(London) – It is 60 years to the day since President Harry S. Truman signed the Marshall Plan into law to give much needed aid to a prostrate Europe.
It is one day since the Europeans told President Barack H. Obama that they have no intention of helping him to stimulate the world economy.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, presiding over an economy that was saved by America 60 years ago, and that has been supported by American consumers ever since, wouldn’t play.
Neither would French President Nikolas Sarkozy, whose nation’s memory of the liberation of the Paris they so easily surrendered has, er, dimmed with time.
Instead, we get Lisa Doolittle’s “Words! Words! Words!… Make me no underlying vow. Show me now.” Which the G-20 wouldn’t.
Fortunately, none of this mattered very much, as no knowledgeable observer expected much of the G-20 meeting. The action was off-stage, where Obama tried to accomplish three things.
The first was to make up for his rude treatment of Gordon Brown when Britain’s Prime Minister visited the United States last month.
By denying Brown the full-blown press conference to which Tony Blair was always treated — twin podia, flags of both nations, cameras whirring — and then presenting the PM with a thoughtless gift of some DVDs that don’t work on the UK system, Obama handed the anti-Brown British media a gift.
Obama atoned for what might have been a gaffe by effusively praising Brown for his leadership in organizing the G-20 meeting, and devising bank bail-out schemes.
Obama then sought to press the “reset” button in U.S.-Russian relations in a private meeting with Russian President Dimitriy Medvedev.
So intent is our President on heaping blame on George W. Bush that he apologized for America’s part in allowing our relations with Russia to “drift.”
Never mind that Russia had cut off natural gas supplies to our European allies, invaded Georgia, threatened Poland by placing missiles on its border, and bribed Kyrgzstan to deprive us of our last military airbase in central Asia. Seems more like revanchism than “drift” to this observer.
Not to worry. All will be sorted out when the President visits Moscow this summer, and exposes Vladimir Putin and the Russian people to his star power.
Obama then had his first meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao. Although this was billed as merely a get-acquainted meeting, Obama immediately agreed to two Chinese requests: That he visit Beijing, and that China be given a larger voice at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other institutions.
The small matters of human rights, North Korea’s missile launch, and China’ recent proposal to have the dollar replaced as the world’s reserve currency did not come up.
And today the President is at a NATO meeting, where he will be told by our allies that they are unwilling to send more fighting men and women to help us in Afghanistan.
That refusal will be papered over with talk of “trainers” for the Afghan army, logistics support, and perhaps even a bit of money, but a refusal it will be nevertheless.
No surprise to this writer: Immediately after Obama’s inauguration, I attended a meeting at which top foreign diplomats said that their main goal was to persuade the Obama team not to make any request they would have to refuse. You don’t ask, and we won’t say “no.”
All in all, a rather strange first trip for our new President:
* A visit to the Queen of England, at which Obama presented her with an iPod, further proof that he has no ability to select a gift that reflects the rich history of Anglo-American relations.
* Attendance at a G-20 meeting in which his allies reject his call to supplement his efforts to stimulate the world economy.
* On to a meeting with the Russians, in which the President of the United States accepts responsibility for the “drift” in relations with that country, and with the Chinese, in which he concedes them the added international clout they crave, with no discernable quid pro quo.
Top that off with a refusal of our allies to offer meaningful help in combating the terrorists that thrive in Afghanistan and threaten them as well as us, and only someone with the supreme self-regard of Barack Obama can regard the trip as a success.
If he had any sense of history, he might have called the Europeans’ attention to the anniversary of the Marshall Plan. But he doesn’t, and so he didn’t.
Examiner columnist Irwin M. Stelzer is a senior fellow and director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Economic Studies.
