Obama praises Berliners, calls for nuclear warhead cuts

Sumi Somaskanda | Special for USA TODAY

BERLIN — With the iconic Brandenburg Gate at his back, President Obama urged Berliners in a speech Wednesday to embrace the common values that bind America and Germany, and to carry forth the spirit of freedom that defines the once-divided city.

"It is citizens who choose whether to be defined by a wall or whether to tear it down," Obama told cheering crowds before the 18th-century city entrance. "We can say here in Berlin, here in Europe, our values won."

Fifty years after President Kennedy delivered his legendary "Ich bin ein Berliner" ("I am a Berliner") speech in the former West Berlin, Obama said he was proud to stand on the eastern side of the wall.

Kennedy gave his famous speech when the Berlin Wall — erected by the Soviet Union to cut off communist East Germany from democratic West Germany — was still standing. With the wall gone since 1990 and Germany reunited, Obama urged Berliners to take an active role in helping to protect freedom and democracy around the world.

"We must acknowledge that there can at times be complacency among our Western democracies," he said, as many waved American and German flags and shouted in approval. "Complacency is not the character of great nations."

As he spoke, Obama's wife, Michelle, and daughters, Sasha and Malia, toured the famous front line of the Cold War at Checkpoint Charlie, the former guard station between East and West Germany, and visited the memorial of the Berlin Wall.

Joined by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Berlin's mayor, Klaus Wowereit, Obama addressed 6,000 invited guests and dignitaries on a hot day under a bright sky. When he talked specifics, Obama kept to issues on which the majority of the crowd appeared to agree.

Obama said he planned to slash America's nuclear weapons stockpile by up to a third and promised to seek negotiated cuts with Russia, too, saying "so long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe."

The loudest cheers came when Obama vowed to close the Guantanamo Bay terrorist prison, a move that many Europeans have been waiting for since Obama took office.

Supporters held up signs with the words "Yes we can" and "Welcome" and chanted Obama's name. At one point during his speech, two women holding a "No NATO War" sign shouted briefly from the crowd at Obama before they were questioned by security personnel.

It was a much smaller crowd than the estimated 200,000 people who greeted Obama five years ago, when he visited Berlin as a candidate for president. Back then, he captured the enthusiasm of Germans and won broad support across Europe.

He remains popular with much of Germany, where local news outlets followed the first family's every move in the capital and published detailed features on their Ritz-Carlton presidential suite. A recent survey indicated that 85% of Germans believe Obama is a good president.

But while his pronouncements appealed to the pacifist sentiments of many Germans, they did not go down well with critics in the United States.

The Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Buck McKeon of California, lamented that Obama wanted to further reduce U.S. nuclear readiness against a Russian government that has failed to adhere to existing arms-reduction agreements.

"The president must make clear to (Russian) President (Vladimir) Putin that the United States will not allow itself or its allies to be bullied by Russia or to allow that state to ignore its arms control obligations," McKeon said.

On Guantanamo, the president has declined to free the remaining prisoners at the facility and his Department of Justice has said the president has the authority to hold enemy terrorists without charge indefinitely.

There is no question that the Obama euphoria that swept the country five years ago has faded. The cover of the national newspaper Taz featured a full-page picture of Obama with the caption "Love Hurts," and the weekly magazine Der Spiegel featured a picture of Obama and Kennedy on its cover, with the title "The Lost Friend."

"His overall poll ratings in Germany are still for any American campaign manager dream-like, but at the same time, Germans have lowered their expectations," said Sudha David-Wilp, a senior program officer at the German Marshall Fund. "When he came here in 2008, he mentioned climate change, he mentioned a new way of doing business in the world, working with partners. Those things unfortunately haven't come to fruition."

Obama has been the subject of criticism in recent weeks over Washington's global surveillance program PRISM, which requests information legally from U.S.-based Internet companies on communications involving foreigners suspected of terrorist activity. Since Europeans communicate through such companies, it is possible German citizens have been spied on through the program.

Germany's history with fascism has planted a deep-rooted distrust of any sort of surveillance and the country has some of the strictest data privacy laws in the world.

"I think the spying is disgusting," said Richard Radtke, 52, a lawyer who navigated his way around police barricades on Wednesday to get to work. "If it's as nasty as it looks, then it will make a big difference in my opinion of the way Americans deal with the public interest and privacy."

Obama defended the program during a joint press conference with Chancellor Merkel earlier in the day, saying the initiative had saved lives.

"This is not a situation where we are rifling through ordinary e-mails of German citizens or American citizens or French citizens," he asserted, adding that it was important to strike a balance between protecting citizens and intruding on their rights.

Obama renews call for nuclear reductions President Barack Obama is calling for a one-third reduction of the world's nuclear stockpiles. Speaking at Berlin's iconic Brandenburg Gate, he says he intends to seek negotiated cuts with Russia to move beyond a Cold War nuclear posture. (June 19)

Before meeting with reporters, Obama and Merkel spoke at length about some of the progress made in Syria-related talks at the Group of Eight meeting in Northern Ireland earlier this week, and touched on Syria, Iran and the upcoming trans-Atlantic trade treaty as well.

"Europe is our partner in almost everything we do," Obama said. "Europe remains the cornerstone of our freedom and our security."

He also vowed to do more to change the climate, which he said is "the global threat of our time."

Though polls show may Europeans worry about global warming, some countries in Europe are scaling back government-subsidized renewable-energy plans in the face of rising electricity prices and cash-strapped government budgets.

While many in Europe believe measures to cut carbon emissions are crucial, skeptics point to recent scientific analyses that show that since 1998 global mean temperatures have remained unchanged.

Berliners said they are less excited about this visit and have been disappointed that Obama has not delivered on promises he made previously.

"It's easy to build up expectations of charismatic people but he's not a superhero," said Berliner Jannis Huelsen, 29.

Contributing: Ena Paponja and Catherine Featherston in Berlin