Does America Care About Europe?

SLATE.COM/OPINION: BY Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and wife of Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski/
"Let's be brutally frank: The 60th anniversary of the NATO alliance, celebrated in April, was a bore. The American president was visibly uninterested. His European counterparts, though more accustomed to "celebrations" consisting of somnolent speeches delivered in multilingual bureaucratese, were no more enthusiastic. The affair closed with a limp American request for more troops in Afghanistan, which had almost no echo whatsoever."

Poland's Angst Over NATO.

NYTIMES/OPINION/Roger Cohen/
"The announcement (that Obama was cancelling the proposed U.S. missile shield) came on Sept. 17, the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland. A gesture to Russia on this date — a “brave” decision said Vladimir Putin — was the rough equivalent for the Poles of their announcing concessions to a U.S. foe on 9/11.
Poland is now one of the very few places in Europe that prefers former President Bush to Obama."

Concern Growing In EU/NATO Over Russia's Treatment Of Neighbors.

KYIVPOST.
A recent survey reports that "Moscow's behavior toward its neighbors (Ukraine and Georgia) is of growing concern among the NATO allies."
"The most worried were the Dutch (78%) and the Americans (78%, with 35% very concerned). The least troubled were the Bulgarians (40%). But in all countries, apart from in Poland, more people were worried in 2009 than in 2008," according to the findings.