When Obama entered Rhenus Hall in Strasbourg, the city that co-hosts NATO's 60th anniversary summit this weekend, Perrine Roulin, a 16-year-old French girl with a ponytail, cheered loudly. She was one of roughly 3,000 students from mostly France and Germany who had waited for hours in this sports hall to see and hear the U.S. president before he would meet with his fellow NATO leaders.

"I'm very excited," she said. "This is the most powerful man in the whole world, and to meet him is the chance of a lifetime."

Obama knows that Europeans are thrilled over his election (a young French woman kissed the U.S. president on the cheek when he approached the public earlier that day near the Palais Rohan), and in Strasbourg, mid-way into his first trip to Europe as president, he tried to spend the extra capital to reset America's relations with nations here.

"In recent years, we've allowed our alliance to drift," Obama said, referencing a period of icy relations between Washington and several European nations, including France and Germany, over the Iraq war and a host of other issues.

Obama conceded that Washington had in the past shown arrogance toward Europe, and also criticized anti-Americanism in Europe "that is at once casual but can also be insidious."

"So I've come to Europe this week to renew our partnership, one in which America listens and learns from our friends and allies, but where our friends and allies bear their share of the burden," Obama said. "America is changing, but it cannot be America alone that changes."

Obama knows that he needs the active support of several European powers to deal with a number of issues, including the economic crisis, climate change, nuclear proliferation and terrorism.

Europe harshly criticized the previous administration's anti-terror campaign, but Obama stressed that joint efforts were needed to defeat terrorism.

"It is important for Europe to understand that even though I'm now president and George Bush is no longer president, al-Qaida is still a threat," he said. "We cannot pretend somehow that because Barack Hussein Obama got elected as president, suddenly everything's going to be OK."

But to defeat al-Qaida, the West has to win the war in Afghanistan, NATO's first non-European military mission, and to achieve that, "we need an alliance that is even stronger than the one that brought down a wall in Berlin," Obama said.

The U.S. president last week unveiled his new strategy for Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. It includes commitments to boost civilian efforts, and convince regional powers such as Iran and China to help stabilize the war-torn country -- aspects that were widely lauded in Europe.

But the strategy also includes the plan for a significant troop surge, and "Europe should not simply expect the United States to shoulder that burden alone," Obama said. "This is a joint problem, and it requires joint effort."

NATO has more than 60,000 troops in Afghanistan to fight a Taliban-led insurgency, but Obama has called for tens of thousands more soldiers to be sent there.

Several European nations have been reluctant to respond to troop-surge calls in the past, often highlighting the Bush administration's misguided approach to the region. Yet with Obama now fulfilling most of Europe's wishes with the strategy change, it won't be easy to dodge greater commitments in Afghanistan, observers say.

That doesn't mean it's not happening anymore. None of the NATO members have so far come forward to help man a short-term deployment of 4,000 extra troops needed to secure volatile southern Afghanistan and the country's election in August, the Times of London reports.

Obama was eager not to single out any individual countries for a lack of commitment, explicitly lauding Germany, which has been criticized for refusing to send its troops into combat in the south.

After a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel later Friday in Baden-Baden, Obama called Germany a "stalwart ally" for NATO in Afghanistan, adding he was "confident that Germany will be stepping up to the plate … to get the job done."

Friday did in fact see some concrete headway on trans-Atlantic cooperation, with Sarkozy promising to take a prisoner from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to help Washington close the facility.

And if it was for Elise Peter, a 15-year-old student from Strasbourg, Europe would indeed step up its efforts in Afghanistan.

"I am against war … but to help Afghanistan, maybe we have to do it," she said a few moments after Obama had left the sports hall. But would she also back deploying additional European troops there? "Yes," the girl replied enthusiastically. "Obama completely convinced me."

If it only were that easy all the time.

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