The innocent abroad.(FOREIGN POLICY)(G-20 Summit)

DURING a busy week overseas, President Obama attended three major summits--of the G20 industrial countries, NATO, and the European Union--and met with the leaders of Russia, China, India, Turkey, and the main European nations. On a personal level, the trip was a triumph. Everywhere Obama went, he was greeted by diverse crowds of cheering people: eager young Europeans, curious Turks, and proud American soldiers. He received rock-star treatment even from his fellow leaders; one admitted off the record that "we all want to be photographed with him." The traveling Washington press corps was adulatory as usual, even though it had to report the president's missed political opportunities.

Obama's European tour came at a time when the relatively stable, American-dominated post-Cold War international order is being undermined by many problems: the international financial crisis, the rise of China and India, the aggressive ambitions of a nationalist Russia, and the continuing impact of jihadism. Each summit dealt with different aspects of these interrelated problems: The G20 hoped to respond to the financial crisis and its accompanying economic recession, NATO to craft a military response to Islamist jihad and Russian adventurism, and the EU to find common diplomatic ground among the Western nations on all these issues.

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Of the G20 summit, in London, Obama said mildly: "I think it went okay." In fact the G20 rejected his main policy proposal, for a collective international stimulus. We think the summit went okay for precisely that reason--and because it also rejected French president Nicolas Sarkozy's proposal for an unaccountable global financial regulator. But although the G20's dismissal of both proposals lifted markets temporarily, it left the financial-cum-economic crisis still rumbling ominously along under the surface. More needs to be done to restore confidence.

As summit succeeded summit, the president did progressively less okay. The central issue at the Strasbourg summit of NATO was Afghanistan. All 28 NATO countries have signed on to the Afghan mission as vital, but only Canada, Britain, and the U.S. have sent significant numbers of fighting troops. The president had to mime gratitude for a European promise of an extra 5,000 troops, all of them non-combat. With European defense spending averaging just 1 ...