Europe Contemplates Life After America - Main contents
Disillusionment with Barack Obama coupled with concern that his legacy could help put Donald Trump in the White House has now entered respectable European political discourse. The notion reflects profound doubts at Europe's core about a country with both a president who broke his word and failed to attack Syria for its use of poison gas - damaging American credibility as the West's ultimate recourse to justice by military intervention - and a leading candidate for the White House whose campaign resounds with brutality, bigotry and ignorance of the world.
Referring to the article, Han ten Broeke, the foreign-policy spokesman of the Netherlands' ruling Liberal party and chairman of the Dutch Parliament's armed- services commission, told me that Mr. Obama should have listened to "Joe Biden's admonition that big nations don't bluff. His making red lines vanish surely eroded the belief in Western intent to stare down villains and stand up for world order."