This is a different take on the way Obama's recent European trip was seen by many others around the world versus in just the US and here on FF. I think it is a realistic assessment of his trip and the way he is perceived around the world as the new leader of the USA with a different perspective of where the US should fit into the world today and our role as the leader of the free world.
I would personally rate his trip as a success for the obstacles that he needs to overcome to get the world to again look at the US as a role model and leader of the world today while getting/gaining the respect we need to lead.
Report Card On Obama’s European Trip:
Success? Failure? Or Mixed Bag?
Posted By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief On April 6, 2009 @ 11:27 am
So how did President Barack Obama really fare on his European trip?
It depends on the criteria used to judge the answer to that question — but by most accounts: quite well. Think of the reports of Obama acting as a kind of peacemaker between other world leaders. The generally positive response to his press conferences and to his town hall. And that one intangible: the concept of imagery and charisma (real or perceived or manufactured) and its impact on a leader — or a country’s — clout: by the time Obama and first lady Michelle Obama finished the G20 meetings, the meeting with Queen Elizabeth and the NATO meeting they had acquired the images of a kind of early 21st century JFK and Jackie.
Overblown? Oversimplistic? A first impression bound to disintegrate in the face of worldwide economic disaster and growing threats such as North Korea and Iran — threats that Obama, the G20, NATO and even the UN will be impotent to effectively short-circuit?
Perhaps. But as this cartoon by Hajo de Reijger of the Netherlands indicates, if JFK was perceived as kind of American royalty, Obama left the European stage with the image of a kind of rock star.
What does it mean? Where is it likely to go from here (it at all). Was Obama all flash and little accomplishment? Here’s a roundup of some analysts on Barack and Michelle’s Big European Adventure. These are only excerpts, so go to the links to read these in their entirety:
–The AP: [1]
Stop after stop, crowds are thronging, leaders gushing, headlines blaring. Even a roomful of foreign reporters applauded after President Barack Obama’s London news conference.
They love him over here. But are they giving him anything else to take home?
It’s a mixed bag: some success, several failures and much still to be determined.
–Clarence Page: [2]
His wife may have attracted more camera attention, but the Group of 20 economic summit in London was President Barack Obama’s show. He didn’t get everything he wanted in his first presidential foray onto the world stage, but he passed his audition.
…European leaders in particularly don’t want to build large public debt loads to pay for stimulus, especially when they blame our cowboy capitalists for the problem. Besides, European countries already direct a bigger portion of government spending than we do into job protections, unemployment benefits and other social safety nets.
Nevertheless, Obama’s comfort with give-and-take appears to have relieved world leaders.
A key moment for Obama’s bridge-building skills, according to witnesses inside the closed-door sessions, came when he stepped into a spat between China’s President Hu Jintao and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
–AFP: [3]
Barack Obama is billing himself as the US president which Europe seems to have long desired, one who comes not to lecture, but to “listen, to learn and to lead”.
In five days and three summits in Britain, France, Germany and the Czech Republic, Obama’s political message was unmistakable: the White House and the oldest and somewhat battered US alliances are under new management.
In contrast to the days in George W. Bush’s first term when some angry Americans even refused to call their fries French after an Iraq war spat, Obama’s watchwords were consult, engage and common purpose.
“I think there is a basic message across Europe which should resonate,” said Sean Kay, professor of international relations at Ohio Wesleyan University. “That is, America is in a position now where it is going to lead but lead by example, and consultation and engagement.”
Outside stuffy G20, NATO and European Union summits, Obama and wife Michelle took the continent by storm, whipping up gushing media coverage, rapturous crowds and a sprinkling dose of charisma in grim economic times.
It may be premature to judge whether Obama’s tour advanced his efforts to revive the global economy and finally win the war in Afghanistan — two of his key goals.
–James Lewis is highly critical: [4]
We have a rock star president who for the first time in American history fired the President of a private corporation, General Motors, then immediately flew to Europe with an entourage of 500 courtiers and a worshipful media, bowed waist-deep to the King of Saudi Arabia, and proceeded to accuse his own country of arrogance.
In France, of all places.
Does anybody else think this guy is shockingly ignorant? I wonder if he has every really talked to a concentration camp survivor, or a Cuban refugee, or a boat person from Vietnam? Or a Soviet dissident. Or a survivor or Mao’s purges…
….What arrogance these Americans have. Either that, or a very, very — no, stunningly — ignorant man was just elected president. What kind of man has such an obsessive need to put down his own country? Especially given our real history? Has he ever read an honest history book?
–The Christian Science Monitor [5] (now online only and still one of the most solid publications in the U.S.):
Almost casually, Barack Obama is gliding into old Europe with a new US image, accompanied by the beaming and fashionable Michelle. He smiles broadly. He seems to enjoy, if not relish crowds, meetings, the press give-and-takes, the dinners and group photos.
But while President Obama says he is here to listen, those listening to him hear a new tone – and some new content from the American bully pulpit. If Obama won the US presidency with a message that “we are all in this together,” his eight-day visit to Europe is broadening that “we” message to the globe. He’s apparently trying to make “unity” and “inclusiveness” mean something – in back rooms negotiations at the G-20, and at the NATO summit.
It has been some time since an American president was praised for his skills at cooperation, as he was by German Chancellor Angela Merkel after the G-20. Ms. Merkel came into the meeting prepared to breath fire, according to a Bloomberg report, and left saying “The American president was especially concerned that we get good results…. He was involved in solutions to very specific problems. It was a very good, very cooperative and result-oriented cooperation.”
Globalization is often described in amoral terms, as if an interconnected world of trade and media is value-neutral. But Obama has been seeking to give moral content to the idea of globalization, saying that what is good for people in one nation is good for everyone.
–The Telegraph’s Philip Sherwell: [6]
So Europe still loves Barack Obama. After his rock star reception in Europe last year as a candidate, Mr Obama has been just as enthusiastically greeted - by politicians and population alike - on his return as president.
He even seems to have squeezed a few concessions out of the French and Germans. My colleague Bruno Waterfield reports from Strasbourg that other Nato nations are offering up some extra troops for Afghanistan for a few months over the election period there later this year.
Okay, it’s only temporary but it’s more than was expected. Mr Obama has certainly been making all the right noises for European ears, most notably in those comments in Strasbourg where he criticised American “arrogance” and European “anti-Americanism”.
Indeed, as Michael Scherer points out in Time, he has given Uncle Sam’s international brand a radical overhaul. The prediction by leading neoconservative thinker Robert Kagan in the Washington Post that Mr Obama would play the role of “disturber of the peace” on this trip in the style of other American “creators of turmoil” has not apparently come true.
But Mr Obama and his advisors know, once the British, Gallic. Teutonic and (still to come) Turkish cheers have faded and the obsession with the first lady’s wardrobe has eased, what really matters is how this trip has played back home.
And on that, he will return to an America that is deeply split…..
–The NY Daily News’ Mike Lupica: [7]
Only it isn’t enough for Barack Obama, the most important American President in nearly 80 years, to fix just Detroit, just banks and insurance companies of New York City, erase the unemployment here and in California and Florida and everywhere else.
It is also this: Once again being a President we can send out to the world without embarrassment, or fear. That is why this past week mattered so much in Europe. Having him be the face and voice of this country mattered, last week and next week and for a long time, as he restores this country’s good name the way he tries to restore its confidence.
He is trying to do what George W. Bush never did, and that means build relationships around the world. But then the previous President was somebody who had no interest in a foreign policy that didn’t involve empty threats or tough talk or finishing off Saddam Hussein because his dad never did.
In a world now obsessed with currency, Barack Obama created some with the other world leaders, first in England and then in France and Sunday in the Czech Republic. This was an American President who didn’t think working with NATO was somehow beneath him.
There is no new law passed saying you have to agree with everything he says on the world stage, about Afghanistan or even that squirrely little wing nut in North Korea. But it was clear over the past week that these other world leaders, the smart ones, anyway, want to work with him. They want to respect the office of the President again - the one essentially shared for eight years by Bush and his war-loving vice president, Dick Cheney - after eight years when respect for the office and for this country seemed to shrink to the size of an iPod.
They want him to succeed the way the majority of the country wants him to succeed, all the Americans who don’t side with the screamers from the right, the ones who sell themselves as real patriots as they all seem to be selling books. Between crying jags, anyway.
–Crosscut’s Ted Van Dyk: [8]
I feel better about Obama’s personal performance than at any time since his inaugural. He performed well and learned much in Europe. He clearly is getting a better handle on financial/economic issues day-by-day. My principal worry remains that he has overreached with his domestic proposals.
Let’s start with the President’s European trip, which had mixed results. He campaigned intensely, both among G-20 and European leaders and in public forums in several cities. He gets an ‘A’ grade for his and Michelle Obama’s reception among both elites and common folk. On the substantive side, he gets a ‘B’ for falling short with his principal objectives but making the best of what he could get.
Obama headed to the Group of 20 meetings focused on getting other countries to match our own government stimulus spending. He struck out on that front. He went to NATO meetings focused on getting combat-troop commitments by our partners to the Afghanistan/western Pakistan intervention, which is NATO sponsored. He struck out there too. But, in both places, agreements were made which maintained G-20 and NATO solidarity and provided some half-loaf compromises.
Obama, on departing those meetings, employed the famous Aiken Formula of the Vietnam-war era. (Vermont Sen. George Aiken suggested that the U.S. “should just leave and say we won.”) He claimed victory and trusted that no one would examine the fine print.
FOOTNOTE: A year ago former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote this [9]on the challenges facing a new administration and Europe:
The long-predicted national debate about national security policy has yet to occur. Essentially tactical issues have overwhelmed the most important challenge a new administration will confront: how to distill a new international order from three simultaneous revolutions occurring around the globe: (a) the transformation of the traditional state system of Europe; (b) the radical Islamist challenge to historic notions of sovereignty; and (c) the drift of the center of gravity of international affairs from the Atlantic to the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Conventional wisdom holds that disenchantment with President Bush’s alleged unilateralism is at the heart of European-American disagreements. But it will become apparent soon after the change of administrations that the principal difference between the two sides of the Atlantic is that America is still a traditional nation-state whose people respond to calls for sacrifices on behalf of a much wider definition of the national interest than Europe’s definition.
….No previous generation has had to deal with different revolutions occurring simultaneously in separate parts of the world. The quest for a single, all-inclusive remedy is chimerical. In a world in which the sole superpower is a proponent of the prerogatives of the traditional nation-state, where Europe is stuck in halfway status, where the Middle East does not fit the nation-state model and faces a religiously motivated revolution, and where the nations of South and East Asia still practice the balance of power, what is the nature of the international order that can accommodate these different perspectives? What should be the role of Russia, which is affirming a notion of sovereignty comparable to America’s and a strategic concept of the balance of power similar to Asia’s? Are existing international organizations adequate for this purpose? What goals can America realistically set for itself and the world community? Is the internal transformation of major countries an attainable goal? What objectives must be sought in concert, and what are the extreme circumstances that would justify unilateral action?
This is the kind of debate we need, not focus-group-driven slogans designed to grab headlines.
One factor that needs to be taken into consideration in reading anything by Kissinger: he was a major unofficial adviser to the Bush administration.
Article printed from The Moderate Voice: http://themoderatevoice.com
URL to article: http://themoderatevoice.com/28166/report-card-on-obamas-european-trip-success-failure-or-mixed-bag/
URLs in this post:
[1] The AP:: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ihyaDakzDzUWaiLtqZI1VWp9ue4gD97C1JUO0
[2] Clarence Page:: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0405pageapr05,0,3955382.column
[3] AFP:: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hYwrwnEh7wjtagy8cEPyWWnpU9vw
[4] James Lewis is highly critical:: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/04/those_arrogant_americans.html
[5] The Christian Science Monitor: http://features.csmonitor.com/globalnews/2009/04/04/obama-glides-into-old-europe-with-new-us-image/
[6] The Telegraph’s Philip Sherwell:: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/philip...ck_obama_uniter_in_europe_but_divider_at_home
[7] The NY Daily News’ Mike Lupica:: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/pol...esident_obama_goes_abroad_and_the_worl-2.html
[8] Crosscut’s Ted Van Dyk:: http://crosscut.com/2009/04/05/politics-government/18942/
I would personally rate his trip as a success for the obstacles that he needs to overcome to get the world to again look at the US as a role model and leader of the world today while getting/gaining the respect we need to lead.
- The Moderate Voice - http://themoderatevoice.com –
Report Card On Obama’s European Trip:
Success? Failure? Or Mixed Bag?
Posted By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief On April 6, 2009 @ 11:27 am
So how did President Barack Obama really fare on his European trip?
It depends on the criteria used to judge the answer to that question — but by most accounts: quite well. Think of the reports of Obama acting as a kind of peacemaker between other world leaders. The generally positive response to his press conferences and to his town hall. And that one intangible: the concept of imagery and charisma (real or perceived or manufactured) and its impact on a leader — or a country’s — clout: by the time Obama and first lady Michelle Obama finished the G20 meetings, the meeting with Queen Elizabeth and the NATO meeting they had acquired the images of a kind of early 21st century JFK and Jackie.
Overblown? Oversimplistic? A first impression bound to disintegrate in the face of worldwide economic disaster and growing threats such as North Korea and Iran — threats that Obama, the G20, NATO and even the UN will be impotent to effectively short-circuit?
Perhaps. But as this cartoon by Hajo de Reijger of the Netherlands indicates, if JFK was perceived as kind of American royalty, Obama left the European stage with the image of a kind of rock star.
What does it mean? Where is it likely to go from here (it at all). Was Obama all flash and little accomplishment? Here’s a roundup of some analysts on Barack and Michelle’s Big European Adventure. These are only excerpts, so go to the links to read these in their entirety:
–The AP: [1]
Stop after stop, crowds are thronging, leaders gushing, headlines blaring. Even a roomful of foreign reporters applauded after President Barack Obama’s London news conference.
They love him over here. But are they giving him anything else to take home?
It’s a mixed bag: some success, several failures and much still to be determined.
–Clarence Page: [2]
His wife may have attracted more camera attention, but the Group of 20 economic summit in London was President Barack Obama’s show. He didn’t get everything he wanted in his first presidential foray onto the world stage, but he passed his audition.
…European leaders in particularly don’t want to build large public debt loads to pay for stimulus, especially when they blame our cowboy capitalists for the problem. Besides, European countries already direct a bigger portion of government spending than we do into job protections, unemployment benefits and other social safety nets.
Nevertheless, Obama’s comfort with give-and-take appears to have relieved world leaders.
A key moment for Obama’s bridge-building skills, according to witnesses inside the closed-door sessions, came when he stepped into a spat between China’s President Hu Jintao and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
–AFP: [3]
Barack Obama is billing himself as the US president which Europe seems to have long desired, one who comes not to lecture, but to “listen, to learn and to lead”.
In five days and three summits in Britain, France, Germany and the Czech Republic, Obama’s political message was unmistakable: the White House and the oldest and somewhat battered US alliances are under new management.
In contrast to the days in George W. Bush’s first term when some angry Americans even refused to call their fries French after an Iraq war spat, Obama’s watchwords were consult, engage and common purpose.
“I think there is a basic message across Europe which should resonate,” said Sean Kay, professor of international relations at Ohio Wesleyan University. “That is, America is in a position now where it is going to lead but lead by example, and consultation and engagement.”
Outside stuffy G20, NATO and European Union summits, Obama and wife Michelle took the continent by storm, whipping up gushing media coverage, rapturous crowds and a sprinkling dose of charisma in grim economic times.
It may be premature to judge whether Obama’s tour advanced his efforts to revive the global economy and finally win the war in Afghanistan — two of his key goals.
–James Lewis is highly critical: [4]
We have a rock star president who for the first time in American history fired the President of a private corporation, General Motors, then immediately flew to Europe with an entourage of 500 courtiers and a worshipful media, bowed waist-deep to the King of Saudi Arabia, and proceeded to accuse his own country of arrogance.
In France, of all places.
Does anybody else think this guy is shockingly ignorant? I wonder if he has every really talked to a concentration camp survivor, or a Cuban refugee, or a boat person from Vietnam? Or a Soviet dissident. Or a survivor or Mao’s purges…
….What arrogance these Americans have. Either that, or a very, very — no, stunningly — ignorant man was just elected president. What kind of man has such an obsessive need to put down his own country? Especially given our real history? Has he ever read an honest history book?
–The Christian Science Monitor [5] (now online only and still one of the most solid publications in the U.S.):
Almost casually, Barack Obama is gliding into old Europe with a new US image, accompanied by the beaming and fashionable Michelle. He smiles broadly. He seems to enjoy, if not relish crowds, meetings, the press give-and-takes, the dinners and group photos.
But while President Obama says he is here to listen, those listening to him hear a new tone – and some new content from the American bully pulpit. If Obama won the US presidency with a message that “we are all in this together,” his eight-day visit to Europe is broadening that “we” message to the globe. He’s apparently trying to make “unity” and “inclusiveness” mean something – in back rooms negotiations at the G-20, and at the NATO summit.
It has been some time since an American president was praised for his skills at cooperation, as he was by German Chancellor Angela Merkel after the G-20. Ms. Merkel came into the meeting prepared to breath fire, according to a Bloomberg report, and left saying “The American president was especially concerned that we get good results…. He was involved in solutions to very specific problems. It was a very good, very cooperative and result-oriented cooperation.”
Globalization is often described in amoral terms, as if an interconnected world of trade and media is value-neutral. But Obama has been seeking to give moral content to the idea of globalization, saying that what is good for people in one nation is good for everyone.
–The Telegraph’s Philip Sherwell: [6]
So Europe still loves Barack Obama. After his rock star reception in Europe last year as a candidate, Mr Obama has been just as enthusiastically greeted - by politicians and population alike - on his return as president.
He even seems to have squeezed a few concessions out of the French and Germans. My colleague Bruno Waterfield reports from Strasbourg that other Nato nations are offering up some extra troops for Afghanistan for a few months over the election period there later this year.
Okay, it’s only temporary but it’s more than was expected. Mr Obama has certainly been making all the right noises for European ears, most notably in those comments in Strasbourg where he criticised American “arrogance” and European “anti-Americanism”.
Indeed, as Michael Scherer points out in Time, he has given Uncle Sam’s international brand a radical overhaul. The prediction by leading neoconservative thinker Robert Kagan in the Washington Post that Mr Obama would play the role of “disturber of the peace” on this trip in the style of other American “creators of turmoil” has not apparently come true.
But Mr Obama and his advisors know, once the British, Gallic. Teutonic and (still to come) Turkish cheers have faded and the obsession with the first lady’s wardrobe has eased, what really matters is how this trip has played back home.
And on that, he will return to an America that is deeply split…..
–The NY Daily News’ Mike Lupica: [7]
Only it isn’t enough for Barack Obama, the most important American President in nearly 80 years, to fix just Detroit, just banks and insurance companies of New York City, erase the unemployment here and in California and Florida and everywhere else.
It is also this: Once again being a President we can send out to the world without embarrassment, or fear. That is why this past week mattered so much in Europe. Having him be the face and voice of this country mattered, last week and next week and for a long time, as he restores this country’s good name the way he tries to restore its confidence.
He is trying to do what George W. Bush never did, and that means build relationships around the world. But then the previous President was somebody who had no interest in a foreign policy that didn’t involve empty threats or tough talk or finishing off Saddam Hussein because his dad never did.
In a world now obsessed with currency, Barack Obama created some with the other world leaders, first in England and then in France and Sunday in the Czech Republic. This was an American President who didn’t think working with NATO was somehow beneath him.
There is no new law passed saying you have to agree with everything he says on the world stage, about Afghanistan or even that squirrely little wing nut in North Korea. But it was clear over the past week that these other world leaders, the smart ones, anyway, want to work with him. They want to respect the office of the President again - the one essentially shared for eight years by Bush and his war-loving vice president, Dick Cheney - after eight years when respect for the office and for this country seemed to shrink to the size of an iPod.
They want him to succeed the way the majority of the country wants him to succeed, all the Americans who don’t side with the screamers from the right, the ones who sell themselves as real patriots as they all seem to be selling books. Between crying jags, anyway.
–Crosscut’s Ted Van Dyk: [8]
I feel better about Obama’s personal performance than at any time since his inaugural. He performed well and learned much in Europe. He clearly is getting a better handle on financial/economic issues day-by-day. My principal worry remains that he has overreached with his domestic proposals.
Let’s start with the President’s European trip, which had mixed results. He campaigned intensely, both among G-20 and European leaders and in public forums in several cities. He gets an ‘A’ grade for his and Michelle Obama’s reception among both elites and common folk. On the substantive side, he gets a ‘B’ for falling short with his principal objectives but making the best of what he could get.
Obama headed to the Group of 20 meetings focused on getting other countries to match our own government stimulus spending. He struck out on that front. He went to NATO meetings focused on getting combat-troop commitments by our partners to the Afghanistan/western Pakistan intervention, which is NATO sponsored. He struck out there too. But, in both places, agreements were made which maintained G-20 and NATO solidarity and provided some half-loaf compromises.
Obama, on departing those meetings, employed the famous Aiken Formula of the Vietnam-war era. (Vermont Sen. George Aiken suggested that the U.S. “should just leave and say we won.”) He claimed victory and trusted that no one would examine the fine print.
FOOTNOTE: A year ago former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote this [9]on the challenges facing a new administration and Europe:
The long-predicted national debate about national security policy has yet to occur. Essentially tactical issues have overwhelmed the most important challenge a new administration will confront: how to distill a new international order from three simultaneous revolutions occurring around the globe: (a) the transformation of the traditional state system of Europe; (b) the radical Islamist challenge to historic notions of sovereignty; and (c) the drift of the center of gravity of international affairs from the Atlantic to the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Conventional wisdom holds that disenchantment with President Bush’s alleged unilateralism is at the heart of European-American disagreements. But it will become apparent soon after the change of administrations that the principal difference between the two sides of the Atlantic is that America is still a traditional nation-state whose people respond to calls for sacrifices on behalf of a much wider definition of the national interest than Europe’s definition.
….No previous generation has had to deal with different revolutions occurring simultaneously in separate parts of the world. The quest for a single, all-inclusive remedy is chimerical. In a world in which the sole superpower is a proponent of the prerogatives of the traditional nation-state, where Europe is stuck in halfway status, where the Middle East does not fit the nation-state model and faces a religiously motivated revolution, and where the nations of South and East Asia still practice the balance of power, what is the nature of the international order that can accommodate these different perspectives? What should be the role of Russia, which is affirming a notion of sovereignty comparable to America’s and a strategic concept of the balance of power similar to Asia’s? Are existing international organizations adequate for this purpose? What goals can America realistically set for itself and the world community? Is the internal transformation of major countries an attainable goal? What objectives must be sought in concert, and what are the extreme circumstances that would justify unilateral action?
This is the kind of debate we need, not focus-group-driven slogans designed to grab headlines.
One factor that needs to be taken into consideration in reading anything by Kissinger: he was a major unofficial adviser to the Bush administration.
Article printed from The Moderate Voice: http://themoderatevoice.com
URL to article: http://themoderatevoice.com/28166/report-card-on-obamas-european-trip-success-failure-or-mixed-bag/
URLs in this post:
[1] The AP:: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ihyaDakzDzUWaiLtqZI1VWp9ue4gD97C1JUO0
[2] Clarence Page:: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0405pageapr05,0,3955382.column
[3] AFP:: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hYwrwnEh7wjtagy8cEPyWWnpU9vw
[4] James Lewis is highly critical:: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/04/those_arrogant_americans.html
[5] The Christian Science Monitor: http://features.csmonitor.com/globalnews/2009/04/04/obama-glides-into-old-europe-with-new-us-image/
[6] The Telegraph’s Philip Sherwell:: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/philip...ck_obama_uniter_in_europe_but_divider_at_home
[7] The NY Daily News’ Mike Lupica:: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/pol...esident_obama_goes_abroad_and_the_worl-2.html
[8] Crosscut’s Ted Van Dyk:: http://crosscut.com/2009/04/05/politics-government/18942/
[9] State Henry Kissinger wrote this : http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/04/the_three_revolutions.html_revolutions.html