Merkel seen as key to Obama's success at G-7 - Washington Post

By Greg Jaffe, <span class="timestamp updated pre" epochtime="1433689341000" datetitle="published" pagetype="leaf" contenttype="article"/>


KRUN, Germany — Before he sat down with the leaders of the seven largest industrialized democracies here Sunday, President Obama met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a sign of how important their sometimes strained relationship has become to his presidency.

Obama toured a small Bavarian village with the German chancellor, and he kept the mood light. The president praised the alphorn music that greeted his arrival, drank a beer and joked about needing some lederhosen. Then the two leaders discussed some of the thorniest and most important foreign policy problems Obama is facing in the fourth quarter of his presidency.

The list Sunday included sanctions designed to punish Russia for its aggression in Ukraine and two issues Obama views as critical to his legacy: progress against climate change and the passage of free-trade agreements in Asia and Europe. Merkel’s support will be critical in all of those endeavors.

“Merkel is the European leader he openly admits he’s been probably the closest to, and yet that relationship has really weathered a number of storms over the last year,” said Julianne Smith, a former deputy national security adviser in the Obama administration and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

Germans were outraged in 2013 after information released by whistleblower Edward Snowden showed that the National Security Agency was monitoring U.S. allies’ communications, including those of Merkel. The scandal resurfaced last month when new revelations suggested that Berlin’s foreign intelligence agency, also known as the BND, might have helped the United States gather intelligence on hundreds of European companies and politicians.

The result has been a “spike in anti-Americanism,” said Heather Conley, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

[Germans, still outraged by NSA spying, learn their country may have helped]

Obama needs Merkel’s help most acutely in Ukraine, where Russian separatists recently launched a new offensive. U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, during a visit to Germany last week, said tough economic sanctions had not curbed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s aggressive behavior and suggested that other measures would be needed, though he did not specify what those might entail.

Obama has maintained that the only way to stop the fighting in Ukraine is through diplomacy, and that is where Merkel will be crucial. A fluent Russian speaker, Merkel is the Western leader with the closest relationship with Putin.

[At G-7, Obama’s primary task is confronting his Putin problem]

The White House’s first priority is maintaining unity with its European allies on sanctions, which come up for review at a European Council meeting this month. But it also needs to “try to forge a consensus” with its partners on how the West might respond if the Russians continue to escalate the fighting, said Charles Kupchan, White House senior director for European affairs.

On trade, Obama is pushing a 12-nation deal in the Asia-Pacific region, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which faces staunch resistance from many in his party. If it succeeds, the president would like to conclude a similar deal with Europe, where Merkel’s assistance will again be essential to overcome resistance among some on the continent to free-trade deals.

The trade issue has become “something of a proxy for engagement in the world,” said Richard Fontaine, president of the Center for a New American Security.

The president would like to emerge from the next two days of meetings with the Group of Seven allies with informal pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions ahead of a climate-change summit later this year in Paris. It is an issue on which Obama’s goals and aspirations are largely in sync with Merkel and many of the other European leaders.

The meetings this week in Germany are an “important milestone on this issue,” said Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to Obama. “We can move both with announcing our own targets and taking steps to support other countries to protect the environment.”

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