PRAGUE — "I think we did okay," concluded U.S. President Barack Obama after last week's London G20 summit on the world financial crisis. It was a verdict that could reasonably be applied to all three summits - Prague and Strasbourg, as well as London - and to the numerous bilateral meetings the President attended on his whirlwind European tour that ends today in Turkey.
Where security permitted, Mr. Obama received his usual rock-star welcome from large crowds of young Europeans. He established good personal relations with all the major European leaders. And he delivered a bold substantive speech calling for the popular goal of curbing nuclear proliferation.
Americans at home will conclude from the news coverage that their new President has restored America's reputation somewhat. All the summits ended in some kind of agreement. Mr. Obama's bilateral meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was cordial. And the overall impression from the tour is that the Atlantic alliance is recovering nicely to tackle some important but soluble economic and security questions.
Okay seems a fair verdict - and maybe slightly better than okay.
From the archives
Much of this restrained euphoria, however, arises from the skillful managing of expectations. Once we remove the veil of low expectations, however, how do the results of the various summits look?
The G20 agreed on more funding for the International Monetary Fund and global bodies dealing with developing countries. It postponed any concerted international economic stimulus to a later summit. And it took a few modest steps toward new international rules for finance that must still respect national sovereignty in regulatory matters.
That mixture fell short of what Europe and America wanted: respectively, a global financial regulator and a concerted economic stimulus. But that shortfall may be no bad thing. Consumers may be persuaded to spend again less by cheap money than by the prospect of stable finances. And it seems sensible to see how previous injections of demand have worked before embarking on dramatic new policies.
NATO's summit at Strasbourg was a clearer case of low expectations producing mediocre results. Mr. Obama had been long expected to call for more troops for Afghanistan where the United States, Canada, Britain and a handful of other countries have provided most of the forces in a struggle endorsed by the whole of NATO.
In the event, Mr. Obama gracefully accepted a promise of 5,000 extra soldiers, many of whom will not actually fight anyone, from an alliance of 26 countries. This derisory offer, along with Europe's spending about 1 per cent of its collective GDP on defence, amounts to shirking NATO obligations. It was hardly an achievement.
It is hard to say what the Prague summit between the U.S. and the European Union was intended to be about, but it soon became clear there was no clear agreement on the two central issues that affect them all - how to deal with Turkey and Russia.
Europe itself is divided on how to deal with Russia - between a West that wants secure Russian energy supplies and a post-Soviet East that wants a secure independence for countries such as Ukraine and Georgia. It is similarly divided on whether to admit Turkey to full EU membership - between France and Germany (against) and Britain, other countries and the EU Commission (for). Mr. Obama leans toward France and Germany on the Russia question. He tilts toward Britain on Turkish membership.
This list of unsolved problems - Turkey, Ukraine, Georgia, Russia's growing assertiveness, continued financial nervousness - will continue to aggravate Europe when Mr. Obama returns to Washington. Europe alone seems incapable of solving them. In the face of the current fashion for anti-Americanism, U.S. leadership will be required.
In a similar moment of continental paralysis in the 1950s, British foreign secretary Anthony Eden hit upon the idea of using the Western European Union, a modest institution neglected after NATO was founded, to bring postwar Germany into the Western security system over initial French opposition to German rearmament. This led, in time, to full German participation in a revived Europe, to the Treaty of Rome, and to the long postwar economic boom founded on a secure Western alliance.
Mr. Obama might consider a similar move. Two years ago, George Bush, Chancellor Angela Merkel and EU Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso agreed to move toward a North Atlantic Economic Union. That grand title conceals a very modest reality - a body that is intended to smooth over regulatory differences between America and Europe.
It could be expanded, however, into a genuine Atlantic Economic Union, uniting the U.S., Canada and the EU but also admitting those countries in Europe that are not EU members. They include Norway and Switzerland - but also Turkey, Ukraine, Georgia (and the other "eastern partnership" countries) and Serbia.
Such a union would not offer "free movement of labour" (i.e. open immigration), which frightens France and Germany. But it would soothe that pain quite effectively by giving new entrants membership of the largest free-trade area in the world accounting for more than 50 per cent of world GDP. In addition to Ukraine and Georgia, it might admit a Russia that has shed its nostalgia for empire. And it might provide the springboard of confidence and stability for an economic revival of both Europe and America.
But all that would require a greater willingness to take risks and spend political capital than we have seen in the past week.
John O'Sullivan is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
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