Analysis: For Obama, a world of Snowden troubles
Since his first day in office, President Barack Obama's foreign policy has rested on outreach: resetting ties with Russia, building a partnership with China and offering a fresh start with antagonistic leaders from Iran to Venezuela.
But the global travels on Sunday of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden highlight the limits of that approach. Leaders Obama has wooed - and met recently - were willing to snub the American president.
The cocky defiance by so-called "non-state actors" - Snowden himself and the anti-secrecy group, WikiLeaks, completes the picture of a world less willing than ever to bend to U.S. prescriptions of right and wrong.
Snowden flew out of Hong Kong, the semi-autonomous Chinese territory, early on Sunday after Hong Kong authorities rebuffed a U.S. request to detain him pending extradition to the United States for trial. Snowden has acknowledged leaking details of highly classified NSA surveillance programs.
Beijing may merely have wished to get rid of a potential irritant in its multifaceted relationship with Washington. But Snowden's next stop was Russia, a U.S. "frenemy" in which the friend factor has been harder to spot since President Vladimir Putin returned to power in May 2012.
WikiLeaks, which says it is helping the 30-year-old Snowden, said via Twitter that he intended to go to Ecuador, whose government has antagonistic relations with Washington. Ecuador's foreign minister, Ricardo Patino Aroca, said, also via Twitter, that his government had received an asylum request from Snowden.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/23/us-usa-security-obama-analysis-idUSBRE95M0HL20130623
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