Afghanistan, what now? After a week of death and retaliation in the country, it appears that a car bomb has been detonated on the runway at Camp Bastion — probably aimed at the visiting US Secretary of Defence, Leon Panetta. A spokesman has since said that ‘at no point was anyone on board Mr Panetta’s plane at risk,’ but it certainly highlights the dangers attached to his visit. What chance, now, that he will be successful in his goal of ‘easing tensions’?
The incident cropped up very briefly in David Cameron and Barack Obama’s press conference just now. Asked for further information by Sky’s Joey Jones, the PM stressed that ‘details are still coming through,’ and moved onto talking about how the situation in Afghanistan has improved over the last five years. Obama talked only about the more general situation, concluding that ‘we will be able to achieve our objectives by 2014’.
Beyond Afghanistan, much of the rest of the press conference was an exercise in mutual chumminess. Obama and Cameron trilled on and on about last night’s basketball game, and about the gifts that they have handed to each other. And the former gave Downing St another gift, in the shape of a mitigated endorsement of the latter’s fiscal plan. ‘Their banking sector was larger than ours, their capacity to sustain debt was weaker than ours,’ said Obama, by way of explaining away the differences in our two countries’ policy responses, ‘but our objectives are the same.’
The only other thing to note, really, was the mixture of soft and hard rhetoric on Iran and Syria. On Iran, Obama emphasised ‘diplomatic solutions,’ but also said that, ‘I will do everything I can to prevent Iran getting a nuclear weapon.’ On Syria, neither man really came close to threatening military intervention, but both suggested that the military has considered options such as enforcing a no-fly zone — ‘because that is what militaries do’.
All in all, this was more another act of political theatre than anything substantial. It’s on to tonight’s state banquet for the PM and the President.
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