Obama sets off to reassure allies on final foreign tour

President Obama embarks on his final foreign trip Monday, leaving behind a Donald Trump wave in the United States and heading straight into another Trump-like wave in Europe.

The lame-duck president is hoping to reassure allies about the stability of U.S. policy, while the president-elect is gearing up to unravel some of Mr. Obama’s biggest foreign policy initiatives, including the Paris climate change agreement and the Iran nuclear deal.

Even before Mr. Obama left U.S. soil, Mr. Trump was making foreign policy overtures to Europe. The president-elect met Saturday in New York City with Nigel Farage, the interim head of the United Kingdom Independence Party who led the move to pull Britain out of the European Union. Kellyanne Conway, a top adviser to Mr. Trump, said the meeting with Mr. Farage at Trump Tower was “productive.”

“They absolutely had an opportunity to talk about freedom and winning and what this all means for the world,” Mrs. Conway said.

Mr. Obama will be largely powerless to deal with rising concerns among European leaders that upcoming elections in Italy and France could be swayed by the same sort of anti-establishment forces that contributed to Mr. Trump’s victory and British voters’ decision to leave the European Union. The U.S. president was on the losing side of both votes, and he’s also spoken out in support of the Italian prime minister’s proposed constitutional changes to consolidate power, a referendum to be held next month.

“Now the president has the unenviable task of telling his counterparts and explaining what Europeans are now coining the ’Trump effect’,” said Heather Conley, senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “And they are very worried, because the same populist, nationalist expressions — whether that’s on immigration, whether that is on free trade — has certainly [been] running very strong political currents within Europe.”

The niece of French opposition leader Marine Le Pen said over the weekend that she contacted Stephen Bannon, CEO of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, “to work together.” France will hold its presidential election in May, and there’s speculation that if Ms. Le Pen wins, she could withdraw France from the European Union, following Britain’s example.

Mr. Trump also spoke by phone on Friday with French President Francois Hollande, discussing Syria and the fight against terrorism.

At stops in Greece and Germany, Mr. Obama will have few answers for allies who are anxious about Mr. Trump’s plans for NATO, and are questioning whether the president-elect will change Mr. Obama’s course on sanctions against Russia or the fight against the Islamic State.

“In some ways there’s nothing to say,” Ms. Conley said. “The trip was meant to just give everybody some reassurance that we made it through this campaign, and we’re going to come out all right. We just have a different scenario now.”

In Athens on Wednesday, Mr. Obama will deliver the major speech of his weeklong trip. White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said the president will address forces of economic unrest in many Western nations, including the United States.

“Part of what the president will discuss is this need to respond effectively to the issues that have been raised by globalization,” Mr. Rhodes said. “That will include, frankly, an acknowledgment of our election results, the Brexit election results and the sense that we’ve seen in a number of countries that there are challenges as people feel that decisions are made beyond their control, as economies change and inequality has persisted.”

In an interview with the Greek newspaper Kathimerini ahead of his trip, Mr. Obama tried to offer assurances that the U.S. understands the importance of the EU and NATO.

“The EU and NATO are extraordinary forces for peace and stability,” Mr. Obama said. “Europe is our largest economic partner, and we have a profound economic interest in a Europe that is stable and growing.”

While Mr. Obama is making his final trip abroad, Mr. Trump will be busy meeting with his transition team, narrowing the search for his top foreign policy advisers to fill roles such as secretaries of state and defense, CIA director and White House National Security Adviser. He has questioned the U.S. commitment to NATO partners who don’t pay their fair share and campaigned on renegotiating the terms of the Iranian deal.

Reuters reported that Mr. Trump is eyeing ways to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement quickly, possibly by issuing an executive order that would delete the U.S. signature from the pact.

Mr. Rhodes said Mr. Obama essentially will urge allies to bear with the incoming administration, pushing a theme that the U.S. keeps certain “core relationships” abroad no matter who is president.

“Given all the important issues that we face, no matter what our preferred choice may have been in the election, right now we as Americans have a stake in seeing this incoming administration succeed,” Mr. Rhodes said. “We obviously believe in the importance of the Iran deal, which has significantly rolled back Iran’s nuclear program. We believe in the importance of the Paris agreement. Even as we’ve had diverse foreign policies pursued by administrations of different parties, we’ve remained committed members of the NATO alliance. There’s a baseline of shared interests and values that has continued under different administrations.”

Luke Coffey, director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Mr. Trump should work quickly to ease concerns among NATO allies about his commitment to the security alliance in the face of continued Russian aggression.

“The Trump Administration should take early steps to reassure European allies that America remains committed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” Mr. Coffey said in a blog post. “President-elect Trump should recognize that [Russian President] Vladimir Putin is not a partner to the U.S. in the transatlantic region. Most important, Trump should refocus NATO on the alliance’s core mission of territorial defense.”

It will be Mr. Obama’s 52nd foreign trip to a total of 58 countries. President George W. Bush made 48 trips abroad, visiting a total of 72 nations; President Bill Clinton made 54 trips to 70 countries.

After his stops in Greece and Germany, Mr. Obama will fly back across the Atlantic Ocean to Peru, host of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. There, Mr. Obama will meet with heads of state who signed the stalled Trans Pacific Partnership free trade deal, which is virtually dead in the lame-duck session of Congress.

Mr. Trump has said he’ll renegotiate the agreement to work out more favorable terms for American workers.

“We still think the TPP makes sense for America for economic and national security reasons, and that it’s important that we stay engaged in the region,” said Wally Adeyamo, White House deputy national security adviser for international economics. “And he will talk to them about the importance of that engagement, and talk about how we can work together over the course of the remaining days of this administration to solidify the partnership with those countries.”