For the last year, White House aides had been using the name of this city as a one-word symbol of President Barack Obama`s hopes to combat climate change, which has dominated much of the international agenda for the end of his presidency.
For the last two weeks, the city`s come to represent how much his international agenda`s at risk of being upended as he enters his final year in office.
Obama`s trip here, scheduled long before terrorists attacked the French capital and catalyzed what appears to be a major increase in Western engagement against ISIL, was meant to focus on the kick-off of a major international climate summit with the potential to produce the most significant steps the world`s yet taken to fight global warming.
But Obama walked into meetings here with French President François Hollande and 150 other foreign leaders who gathered on Monday—the French government made the Metro free for the day to help residents and visitors escape motorcade traffic—ahead of a year more likely than not to involve a conflict in Syria escalating far beyond what he`d wanted or planned.
Instead of becoming the president who fulfilled his campaign promise of ending two wars, Obama’s looking like the president who didn`t quite end either, was drawn into a third, and could wind up in what some fear will become a fourth in Libya to prevent another ISIL haven from taking root.
"Paris is a perfect metaphor for how world events can take over a president`s agenda, much against their best efforts and wishes," said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, speaking shortly before Air Force One took off for France on Sunday morning. "There is no way to escape the centrality of the fight against ISIS to the remainder of his presidency."
"The most important decision the president must make is whether the objective is to defeat rather than just contain ISIS," said Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). "It is my hope that the devastating attacks in Paris can be a catalyst for the administration to finally form a coalition that is more robust and will actually focus on defeating an organization that now has demonstrated a desire and capability to export acts of terrorism against the West."
Obama`s approach to ISIL and to the climate agreement each reflect his approach to international leadership over his presidency and going into his final year: gently guiding countries with competing interests toward big but loose goals that will only come together over many years.
This is Obama`s brand of foreign policy realism, his sense of how American power actually can influence the world as it`s changed.
White House aides describe the trip to Paris as a metaphor of sorts for how Obama has demonstrably flexed American leadership, and on multiple fronts at once, neither falling behind nor getting distracted by flare-ups or what they largely dismiss as political potshots from critics. There wouldn`t be a real chance for a 190-nation climate agreement in Paris without the groundwork that Obama`s put into it, they contend, much like there wouldn`t be any kind of real effort against ISIL without the United States leading, diplomatically and militarily, the 65-nation coalition.
“Only American leadership can mobilize that breadth of collective action from this many countries,” deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said Monday in Paris, describing the White House’s groundwork for the talks.
Rhodes said that approach is reflected throughout Obama’s foreign policy, including in the campaign against ISIL.
“This is the type of collective action that we like to apply to this challenge and other challenges going forward,” he said.
That’s a work in progress on ISIL, Rhodes acknowledged.
“We certainly are pleased with the cooperation we have in place which has facilitated,” he said. “But yes, we want countries to continue to step up to the plate and do more.”
Many in the White House see discussion of how much is on the line for Obama after the Paris attacks as just the latest example of a live-by-the-minute media and public who see a crisis for the president at every turn, overhyping each until the next comes along.
The White House is preparing a 2016 schedule for the president that will include a foreign trip as much as nearly once a month—an ambitious and optimistic plan meant to be part legacy securing, part making new moves. Rhodes said the president does not feel that his foreign policy plans have been overtaken by terrorism, despite the increased attention being paid now to ISIL.
""“I think you’ve seen over the course of this year, we have a multifaceted agenda because America has a lot of interests,” Rhodes said.
But now Obama, who got the Nobel Peace Prize at the start of his presidency because of the potential for new leadership that the international community saw in him, faces intertwined tests in Paris of how much sway on the global stage he actually has, or has left.
Even before the series of unexpected crisis developments about ISIL in the last few weeks, "Obama had his work cut out for him, given the escalation and intractability of the Syria crisis per se, exacerbated by the way the IS was feeding off of it," said Strobe Talbott, the Brookings Institution president a former deputy Secretary of State under Bill Clinton and currently chairman of the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board.
"Climate change was an issue that he embraced from the beginning of his administration; he hoped progress on international action toward mitigation would be part of his legacy. It will be a real challenge for him to use his skills in Paris, as well what is still a high standing abroad, to keep that issue from being smothered or derailed."
White House press secretary Josh Earnest acknowledged that ISIL was overtaking many discussions, speaking as Obama held a working dinner with Hollande at a Michelin three-star restaurant at the Place des Vosges.
“While climate has of course been the focus of today’s proceedings, we’re cognizant that our global campaign to degrade and destroy ISIL has a special resonance in this city,” Earnest said.
Obama even pressed the case on engaging ISIL to Chinese President Xi Jinping at their bilateral meeting focused on climate change, held at the conference site on Monday, expressing condolences for a Chinese hostage killed by the group.
“I think it indicates the degree that this is a threat to all of our countries,” Obama said.
In a readout of the meeting afterward, the White House said Xi had agreed to help.
A few hours later, Obama had yet another sidelines meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin—the two had an impromptu meeting at the G-20 in Turkey two weeks ago, after the Paris attacks but before Turkey shot down a Russian jet near the border with Syria.
Putin isn’t scheduled to meet with Turkish President Recep Erdoğan, whose government he condemned as making common cause with terrorists after the jet was downed, though they’re both in town for the climate summit. But the White House announced Monday that Obama will hold his own bilateral meeting with Erdogan before flying back to Washington on Tuesday.
But at least for Monday, officials here tried to keep the focus on the climate talks.
"History is calling,” United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said as the conference began. “I urge you to answer with courage and vision."
