The fact remains, whether the request comes from George W. Bush or Barack Obama, some European contingents only do the equivalent of light housework

When it comes to actual risk, this links up to Mr. Obama’s assertion that he got ‘’strong and unanimous support” on Afghanistan at the Strasbourg NATO summit. Which, if you mean more European troops engaged in more Afghan combat missions, just didn’t happen.

Thus writes John Vinocur regarding "a week’s presidential visit that largely involved wanting to be liked and resulted in mixed messages".

The fact remains, whether the request comes from George W. Bush or Mr. Obama, some European contingents only do the equivalent of light housework — while the Dutch, the Danes and the British are very much apart on the dangerous southern front with the Americans and Canadians. The problem is so present that at a symposium on European-American cooperation last week a participant asked, with a knowing look, if “military to military relations are being undermined by the distinction between those who fight and those who don’t?”

The European player who gave Mr. Obama such high marks for his performance at the G20 had a harsher view of his aversion to press further for greater European engagement: “Obama was too deferential and listened too closely to some really pathetic explanations. He got fobbed off. And this is a guy who has rock star status! He could have pushed much, much harder.”

Russia: Mr. Obama spoke of a “terrific meeting” in London with President Dmitri Medvedev. But unless he told Mr. Obama he had just been woofin’, nothing countermanded his announcement two weeks earlier that the Russian armed forces would begin “rearmament on a grand scale in 2011,” concentrating on strategic nuclear capacity.

The effect was troubling. An American I spoke to said there was some concern that Western Europe could be misinterpreting (Willfully? Never!) the degree of tolerance in the administration’s line about pressing the reset button on Russia policy.

Broadcast as a big American concern two months ago by Vice President Joe Biden (“writ large” were his words), energy security, or turning around Europe’s dependency on Russian natural gas, wound up fudged into Item 57 in the NATO summit declaration.

As far as NATO cooperation with the E.U. goes, there are West Europeans said not to like the juxtaposition of the words energy and security. That sounds too much like contemplating something military in the event of new political extortion by Russia involving Europe’s fuel supply.