“Given the success, I’ve approved the deployment of up to 250 additional US personnel in Syria, including special forces to keep up this momentum”, Obama said in a speech at a trade fair in the northern city of Hanover, the last stop on a trip that has taken him to Saudi Arabia and Britain.
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The trade fair visit was on the final day of Obama’s six-day trip that spanned three countries.
Obama discussed the IS fight with British Prime Minster David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minster Matteo Renzi. He is crediting German Chancellor Angela Merkel for setting that tone and he is calling for every nation to step up and share responsibility for helping those fleeing violence in the Middle East, including the United States.
Meanwhile, Obama said Europe has sometimes been complacent in its own defence.
Germany, Obama’s host country and Europe’s economic powerhouse, has been frequently criticized for spending well below the target on defense capabilities.
“In the vacuum, if we do not solve these problems, you start seeing those who would try to exploit these fears and frustrations and channel them in a destructive way”, Obama said, describing “a creeping emergence of the kind of politics that the European project was founded to reject, an “us” versus “them” mentality that tries to blame our problems on the other”. But he said that “we need to keep sanctions on Russian Federation in place” until it stops the war in east Ukraine.
Insisting that “the United States, and the entire world, needs a strong and prosperous and democratic and united Europe”, Obama said Europeans face a “defining moment”.
“The president is coming as the strongest ally of Europe to say we have complete confidence in Europe’s ability to confront these challenges”, Rhodes said.
Evoking history and appealing for solidarity, President Barack Obama on Monday cast his decision to send 250 more troops to Syria as a bid to keep up “momentum” in the campaign to dislodge Islamic State extremists.
Before his term ends, Obama would like to finish negotiations with the European Union on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the second of two broad deals he believes will boost the USA economy.
“They’re not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces”, Obama said during a speech in Germany that capped a weeklong trip that also took him to Saudi Arabia and Great Britain.
Before boarding Air Force One to fly back to the United States on Monday evening, Mr. Obama met with the leaders of Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom in the north German city.
The move to increase U.S. Special Forces in Syria to a total of about 300 personnel comes as a fragile cease-fire in the civil war disintegrates, casting doubt on the possibility of a political solution to the conflict. The deployment comes about a week after Obama approved increasing US forces stationed in Iraq and allowing them to move closer to the front lines of combat with Islamic State in that country.
The deployment will bring the number of personnel to roughly 300, up from about 50 special operations forces now in Syria. And loud voices get the most attention.
Families were separated on this continent, Obama said.
“Through the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation mission in the Aegean Sea, the U.S. has shown its willingness to take part in combating illegal immigration here”, Merkel said.
“Perhaps you need an outsider, somebody who is not European, to remind you of the magnitude of what you have achieved”, he said, a day after the anti-immigration far-right triumphed in a presidential vote in Austria.
Obama is decrying a mindset of singling out people who look or pray differently, whether it’s immigrants or Muslims.
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But since then, Obama’s star has dimmed, and the United States president has become frustrated with Europe’s inability to move quickly in response to the global recession or to the threat from jihadists.
