OBAMA AND THE EUROPEANS – AT 8:56 P.M. ET:  At The Angel's Corner last night I discussed Obama's cultural affinity for countries rather hostile to the U.S., and his indifference to traditional allies.

That theme is carried forward by a first-class column in tomorrow's Times of London, which expresses the dismay that many in the Atlantic alliance feel about the man they saw, in 2008, as something better than the Second Coming:

Unlike George W Bush and Bill Clinton, Obama has made little effort to strike up friendships with European leaders. At the G20 summit in Pittsburgh last year he was pictured walking out with the leaders of China and India, his administration’s evident priorities, along with Russia, at the expense of America’s traditional allies.

“The paradox is Europeans think Obama is one of them, that he ran [for office] on repairing American relations with them — damaged by Bush and the war in Iraq — and now feel he doesn’t care about them,” said Robert Kagan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who was foreign policy adviser to Senator John McCain, Obama’s election opponent.

“He’s just not emotionally attached to Europe,” agreed Kim Holmes, of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. “It’s not hostility. It’s just indifference.”

When the Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl asked White House officials to name a foreign leader with whom Obama had forged a personal relationship, there was “a lot of hemming and hawing”, he said. To his astonishment, no one mentioned Gordon Brown. Instead the name proffered was Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president.

And...

A senior official from No 10, who was in Washington in December for Obama’s big speech on Afghanistan, was horrified that the president did not once mention Britain in the 45-minute address despite the presence there of 10,000 British troops.

And...

“President Obama seems hugely indifferent to America’s closest ally,” said Nile Gardiner, who runs the Washington-based Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom and recently compiled a list of Obama’s top 10 insults against Britain. “I think the special relationship is at its lowest point since Suez in 1956.”

And the East Europeans are miffed as well, and the Israelis are appalled. 

Welcome to the new world order.  Old friends need not apply.

March 13, 2010