In Germany, Obama Says NATO Must Change
The president said that nations must focus on refining the goals of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the military alliance between democratic states in Europe and North America.
Mr. Obama, who came to Baden-Baden and nearby Strasbourg, France for a NATO summit honoring the alliance's 60th anniversary, said the alliance has been enormously successful. But he added that NATO goals must be focused; "If NATO becomes everything," he said, "then it's nothing."
The president has put a renewed focus on the war in Afghanistan, pledging to deploy 30,000 more troops to the country by the end of the year. Under President George W. Bush, troop levels were evenly divided between U.S. and allied forces; the American troop buildup, as the New York Times notes, will mean there will be twice as many American troops as allied troops by year's end unless NATO deploys significantly more troops.
That looks unlikely; as the Times writes:
NATO allies are giving the president considerable vocal support for the newly integrated strategy. But they are giving him very few new troops on the ground, underlining the fundamental strains in the alliance. The allies will offer more funds but no more than several thousand new personnel members, according to alliance military planners. Many of those will not be soldiers, but police trainers to meet a central pillar of the president's new Afghan strategy, which focuses on an expansion of Afghan security forces. But even for the small numbers of European combat reinforcements, check the fine print: Nearly all will be sent to provide security for Afghanistan's elections this summer, and will not be permanently deployed.In his remarks with Merkel today, the president appeared to push for NATO to take a greater stake in the Afghanistan conflict, saying that he believes that NATO members agree with him that "we cannot allow a territory in which people who would kill our citizens with impunity can be permitted to operate."
The German chancellor, meanwhile, said that Germany will do its part to help deal with the situation in Afghanistan.
Mr. Obama also addressed grim new unemployment numbers in his appearance with Merkel, saying they underscore the importance of taking coordinated global action to avoid "collective failure."
The president tied the health of the world economy to that of the United States and, as he had at the G20 summit, stressed the dangers of protectionism, arguing that "none of us can isolate ourselves from a global market."
Noting a trade imbalance between the U.S. and Germany, the president also called for action to alter trade patterns between the two countries.