On first foreign trip,Obama will face defiant world

President Barack Obama is facing challenges to American power on multiple fronts as he prepares for his first trip overseas since taking office...

President Barack Obama is facing challenges to American power on multiple fronts as he prepares for his first trip overseas since taking office,with the nations economic woes emboldening allies and adversaries alike.

Despite his immense popularity around the world,Obama will confront resentment over American-style capitalism and resistance to his economic prescriptions when he lands in London on Tuesday for the Group of 20 summit meeting of industrial and emerging market nations plus the European Union.

The President will not even try to overcome NATOs unwillingness to provide more troops in Afghanistan when he goes on later in the week to meet with the military alliance.

He seems unlikely to return home with any more to show for his attempts to open a dialogue with Irans leaders,who have,so far,responded with tough words,albeit not tough enough to persuade Russia to support the US in tougher sanctions against Tehran. And he will be tested in face-to-face meetings by the leaders of China and Russia,who have been pondering the degree to which the power of the US to dominate global affairs may be ebbing.

Obama is unlikely to push for specific commitments from other countries on stimulus spending to bolster their own economies,White House officials acknowledged on Saturday in a teleconference call,despite the fact that administration officials would like to see European countries,in particular,increase their spending to try to prompt a global economic recovery.

Nobody is asking any country to come to London to commit to do more right now, said Michael Froman,Deputy National Security Adviser for International Economic Affairs. Instead,world leaders at the meeting will try to do whatever is necessary to restore global growth,he said.

The challenges stem in part from lingering unhappiness around the world at the way the Bush administration used US power. But they have been made more intense by the sense in many capitals that the US is no longer in any position to dictate to other nations what types of economic policies to pursue or to impose its will more generally as it intensifies the war in Afghanistan and extracts itself from Iraq.

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There is a direct challenge under way to the paradigms that America has been trying to sell to the rest of the world, said Eswar S Prasad,a former China division chief at the International Monetary Fund. The American banking collapse,which precipitated the global meltdown,has led to a fundamental rethinking of the American way as a model for the rest of the world.