Politico quotes NATOSource Director and Brent Scowcroft Center Senior Fellow Jorge Benitez on the upcoming NATO Summit in Wales:
Obama has “a very strong hand. He’s just playing it very badly,” said Jorge Benitez, the well-known NATO expert at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center.
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“For all this talk about being a multilateral president, Obama just announced it unilaterally,” Benitez said. “Normally the way you do this with NATO and coalitions is, you tell people beforehand, ‘Here’s what I’m going to do. Here’s what I’m going to contribute … now what are you prepared to do?’ We’ve already paid for lunch, and now we’re trying to negotiate with allies to chip in and help pay for the tip.”
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“It’s sort of like they spent all their money on buying Ferraris and now they have no gas money,” Benitez said. “There are many allies that literally aren’t flying their planes because they can’t afford to. They have very advanced fleets, but their fleets aren’t leaving port because they can’t afford to.”