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Let’s start with the positive: Obama’s symbolic presence in Poland – for that matter, anywhere in Europe – shines a very reassuring spotlight on the region, by virtue of the media glare drawn by the man who is irrefutably the most powerful head of state on the planet. As put by Jan Techau, the director of European programs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “the presidential visit to Warsaw is the most important symbolic element of Obama’s Europe trip.” He was able to win back some of the confidence lost from more Asia-focused foreign affairs dealings earlier in his presidency. Poland and the surrounding region boast some of the most strident pro-American populations in Europe who, in the wake of Soviet disintegration, saw in the US a reliably pro-democracy ally they could depend on in their struggle to establish autonomy from their unpredictable, domineering former master. If the early days of the Obama administration gave the Eastern bloc countries reason for worry, his symbolic presence in the country spurred a significant spike in the Poles’ confidence that their alliance with the Americans still stands strong.

Far weaker was the president’s unconvincing record with Israel. It is poignant that the Poland visit – the home of Auschwitz, the Nazi-run concentration camp where millions of Jews were massacred during World War II – occurred just days after Obama was bluntly opposed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on negotiations over new borders with Palestine. Netanyahu angrily dismissed Obama’s move to return to the boundaries as they stood in 1967 as “indefensible.” Simply put, Obama’s efforts at an Israeli-Palestinian solution stand at odds with both Israeli leadership and much of the global Jewish community. One Polish Jew in attendance at Obama’s visit to Warsaw’s Ghetto Hero’s Memorial indicated as much when she asked him to support the Jewish state, to which he replied, “I will always be there for Israel.” Poland’s and the world’s pro-Israel groups would no doubt like to think so, but right now the cold disagreement between Obama and Netanyahu leaves little room for optimism.

Equally tepid were the tricky details over US-Polish security cooperation. To his credit, Obama revealed a small but significant bit of news in bilateral military engagement—that Poland would be hosting a squadron of US fighter jets in 2013. However, this was set to take place anyway as a part of a standard-procedure force rotation plan, so the news doesn’t signify an increase in US military commitment as much as a reminder of pre-existing arrangements. In any case the announcement spawned positive press and had the effect of reassuring a Polish public hungry for just that kind of news. What casts a shadow over Obama’s words from the G8 summit in Paris from earlier in Obama’s week-long visit, during which he reportedly assured Russian President Dimitri Medvedev that he could “count on the [US] administration's support on security” and other issues, according to Axel Krause at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. As with the Israel debate, Obama’s contradictory statements on security commitment had the disappointing effect of muddling his messages and diluting his base of supporters.

President Obama could have done better in Poland, but he certainly could have done worse. His physical presence in the country provided a decisive moral boost for the country and the region. His pledge to “always be there for Israel” while in the Polish capital would seem not to ring true, especially given his recent unsuccessful efforts with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toward a two-state solution with Palestine. And his gesture to sustaining security cooperation – in the form of a fighter jet squadron to be stationed in Poland in 2013 – offered no more than what had already been planned.

Here’s hoping the US-Polish relations stay at least as (slightly) positive as when Obama visited in May 2011.

William C. Fleeson blogs at euramerican.blogspot.com