„French President François Hollande delivered a sharp critique of the Obama administration in comments published Wednesday, calling Washington afraid to use its power to stop the bloodshed in Syria but too eager to wield its economic might to penalize European companies. The comments reflect a divide between France and the U.S. over how to respond to Russia’s bombardment of Aleppo, combined with long-simmering anger at Washington’s power to target European companies, most recently Deutsche Bank AG with an expected multibillion-dollar fine. The U.S. has ‚too much power to take back money and not enough power to make peace,‘ Mr. Hollande said in an interview published in the French magazine l’Obs. (…)
Mr. Hollande, in his toughest critique yet of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy, said the decision not to retaliate against the Syrian government in 2013 for using chemical weapons encouraged Russia’s military expansion into Ukraine and Syria. ‚This signal was interpreted as weakness from the international community,‘ Mr. Hollande said. ‚That’s what provoked the crisis in Ukraine, the illegal annexation of Crimea, and what’s happening in Syria right now.‘“
(The Wall Street Journal: „Hollande Offers Sharp Critique of U.S. Policy“)
