http://www.aol.com/article/2016/03/10/president-obama-frustrated-with-allies-calls-out-the-free-rid/21325746/

President Obama, frustrated with allies, calls out the 'free riders'
NBC News
ERIK ORTIZ Mar 10th 2016 11:46AM

In some of his bluntest comments yet on the subject of foreign policy, Obama told The Atlantic that he warned Great Britain that it would no longer have a "special relationship" with the U.S. if it did not start spending at least 2 percent of its GDP on defense.

It was previously reported that Obama spoke with Prime Minister David Cameron about England's military spending during last year's G7 summit.

"Free riders aggravate me," Obama said in a wide-ranging interview with The Atlantic that was published online Thursday and will be featured in its April issue.

Obama said he has struggled to get other nations to take the lead and pull their weight when necessary on several issues — including terrorism, Russian incursions and Chinese aggression.

Jeffrey Goldberg, who conducted the interview, said the president was especially perturbed when The New Yorker reported, citing an anonymous administration official, that the White House was "leading from behind" amid the Libya crisis of 2011.

"We don't have to always be the ones who are up front," Obama told Goldberg, the magazine's national correspondent. "Sometimes we're going to get what we want precisely because we are sharing in the agenda. The irony is that it was precisely in order to prevent the Europeans and the Arab states from holding our coats while we did all the fighting that we, by design, insisted" they lead during the mission to oust longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. "It was part of the anti-free rider campaign."

Obama held up Britain and France as examples of nations who seemed resistant to stepping up wholeheartedly at that time.

He said Cameron became "distracted by a range of other things," while former French President Nicolas Sarkozy "wanted to trumpet the flights he was taking in the air campaign (in Libya), despite the fact that (the U.S.) had wiped out all the air defenses and essentially set up the entire infrastructure" for the intervention.

Obama also questioned America's relationship with the oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which has played a pivotal role in the Middle East as a U.S. ally — and Iran's archrival.

He said he did not want to throw "our traditional allies overboard," but that the Saudis will need to get along with Iran for the sake of extended peace.

"The competition between the Saudis and the Iranians — which has helped to feed proxy wars and chaos in Syria and Iraq and Yemen — requires us to say to our friends as well as to the Iranians that they need to find an effective way to share the neighborhood and institute some sort of cold peace," Obama said.

The Atlantic piece also revealed that Obama has likened the entire Middle East to Gotham, the metropolis in the "Batman" comics, and said ISIS was akin to the Joker from the 2008 movie "The Dark Knight," according to advisers.

"There's a scene in the beginning in which the gang leaders of Gotham are meeting," the president has said, according to The Atlantic. "These are men who had the city divided up. They were thugs, but there was a kind of order. Everyone had his turf. And then the Joker comes in and lights the whole city on fire. (ISIS) is the Joker. It has the capacity to set the whole region on fire. That's why we have to fight it."

The president was also introspective of what he's accomplished in his foreign policy efforts so far. He told The Atlantic that he realizes that historians will one day question his decision to not bomb Syria in 2013 after it appeared Damascus had violated his so-called "red line" against using chemical weapons.

But of that decision, he said, "I'm very proud of this moment. ... The perception was that my credibility was at stake, that America's credibility was at stake. And so for me to press the pause button at that moment, I knew, would cost me politically."

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/saudi-arabia-succession/white-house-sees-no-snub-arab-leaders-skipping-summit-n357156

The White House sought to quash concerns that the withdrawal of four of the six top leaders of Gulf nations from a planned summit later this week at Camp David signals strained relations between the administration and countries in that region.

Of the six Arab states invited, only two of the those countries — Kuwait and Qatar — plan on sending their top leaders. The remaining countries Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are all sending delegates.

"There had been some speculation that this change in travel plans was an attempt to send a message to the U.S. — if so, the message was not received because all the feedback we have gotten from the Saudis has been positive," Earnest told reporters on Monday.

Monday afternoon, King Salman called President Obama and "expressed his regret at not being able to travel to Washington this week" according to the White House readout of the call. Both leaders reviewed the agenda for the summit and discussed Iran, Yemen and the need to work closely to address a range of threats.

The White House hopes the summit will be an opportunity to discuss "our shared concern about Iran's destabilizing activities in the region," and address military cooperation throughout the region, deputy press Secretary Eric Schultz had said previously. The talks will also likely include a potential deal between several world powers and Iran on that country's nuclear program as well as crises in Syria and Yemen.
[White House Denies Tension Exists Between Saudi King, Obama]
White House Denies Tension Exists Between Saudi King, Obama 1:01

However, the Obama administration is facing tough questions after King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, one of the administration's key allies, backed out of the summit. Saudi Arabia announced that King Salman will not attend the summit and would instead send Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef to lead the Saudi delegation.

A senior White House official and officials from the State Department told NBC the administration first learned of the King's possible change of plans from the Saudis on Friday night and this was confirmed by the Saudis on Saturday.

The administration also insisted that the change was not in response to any substantive issue.

"Nothing could be further from the truth that there was some 'snub' — to use the term used by cable news talking points," State Department spokesperson Marie Harf said during a briefing on Monday afternoon, adding that Secretary Kerry left his visit in Riyadh last week after "very positive discussions."

When the summit was first announced by the White House on April 17th, the official White House statement said the president would "welcome leaders from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — to the White House on May 13 and to Camp David on May 14."
[Saudi Oil Min: Not worried about Iran crude]
Saudi Oil Min: Not worried about Iran crude 1:10

Saudi Arabia's decision not to send its top leader is the most jarring: both because of its role as a key ally in the region, but also because it was such an abrupt change, coming just hours after Schultz confirmed the meeting between the president and King Salman on Wednesday at the White House.

A rare Camp David summit with Gulf leaders could have been both a symbolic show of the president's foreign policy cooperation and a substantive play to boost Middle East allies and persuade nations to embrace a potential nuclear deal with Iran, foreign policy experts said. Instead, the White House spent the entire day explaining why just two of the six top leaders of Gulf nations will attend.

While White House officials insisted this is not a setback for the Obama administration, some foreign policy experts disagreed.

Former Ambassador to Morocco, Mark Ginsberg said Gulf leaders believed there would be progress, if not agreements on a mutual defense agreement, ballistic missile cover and the transfer of F-35 jets, and when they found out they weren't going to get any of the things they were asking for, they decided it wasn't worth their time to attend.

"This was a real failure," Ginsberg said.

An administration official pushed back on that idea, insisting leaders were told weeks ago there would be no formal treaty, and only one nation expressed disappointment in person at a meeting in Paris.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/08/us/politics/panetta-speaks-to-senate-panel-on-benghazi-attack.html?_r=0
deep divisions over what to do about one of those issues — the rising violence in Syria — spilled into public view for the first time in a blunt exchange between Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and the leaders of the Pentagon.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta acknowledged that he and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, had supported a plan last year to arm carefully vetted Syrian rebels. But it was ultimately vetoed by the White House, Mr. Panetta said, although it was developed by David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director at the time, and backed by Hillary Rodham Clinton, then the secretary of state.

(. . .)

Neither Mr. Panetta nor General Dempsey explained why President Obama did not heed their recommendation. But senior American officials have said that the White House was worried about the risks of becoming more deeply involved in the Syria crisis, including the possibility that weapons could fall into the wrong hands. And with Mr. Obama in the middle of a re-election campaign, the White House rebuffed the plan, a decision that Mr. Panetta says he now accepts.

With the exception of General Dempsey, the officials who favored arming the rebels have either left the administration or, as in Mr. Panetta’s case, are about to depart. Given that turnover, it is perhaps not surprising that the details of the debate — an illustration of the degree that foreign policy decisions have been centralized in the White House — are surfacing only now. A White House spokesman declined to comment on Thursday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/us/politics/in-behind-scene-blows-and-triumphs-sense-of-clinton-future.html WASHINGTON — Last summer, as the fighting in Syria raged and questions about the United States’ inaction grew, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton conferred privately with David H. Petraeus, the director of the C.I.A. The two officials were joining forces on a plan to arm the Syrian resistance.

The idea was to vet the rebel groups and train fighters, who would be supplied with weapons. The plan had risks, but it also offered the potential reward of creating Syrian allies with whom the United States could work, both during the conflict and after President Bashar al-Assad’s eventual removal.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Petraeus presented the proposal to the White House, according to administration officials. But with the White House worried about the risks, and with President Obama in the midst of a re-election bid, they were rebuffed.

( . . .)

The disclosures about Mrs. Clinton’s behind-the-scenes role in Syria and Myanmar — one a setback, the other a success — offer a window into her time as a member of Mr. Obama’s cabinet. They may also be a guide to her thinking as she ponders a future run for the presidency with favorability ratings that are the highest of her career, even after her last months at the State Department were marred by the deadly attack on the American Mission in Benghazi, Libya.

“Secretary Clinton has dramatically changed the face of U.S. foreign policy globally for the good,” said Richard L. Armitage, deputy secretary of state during the George W. Bush administration. “But I wish she had been unleashed more by the White House.”

(. . .)

After Britain and France argued for intervening to defend Libya’s rebels against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Mrs. Clinton played an important role in mobilizing a broad international coalition and persuading the White House to join the NATO-led operation.

But it was Syria that proved to be the most difficult test. As that country descended into civil war, the administration provided humanitarian aid to the growing flood of refugees, pushed for sanctions and sought to organize the political opposition. The United States lagged France, Britain and Persian Gulf states in recognizing that opposition as the legitimate representative of the Syria people, but by December, Mr. Obama had taken that step.

Still, rebel fighters were clamoring for weapons and training. The White House has been reluctant to arm them for fear that it would draw the United States into the conflict and raise the risk of the weapons falling into the wrong hands. Rebel extremists affiliated with Al Qaeda had faced no such constraints in securing weapons from their backers.

When Mr. Petraeus was the commander of forces in Iraq and then-Senator Clinton was serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee and preparing for her 2008 presidential bid, she had all but called him a liar for trumpeting the military gains of the troop increase ordered by President Bush. But serving together in the Obama administration, they were allies when it came to Syria, as well as on the debate over how many troops to send to Afghanistan at the beginning of the administration.

Mr. Petraeus had a background in training foreign forces from his years in Iraq, and his C.I.A. job put him in charge of covert operations. The Americans already had experience in providing nonlethal assistance to some of the rebels.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/172774/obama-opposed-syria-war-plan-clinton-petraeus-panetta-gen-dempsey Let’s give the White House and President Obama, personally, credit for blocking the hawks in his administration from going to war in Syria.

Last week, we learned that Hillary Clinton and David Petraeus, now thankfully pursuing other opportunities and spending more time with their families, had cooked up a plan to arm and train the ragtag Syrian rebels, thus getting the United States directly involved in that horrible civil war.

Now we learn that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs—both of whom are about to join Clinton and Petraeus in the private sector—also backed the Clinton-Petraeus plan,

Who was against it? Obama.

Here’s how The New York Times reports the bombshell revelation, which emerged at a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing with Panetta and Dempsey, under questioning from the invariably pro-war John McCain:

Did the Pentagon, Mr. McCain continued, support the recommendation by Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Petraeus “that we provide weapons to the resistance in Syria? Did you support that?”

“We did,” Mr. Panetta said.

“You did support that,” Mr. McCain said.

“We did,” General Dempsey added.

Despite the formidable coalition of Panetta, Clinton, Petraeus, and Dempsey—and no doubt Susan Rice was in there punching, too—Obama nixed the idea.