Walker's World: A declining West?: Europeans, seeing the keystone economy of Germany drifting back into recession, are pinning more and more of their hopes on U.S. President Barack Obama's proposal for a Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership to kick-start growth.
But on the evidence of this year's German conference at Harvard, Europeans are equally keen on the idea as a way to symbolize the enduring strength of the Atlantic alliance and to reassure allies made nervous by the Obama administration's talk of a strategic pivot toward the Pacific.
"Some may be concerned by the pivot but we should be more worried if the United States ignored these historic shifts under way in Asia," Frank-Walter Steinmeier, former foreign minister and current leader of the Social Democrat opposition in the German Parliament, told the conference.
