Global diplomacy aside, Obama gets to work back home (Feature)

By Chris Cermak Apr 9, 2009, 1:10 GMT

Washington - With a high-profile trip to restore the United States' global standing behind him, President Barack Obama now returns to the tough task of converting his ambitious agenda into reality.

Some of the promises made by Obama during an eight-day trip to Europe and the Middle East included rebuilding ties with the Islamic world, remaking the global financial order, defeating al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, ridding the world of nuclear weapons and agreeing on a new global deal to tackle climate change.

The White House also points to some firm policy commitments: a deal to commit 1 trillion dollars to aid the global economy at the Group of 20 nations summit in London, 5,000 extra troops from Europe for the war in Afghanistan, the beginnings of a new disarmament deal with Russia.

But Obama's overtures to foreign leaders and their public were largely designed to re-set relations after a tumultuous eight years under former president George W Bush, whose policies and attitude towards the international community were widely condemned abroad.

The focus of Obama's trip 'was as much about public diplomacy as about the concrete policy agenda,' according to Charles Kaplan, an expert on Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations. Obama sought to capitalize on his popularity around the world with a series of townhall-style meetings, in addition to his talks with world leaders.

Returning to the United States Wednesday morning, Obama planned to keep an uncharacteristically low profile in the coming days. His only remaining events for the week were a White House speech Thursday on health care for military veterans and a roundtable discussion on interest rates.

Come next week, Obama returns to facing a multitude of domestic challenges, at the top of which is pulling the United States out of its worst economic crisis in decades.

News on the economic front deteriorated for the most part in Obama's absence. Unemployment climbed to 8.5 per cent, its highest level in a quarter century.

Obama has outlined a sweeping domestic agenda in the first two months of his presidency, pledging an overhaul of US health care, energy and education policy. His Defence Secretary Robert Gates put Congress on notice this week that he will seek a broad and contentious shift in the US military's spending priorities.

The White House hopes that Obama's show of strength overseas might provide him with some momentum as he begins to push his far-reaching agenda through a skeptical Congress.

Initial indicators are that is unlikely. Conservatives derided much of Obama's trip abroad as a failure, and have become increasingly emboldened in attacking his domestic plans as a path towards unsustainable debt.

Newt Gingrich, a former top Republican in Congress, slammed much of Obama's pledges in Europe as 'fantasy.'

'President Obama gave the Europeans every emotional goody they could ask for, and they gave him nothing back,' Gingrich said in an interview with Fox News Tuesday evening. 'I'm not quite sure, in practical, real terms, what President Obama got out of this.'

The administration insists Obama's first trip overseas was never designed to get strong practical commitments from allies in Europe.

Rebuilding the relationship 'will require concerted efforts both to listen more carefully to the perspectives of potential partners and to find creative solutions,' James Steinberg, deputy secretary of state, said in a speech to the National Defence University Wednesday.