Today’s free update from Stratfor was excellent. I recommend people enroll just for the freebie. The gist of it was:
-Europe’s largest economy, Germany, was dead set against any of Obama’s requests because they are worried about a Russian natural gas embargo if they go along. BO also has nothing to negotiate with once he takes withholding the $100B from the IMF off the table and his handlers explained that a couple weeks ago. We taxpayers “stimulate” the US economy and Germany ships more goods to us. So….
-He gets the photo ops in Europe, drops off an iPod and skips on to Turkey where the real negotiating can happen. The deal is vocal support for Turkish EU membership (not popular in Old Europe) and continued U.S. avoidance of the Armenian genocide issue in return for help with South Ossetia and Abkhazia and Turkey owning up to the Armenian issue on their own. Probably a fair deal especially if BO can keep the Kurds from taking a beating later (my view, not Stratfor’s).
Stratfor doesn’t mention it, but there is probably some cold hard cash to go along and they do mention the boost to Turkey’s NATO status. I don’t do all of the chess moves justice here, but take it for what it’s worth and go read it yourself.
