Europe's Convinced U.S. Won't Solve Its Problems

Obama may be gone, but the American people are the ones who chose him and could support other leftists.

Bloomberg View  . . . “ 'The question of war and peace has returned to the continent,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told the audience, indirectly referring to Russian military interventions. “We had thought that peace had returned to Europe for good."

"What was missing from the conference speeches and even the many private discussions in the hallways, compared to previous years, was the discussion of what Europe wanted or even expected the U.S. to do.

"Several European officials told me that there was little expectation that President Barack Obama, in his last year in office, would make any significant policy changes to address what European governments see an existential set of crises that can’t wait for a new administration in Washington.

“ 'There’s a shared assessment that the European security architecture is falling apart in many ways,” said Camille Grand, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. “There is a growing sense that this U.S. administration is focused on establishing a legacy on what has already been achieved rather than trying to achieve anything more. Yet the problems can get much worse.”

"During the first day of the conference, the U.S. role in Europe was hardly mentioned in the public sessions. In the private sessions, many participants told me that European governments are not only resigned to a lack of American assertiveness, they also are now reluctantly accepting a Russia that is more present than ever in European affairs, and not for the better." . . .

And I have no confidence in our millennials to grasp the significance of what is happening in the world nor the dangers inherent in events. Try to teach them differently and it seems they hear a trigger warning telling them to go to their safe spaces. I do not see this changing until disaster comes to America, something other than the now forgotten 9/11 attacks. The Tunnel Dweller

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