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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Farmboy who wrote (73948)	6/17/2012 4:41:18 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

Obama Faces Crises With Few Options By CAROL E. LEE LOS CABOS, Mexico— Barack Obama, already tested by a sluggish economy in an election year, this week confronts two foreign-policy challenges for which he has few options: the European economic crisis and the violence in Syria. The president, with no economic leverage, will continue to pressure European leaders at a gathering of world leaders here this week to take stronger action to resolve their crisis before it further weakens the U.S. recovery. His first meeting on Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin also will test Mr. Obama's powers to persuade Russia to help curtail the violence in Syria. Mr. Obama was set to arrive in Mexico Sunday night for the two-day Group of 20 Summit of advanced and developing economies, which was to begin the morning after Greek elections that have put world markets on edge. U.S. officials indicated last week they have contingency plans to help cope with any upheaval in global markets after the elections, and they say Mr. Obama will deploy his diplomatic skills and offer lessons from the U.S. experience handling the 2008-09 financial crisis to help European leaders reach consensus. The crisis is Europe's problem to solve, they say, so the role of any U.S. president is limited. Still, the European crisis continues to be the most significant threat to the U.S. economy—the main concern for voters in the November election—and so it has become a top priority for Mr. Obama. The president has ramped up his involvement in the crisis in recent weeks, but he arrives in Mexico with little new to contribute, observers say. "The U.S. doesn't exactly have a full bank account," said Colin Bradford, a senior fellow for global economy and development at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "He doesn't really have…a direct card to play in this, in a financial sense," Having a dearth of influence risks becoming an election-year theme for Mr. Obama, who has called on Congress, with little success, to pass jobs initiatives he says would cushion the U.S. economy from a blow from Europe. Similarly, Syria has emerged as an election-year foreign-policy conundrum for Mr. Obama. The White House has been pressing Moscow to engage diplomatically in a process that would result in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's being removed from office and a democratic transition started in Damascus. The U.S. is hoping to replicate the formula it used in Yemen, where it cooperated with leading Arab states to usher out President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Mr. Obama will press that case with Mr. Putin on Monday. Mr. Putin, though, has shown no indication that he wants to unseat Mr. Assad, whose family has been a close ally of Moscow's for more than four decades. Russia has continued to supply arms to Syria's security forces in recent months, drawing Washington's ire. Yet the U.S. continues to cooperate with Russia in other areas. Case in point: Moscow is hosting beginning Monday the latest round of international diplomacy aimed at containing Iran's nuclear program. Senior U.S. officials said Moscow has been largely cooperative in confronting Tehran, because of Russian fears that an Iranian nuclear weapon could pose a long-term security threat. The Russians have particularly voiced fears that an Iranian bomb could fuel a larger arms race near its borders. "Nothing is black and white with the Russians," said a senior U.S. official. "They fight us on Syria but pretty much play ball when it comes to the Iranians." White House officials said the standoff over Syria hasn't unraveled Mr. Obama's "reset" in relations with Russia. Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, said the U.S. still enjoys cooperation from Russia on issues like Afghanistan, Iran and nuclear nonproliferation. "The reset with Russia was based on the belief that we could cooperate with them on areas of common interest, understanding that we'd still have some differences," Mr. Rhodes said. "And it's our view that just because you have difference on certain issues doesn't mean that you want to throw aside the very substantial cooperation that we're getting with the Russians, again, on issues from Afghanistan to Iran to nuclear security." "However," he added, "we have had a very substantial difference with Russia on the issue of Syria."