Clenched fists

Foreign Policy: As President Obama prepares for G8 meeting, Iran and North Korea grow more defiant | Jamie Dean

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

When President Barack Obama arrives in Italy for the Group of Eight (G8) Summit on July 8, he won't find the luxury accommodations that usually greet presidents. Instead, Obama will join other world leaders staying in a dreary block of police barracks in L'Aquila, a mountain town devastated by an April earthquake that killed some 200 people.

Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi moved the summit from an idyllic Sardinian island to L'Aquila to draw attention to the town's plight. The bleak setting may prove fitting as world leaders face a bleak agenda filled with thorny foreign policy issues and economic woes.

American attention to foreign policy has lately centered on Iran and Obama's evolving rhetoric over election-related violence there. But a larger question lurks: Beyond words, what will Obama do? That question will follow the president to Europe as world leaders discuss how to handle increasingly volatile nations that may not accept the open hand that the president has promised to extend.