes up with some new kind of douche baggery.

Hm. I didn't think you would say that about Putin.