Obama Heads to Europe to Reassure Allies

[Geee]

Fox News:

WASHINGTON -- Just days after an exhausting and sometimes disappointing trip to Asia, President Barack Obama is dashing to Europe to assure America's trans-Atlantic allies that he is not neglecting them.

Obama departed from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland shortly before midnight. His two days of diplomacy in Lisbon, Portugal, will be framed by back-to-back summits: one with the North American Treaty Organization and then a joint U.S.-European Union gathering.

But it's Obama's agenda -- from the future of the Afghanistan war to disputes over currency and trade -- that will be in the international spotlight at a time when he's been weakened at home by his party's defeats in the midterm elections and rebuffed abroad by world leaders.

During Obama's swing through Asia last week, he failed to ink a highly coveted free-trade deal with South Korea and couldn't rally wide-ranging international support for his opposition to China's currency manipulation.