Obama Seeking Ally on Europe Finds Merkel a Tough Sell

[dipsydoodle]

Source: Bloomberg News

President Barack Obama has spent much of his term trying to get Chancellor Angela Merkel in his corner, only to find the German leader won’t easily bend to U.S. will.

Five months before the presidential election, the stakes are rising. Obama, in advance of a G-20 summit and European Union crisis meetings, is urging Merkel to take actions aimed at forestalling a euro region financial meltdown that would threaten the U.S. -- and his campaign.

“If Europe implodes, Obama probably won’t be re-elected,” Gary Smith, executive director of the American Academy, a research group in Berlin that promotes trans-Atlantic ties, said in an interview. Yet helping any U.S. president right now “wouldn’t be on Merkel’s radar screen. The divisions about what needs to be done are so fundamental and public.”

Illustrating the concern, Obama discussed the crisis in separate phone calls with Merkel and Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti on June 6. They agreed that it’s important “to strengthen the resilience of the euro zone and growth in Europe and globally,” the White House said in a statement.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-07/obama-seeking-ally-on-euro-response-finds-merkel-a-tough-sell.html

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Speech on subject by Obama later today apparently.

[DallasNE]

1. Merkel Grew Up In Communist East Germany

And that dominates the prism that she looks through. Europe will have economic problems as long as she is the Prime Minister of Germany. Her mind is pretty much closed when it comes to fiscal matters. It still doesn't explain her resistence to the European Central Bank from a program of quantitative easing. Maybe something can happen in the meeting in Mexico later this month.

[JDPriestly]

2. Withdraw some U.S. troops and leave the Germans' Russian flank open . . . . .

[dipsydoodle]

3. Russia want more trade with the EU :

not to invade it.

Apart from that which German / Russian flank did you have in mind ? Poland ?

[JDPriestly]

5. Maybe things have changed in the past 25 years, but when I was in that part of the world

on a regular basis, Germans were still antsy about the Russians.

It's a cultural, psychological, historical, traditional thing.

The older women in Austria were still talking hush-hush about being raped by Russian soldiers, and other families talked about how the Russian soldiers did not understand or want to use Western plumbing.

I'm sure the grandchildren of those old women still remember the stories.

Yes. Poland. Anything to the East of Germany. Things may have changed. But memories of the STASI and E. Germany aren't that far in the past.

[4th law of robotics]

4. While I agree that we should remove our troops from Germany

mostly because they serve no purpose and are only costing us money, I don't think that would be much of a bargaining chip.