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On Overseas Tour, Jeb Bush Hopes To Prove Himself On Foreign Policy

On Overseas Tour, Jeb Bush Hopes To Prove Himself On Foreign Policy

By Seema Mehta, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

World affairs are constants in Jeb Bush’s life.

He met his wife while a teenager studying in Mexico, majored in Latin American affairs in college and lived in Venezuela as a young businessman. He speaks fluent Spanish.

He had a front-row seat to the presidencies of his brother and his father during times of great overseas triumph and tribulation.
Bush, 62, spent the bulk of his adult life in south Florida, one of the most multicultural places in the nation. As governor of Florida, he led more than a dozen international missions, and he has visited 29 countries since then.

Yet Bush still feels compelled to embark on a modern-day rite-of-passage for presidential candidates — an overseas tour to showcase his statesmanship and burnish his foreign policy credentials. This week, he will take a whirlwind spin through the capitals of Germany, Poland, and Estonia before officially kicking off his White House bid on June 15.

The trip is a nod to the dominant role foreign policy is expected to play in the 2016 presidential campaign — one of Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton’s top credentials is her tenure as the nation’s top diplomat. Voters, increasingly alarmed by developments overseas such as Islamic State’s brutality and the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, are expected to prioritize foreign policy experience as they select the next president.

A foreign trip offers candidates upsides: a chance to be seen as a strong, capable leader on the world stage addressing issues vital to the nation’s interests. But as some of Bush’s GOP rivals can attest, any error could be magnified.

Bush faces an additional, unique test — differentiating his views from the foreign policies of his father, President George H.W. Bush, and his brother, President George W. Bush. The former governor has yet to articulate an agenda, but he frequently seeks to distinguish himself from the two presidents on the stump.

“Just for the record, one more time: I love my brother, I love my dad,” Bush said during a foreign policy speech in February in Chicago. “And I admire their service to the nation and the difficult decisions that they had to make. But I’m my own man and my views are shaped by my own thinking and my own experiences.”

Bush noted how much the world had changed since his father formed a coalition to fight the Gulf War in 1991 and his brother invaded Iraq in 2003. Then he emphasized: “New circumstances require new approaches.”

For a candidate whose biggest campaign stumble to date was his difficulty answering a question about the war his brother launched, it’s a recognition that his familial ties cut both ways.

The shadows of the two elder Bushes loom large in the nations the former governor is visiting.

In Germany, for example, President George H.W. Bush is remembered fondly for his role in the negotiations for German unification after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, said Kori Schake, who was a senior foreign policy aide in President George W. Bush’s administration.

But George W. Bush’s policies after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, such as the pre-emptive use of military force, prompted hand-wringing among Germans, she said.

“They thought they knew us,” Schake said. “Our reaction after 9/11 scared them.”

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Bush will spend much of his five-day trip meeting privately with government, business and civic leaders in Berlin, Warsaw and Tallinn, Estonia, about the economy, Trans-Atlantic relations, and security. Public events include a Tuesday speech at a major economic conference in Berlin alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves.

The former governor is expected to be asked about Russian aggression in Ukraine, and whether the United States has been a strong enough ally in the region. NATO, of which the United States is a member, is being urged to more forcefully confront Russian President Vladimir Putin by permanently stationing troops in Poland and the Baltic nations.

He could face questions about the CIA torture report, made public in 2014, that confirmed the existence of a secret interrogation site in Poland during his brother’s administration, and Obama’s decision to scale back George W. Bush-era plans to build a missile-defense site in Poland.

Policy experts said Bush’s challenge would be to showcase his views without explicitly attacking Obama on foreign soil.

“Obviously you want to demonstrate how you’ll be able to contrast your foreign policy if you’re president… but at the same time, you have to do it delicately,” said Lanhee Chen, a top adviser to 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. “Foreign policy and national security are going to be a huge part of this campaign and they’re going to be a huge part of how Republican candidates contrast themselves with the current administration… and also potentially with other Republican candidates.”

Such overseas journeys have repeatedly proven perilous for American politicians.

Romney’s foreign trip in the summer before the 2012 election was dominated by missteps. In Britain, he offended many when he questioned London’s readiness to host the summer Olympics shortly before the Games’ opening ceremony. In Jerusalem, he suggested that “culture” was responsible for economic disparities between Israel and neighboring Palestinian areas.

“I don’t think it was a defining moment during the campaign but at that point of the campaign, you can’t afford to lose many news cycles, and we lost a couple,” said Kevin Madden, a Romney adviser who faulted the campaign for failing to craft an overarching thematic narrative for the trip. In the absence of such messaging, Romney’s missteps were exaggerated, he said.

Earlier this year, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie flubbed a response when asked about mandatory childhood vaccinations while in London; he appeared to side with those who oppose vaccinations. At the same time, reports emerged about lavish trips he took that were funded by wealthy benefactors.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in February took flack for dodging questions about his views on foreign policy and creationism at a prominent think tank in London.

Bush’s life experiences, some argue, inoculate him from such blunders.

“So many of our GOP presidential candidates are using flash cards to try to memorize the different world leaders, and they’re traveling overseas to prove they can remember the name of a leader or a group,” said Richard Grenell, who served as the U.S. spokesman at the United Nations under President George W. Bush and is not aligned with any candidate. “This isn’t an educational trip for Jeb Bush.”
But others wonder about the wisdom of making such a venture.

“The upside is limited but obvious and that is you get your picture taken with the Queen of Siam or wherever you’re going,” said Rich Galen, a veteran GOP operative who worked for former Vice President Dan Quayle and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. “The downside, as Scott Walker found out, is that if you do one of these foreign trips — especially now — you damn well better know what the hell you’re talking about.”

(Times staff writer Mark Z. Barabak contributed to this report.)

(c)2015 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

File photo: Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush looks on prior to speaking at the 2014 National Summit on Education Reform in Washington, DC, November 20, 2014 (AFP Photo/Saul Loeb)

Obama Expresses Skepticism On Russia’s Aims In Ukrainian Conflict

Obama Expresses Skepticism On Russia’s Aims In Ukrainian Conflict

By Kathleen Hennessey, Los Angeles Times

ESTONIA — President Obama expressed skepticism Wednesday about Russia’s aims in Ukraine after Kiev announced that the two countries had agreed to a cease-fire, a claim it later reportedly backed off of.

Noting that it was “too early to tell” whether Moscow would hold to such an agreement anyway, Obama said that if Russia is agreeing to stop backing separatist militias in eastern Ukraine, “that is something we all hope for.”

But he stopped short of endorsing any sort of deal, and within hours, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin denied that a cease-fire had been reached, according to media reports in Russia. Eventually, a spokesman for Ukraine’s president told The New York Times that his office went too far in describing a phone call between the country’s leaders.

The stop-and-start reports came as Obama began a three-day European trip certain to be dominated by the escalating conflict between Ukraine and its eastern neighbor. Obama was due to meet with European allies struggling to agree on fresh financial penalties against Russia that could shift Moscow’s engagement in the civil war across its border with Ukraine. At a NATO meeting in Wales later in the week, the alliance’s leaders planned to counter what they’ve labeled Russian aggression with a new show of force in Eastern and Central European states.

To underscore that goal, the president began the trip in this Baltic capital, where he offered reassurance that the U.S. would defend Estonia, a NATO ally that also shares a border with Russia, should it be subject to similar aggression. He highlighted U.S. efforts to increase its military presence in the region in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea earlier this year. Obama said he hoped to win congressional support to further bolster the U.S. military presence, including additional Air Force units and air training exercises based at Estonia’s Amari air force base.

The U.S. commitment to defend its ally, Obama said, “is unbreakable. It is unwavering. Estonia will never stand alone.”

Obama delivered his message of reassurance to a nation keenly familiar with fears of about Russian aggression. The small, strategic outpost jutting into the Baltic Sea has spent much of the past century under the imposing shadow of its eastern neighbor. After more than four decades of Soviet control in Estonia, the last of the Russian Army soldiers left just 20 years ago.

Since declaring its independence, Estonia has sought security in Western alliances and prosperity in high-tech development and culture.

“I should have called the Estonians when we were setting up our healthcare website,” Obama joked.

Estonia joined NATO in 2004, along with its Baltic neighbors Lithuania and Latvia, whose leaders Obama was slated to meet later with to discuss regional security before he delivers a speech later in the afternoon.

Obama held Estonia up as a model for contributing its share to NATO, which has struggled to get members to meet their targets for defense spending.

Estonia, a nation of just 1.3 million people, “truly punches above its weight,” Obama said.

“We’ve not stayed back and waited for others to take care of our security,” added Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves.

Still, Ilves has sought a permanent NATO presence in Estonia, a move that has so far been rejected by other allies amid concerns that it would further heighten tensions between Moscow and the West. Under a series of agreements, NATO leaders have kept permanent bases out of front-line nations.

NATO leaders are due to announce a ramped-up rotation of NATO forces through Baltic nations, a new Readiness Action Plan some have described as de facto permanent bases.

Obama said the goal was to rid NATO of the “sense of complacency” that has arisen in recent years.

Ilves argued Wednesday that Moscow’s moves in Ukraine, although it is not a NATO ally, have changed the security situation and should call for a rethinking of those previous agreements.

“This is an unforeseen and new security environment,” Ilves said in English. The Estonian leader is the child of refugees, was raised in New Jersey and went to college and graduate school in the U.S.

Obama agreed that the “circumstances have changed” and added that previous assumptions should be looked at “with fresh eyes,” but committed only to discussing the topic in Wales.

AFP Photo/Saul Loeb

Baltics Poised For Obama Visit Amid High Anxiety Over Russia

Baltics Poised For Obama Visit Amid High Anxiety Over Russia

By Maris Hellrand and Michel Mrozinski

Tallinn (AFP) — From Tallinn to Warsaw, Russian moves in Ukraine are sparking grave concern across a region deeply scarred by war and decades of Soviet occupation on the eve of a landmark visit by US President Barack Obama.

“I’m very worried mainly because every time it seems like it can’t get any worse, it does,” says Sildna Helen, 35, a music festival impressario in Estonia’s capital Tallinn where Obama will touch down Wednesday en route to a NATO summit in Wales.

“European leaders just keep on expressing their ‘grave concern,’ nothing more. They don’t do what needs to be done to change the situation,” she told AFP.

More than 100 prominent Baltic figures, including former leaders of Estonia Arnold Ruutel and Lithuania’s Vytautas Landsbergis, on Monday urged “a permanent presence of allied troops” in the Baltic states in an open letter to Obama.

Their call echoes similar ones by leaders from across the region for permanent NATO or U.S. boots on the ground, a move they hope will materialize at the Wales summit.

“Russia’s overt neo-imperialism cannot but make us fear that we are potential objects of its expansionist dreams,” the joint letter said, urging Obama to take an “emphatically unambiguous stand … defending the vision of a free Europe”.

Analysts, however, admit that expectations about what Obama can deliver in Tallinn in terms of regional security must be tempered by the fact that the real deals will be cut at the two-day NATO summit starting Thursday.

“Estonia gets the highest-profile visit possible at this point, but does so just ahead of a crunch NATO summit, which means that the Estonian wish list, insofar as one exists, will have to defer to an obvious need not to rock the boat in the run-up to Cardiff,” Ahto Lobjakas, an analyst at Estonian Foreign Policy Institute told AFP.

On the street, the language is more blunt. In Latvia’s capital Riga, Janis Janson, 47, does not mince his words as he goes about his shopping: “Putin’s a thug. We need to stand up to him, or where will it end? If he succeeds in Ukraine, he would look here next. You can bet on it.”

The tiny Baltic nation broke free from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991 after nearly five decades of occupation and was quick to boost its security by joining both the EU and NATO in 2004, along with fellow Balts Lithuania and Estonia.

“Being in NATO does make a difference. If we weren’t, he would probably be here already. I have seen American troops in the street here and it made me feel good. I wish there were more of them.”

– Russian minority –

Anxiety is also fuelled by the presence of large Russian-speaking minorities, mostly pro-Moscow, which represent more than a quarter of the population in Estonia and Latvia, respectively 1.3 and two million.

But not all ethnic Russians here look kindly on Moscow’s March annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and its subsequent meddling in that country’s east.

“At first I thought he was right to re-claim Crimea but now I don’t. Ukraine was Russia’s friend and brother. Is it worth losing a good friend over a small piece of land?” ethnic-Russian Latvian Anna Slavinskaya, 52 told AFP at Riga’s central train station with a bouquet in hand as she waited to greet friends arriving from Russia.

Enn Toom, a retired Estonian mathematician and psychologist, frets over what he terms Moscow’s “dark propaganda” against Ukraine and the “toothless hypocrisy” of the West.

He points to an ethnic-Russian Estonian “who under the influence of Russian propaganda went to rescue his Ukrainian brothers from the ‘fascist Kiev Junta’. After having seen the reality he returned home a few weeks later.”

“Also I’m worried about the toothless hypocrisy and greed of the so-called western countries. For example the sale of sophisticated military technology to the aggressor,” said the 75-year-old, referring to a lucrative deal by France to sell hi-tech Mistral warships to Russia.

Meanwhile, young Lithuanians like manager Vytautas Budreika, 25, have taken to social media to raise funds for humanitarian aide for Ukraine.

“Six years ago I was confident Russia posed no threat. But after its 2008 action against Georgia and now Ukraine, I believe Russia is dangerous … and I’m very much afraid,” he told AFP.

– History repeating? –

Anxiety is less palpable in Poland, but its war-torn past weighs heavily on the Polish psyche.

“Resorting to armed force against neighbours, annexing their territory, preventing them from freely choosing their international ties, conjures up the darkest chapters of European history,” Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski said Monday at ceremonies marking 75 years since an attack by Nazi Germany on Poland set off World War II.

“I am very concerned about what is happening between Russia and Ukraine. To be honest, I avoid the news because it sends shivers down my spine,” Polish pensioner Barbara Rybeczko-Tarnowiecka told AFP.

“If we don’t stop Russia now, it will continue tomorrow and the day after tomorrow,” says Sandra Kalniete, a former Latvian foreign minister and European commissioner.

A permanent presence of NATO forces in the Baltic States and Poland is “of the utmost importance, not only for our security but for European security as a whole,” she told AFP.

AFP Photo/Alexander Khudoteply

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Obama Accuses Russia, Says No U.S. Military Action In Ukraine

Obama Accuses Russia, Says No U.S. Military Action In Ukraine

Washington (AFP) — U.S. President Barack Obama said it was “plain for the world to see” that Russian forces were fighting in Ukraine, but ruled out any U.S. military action to resolve the escalating conflict.

Obama, who is due in Wales next week for a NATO summit, made clear that ex-Soviet states now in the alliance could expect a U.S. military defense, but said such guarantees did not apply to non-member Kiev.

He however told reporters that he would host Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in September to discuss the escalating crisis. The meeting will be on September 18, the White House said.

Obama’s comments came after NATO reported that hundreds of Russian government troops had crossed into east Ukraine to shore up the pro-Kremlin fighters there.

“Russia has deliberately and repeatedly violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and the new images of Russian forces inside Ukraine make that plain for the world to see,” Obama said.

“This ongoing Russian incursion into Ukraine will only bring more costs and consequences for Russia.”

The United States and the EU have already imposed a series of punishing sanctions on Russia over the crisis, the worst standoff between Moscow and the West since the Cold War.

Also on Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said European leaders would discuss possible new measures against Moscow at a summit in Brussels on Saturday.

“We want a diplomatic solution, and we will not let up on this, but we have to acknowledge that things have become more difficult and worsened again in recent days,” Merkel said.

Obama said he had spoken to Merkel about Ukraine, and that the pair had agreed “the violence is encouraged by Russia; the separatists are trained by Russia; they are armed by Russia. They are funded by Russia.”

The U.S. leader nevertheless said that Washington was “not taking military action to solve the Ukrainian problem.”

“It is not on the cards for us to see a military confrontation between Russia and the United States in this region,” he said.

Obama added that while Ukraine was not a member of NATO, “a number of those states that are close by are. And we take our Article Five commitments to defend each other very seriously.”

Obama will visit NATO member Estonia before heading to Wales for the NATO meeting.

The U.S. leader insisted that the United States stands “shoulder-to-shoulder” with Kiev and was doing everything possible to ensure “they have the best chance at dealing with what is admittedly a very difficult situation.”

Washington’s envoy to the United Nations earlier called on Moscow to “stop lying” about its involvement in the deadly conflict, which the U.N. estimates has claimed more than 2,200 lives since April.

“Russia has to stop lying and has to stop fueling this conflict,” the envoy, Samantha Power, told an emergency session of the 15-member UN Security Council.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Washington’s focus remained on “non-lethal assistance” to Ukraine.

AFP Photo/Saul Loeb

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