Barack Obama has charged Vladimir Putin with being a menace to an international system built up over decades following the Russian leader's sudden appropriation of part of Ukraine.
In his sole big policy speech of a four-day trip to Europe, Obama, on his first presidential visit to Brussels, the capital of the European Union andNato's headquarters, sought to stiffen European spines against Russia and pledge US security guarantees for east European allies on Russia's borders who are alarmed at the Kremlin's expansionist aims.
"We must never forget that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom," Obama said, adding that the Ukraine crisis has neither easy answers nor a military solution. "But at this moment, we must meet the challenge to our ideals, to our very international order, with strength and conviction."
Drawing on modern struggles, like gay rights, as well as the ethnic cleansing and world wars, Obama sought to draw a connection between the US experiment in democracy and the blood spilled by Europeans seeking to solidify their own right to self-determination.
"I come here today to say we must never take for granted the progress than has been won here in Europe and advanced around the world," Obama said.
Obama said that Moscow would become increasingly isolated. "If the Russian leadership stays on its current course, together we will ensure that this isolation deepens," Obama said. At the same time, he acknowledged that military force would not dislodge Russia from Crimea or prevent further encroachment, holding out the allies' combination of pressure and an open door to diplomacy as the path to peace.
Obama addressed about 2,000 young people at an art deco arts centre in central Brussels. Before delivering the speech, Obama held a summit lunch meeting with EU leaders, Herman Van Rompuy and José Manuel Barroso, both bowing out later this year, then a meeting with Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Dane who heads the Nato alliance and whose term also expires this year.
Russia's annexation of Crimea was expected to dominate the speech and meetings. Although this is the first time Obama has come to Brussels as president, Ukraine has already forced a second visit. He is expected back in June for a meeting with G7 leaders because the US and Europe have frozen Russia's membership of the G8 and called off a June G8 summit in Sochi in Russia.
As well as Ukraine and Russia, the US and EU leaders were discussing their ambitious negotiations on a transatlantic free trade area which, if successfully concluded, would boost the EU economy by more than €100bn (£83bn), according to Brussels, although economists say trade agreements actually have little impact on levels of trade and point to China's soaring trade performance as proof.
The trade talks may also be encumbered by European complaints about the National Security Agency surveillance scandal, with White Housereforms of NSA bulk data gathering in the pipeline. The Europeans will press the US leader to facilitate reciprocity in the courts, meaning that Europeans in the US should be able to seek redress in the American courts if they feel their data privacy rights have been violated by US agencies.
Americans in Europe can go to the courts, but not vice versa.
At Nato headquarters, Obama was due to discuss efforts to boost security for eastern allies alarmed by Putin's behaviour, for example by sending air reinforcements to Poland and the three Baltic states, all Nato and EU members.
"There's no question that Nato is prepared to defend any ally against any aggression," said a senior US official. "To reassure them, we do think we should take additional steps. We've already deployed Baltic air policing, additional planes over the Baltic countries. We've deployed an aviation detachment to Poland.
"We are looking at doing more things like that. We'll be discussing very specifically what more can be done in terms of signalling concrete reassurance to our eastern European allies."
In the centenary year of the start of the first world war, Obama started the Belgian leg of his trip on Wednesday by visiting a US war graves cemetery in Flanders, north-west of Brussels.
Credit to The Guardian
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