Obama entrances Europe in vague tones

Europeans are upset about a recent decision by the Pentagon to order a new round of bidding for a $35 billion contract for aerial refueling tankers. A European-led consortium won the lucrative contract, beating Boeing, earlier this year. But Boeing and its Congressional supporters managed to have the bid reviewed and ultimately overturned.

The Europeans are unhappy with a five-year, $289 billion farm bill that maintains sizable subsidies for American farmers, even as the Europeans vow to review their own farm subsidies as a spur to trade talks. The United States complains that the European ban on American poultry costs American farmers about $200 million a year. The Europeans do not like the chlorine bath Americans use to disinfect their chickens, an argument that is less about safety than about taste.

Wariness over military demands
Mr. Obama offered greater support for Europe’s great experiment in shared sovereignty, the European Union, which now includes 27 nations. “In this century, we need a strong European Union that deepens the security and prosperity of this continent, while extending a hand abroad,” he said, a nod to the large amounts of foreign assistance the Europeans provide.

He referred repeatedly to “European” people and values, drawing a contrast with the Bush administration, which has often sought to recruit individual European countries, like Britain and Poland, to support its policies, while doing less to cultivate ties to the broader European Union. Washington views the European Union as being dominated by France and Germany and less eager to follow America’s foreign policy.

But Mr. Obama also called for a more muscular Europe to act with the United States in the common defense, a politically delicate matter here that is likely to prove an irritant no matter who wins the presidency.

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has sent more troops to Afghanistan, but he has faced fierce political criticism for doing so. The Germans continue to be unwilling to send their troops from the safer northern provinces of Afghanistan to the south, where the Taliban is resurgent.

Hubert Védrine, a former French foreign minister, said, “I don’t think Europe is a major stake for” Mr. Obama, adding, “It’s the support that Europeans can bring to his politics that matters.”

Mr. Obama indulged in “some pro-German demagogy on nuclear weapons to get applause,” Mr. Védrine said. But he said Mr. Obama’s call for more European engagement in Afghanistan would not go over so well.

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Even on Iran, where so far Washington and the main European countries have cooperated in their effort to prevent Tehran from getting a nuclear weapon, Mr. Obama refuses to rule out a military option — a position that, as Le Monde said, “is judged unproductive by most Europeans.”

Still, his willingness for some form of prepared negotiation with Iran is much closer to European views than that of Mr. Bush.

Nicholas Kulish contributed reporting from Berlin, and Katrin Bennhold from Paris.

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