"I have been to many summits," the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, said afterward, but Lisbon was more "intimate, informal" and "a real exchange about the priorities" instead of mere note-reading — and he gave credit to Mr. Obama.

In the end, then, the more common diplomatic dynamic was flipped: Instead of foreign leaders taking advantage of a weakened counterpart, they rallied to his aid — for their own interests as much as Mr. Obama's, given the economic and military stakes.

In particular, they gave Mr. Obama ammunition in his Senate battle for the New Start treaty. He collected a series of supportive statements from European leaders — from Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to leaders of former Soviet bloc nations, who remain deeply suspicious of Russia and wary of Mr. Obama's "reset" policy for warmer relations with Russia.

At a news conference after the NATO session, Mr. Obama said, "Unprompted, I have received overwhelming support from our allies here that Start — the New Start treaty — is a critical component to U.S. and European security."

The endorsers, he added, include "those who live right next to Russia, who used to live behind the Iron Curtain, who have the most cause for concern with respect to Russian intentions and who have uniformly said that they will feel safer and more secure if this treaty gets ratified."

Like the Eastern Europeans, NATO leaders more broadly agreed, in effect, that the Mr. Obama's "reset" relationship with Russia had enabled a parallel reset of their own ties with the former Communist bloc leader. The NATO-Russia Council meeting was the first since Russia went to war with Georgia to its south in 2008.

Mr. Obama also made progress drawing Russia into cooperating with, rather than opposing, a new missile defense network in Europe aimed at countering any future threat from Iran. The White House hopes that Russian cooperation could undercut the argument of conservative critics of New Start that the treaty would crimp missile defense plans.

...NYT