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Obama must strike right tone for Europe, U.S.

BY STEVE KETTMANN | Steve Kettmann is an American author living in Berlin. His most recent book is "Letter to a New President," co-written with U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.)

July 23, 2008

BERLIN

Sen. Barack Obama's strong start on his tour of foreign hot spots and capitals this week puts him in a position to step back for a minute from short-term political calculation and approach his speech tomorrow in Berlin like a statesman.

He should keep in mind that it's in his interest to respect the intense expectations and excitement of Bush-weary Europeans looking for Obama to map out a new direction in transatlantic relations, and not just to treat the expected crowd of up to a million Berliners as an exotic backdrop for the TV cameras.

If he's looking for a way to connect with his audience without offending the TV audience back home, Obama could do a lot worse than revisiting the aftermath of Sept. 11 and recalling something that few if any Americans remember - that the world's largest gathering of people in solidarity and support for the victims of 9/11, and their loved ones took place not in the United States, but right here in Germany.

I was there with 200,000 Berliners who gathered that Sept. 14 in the Tiergarten, near where Obama will be speaking tomorrow. I walked past the tall pile of flowers left on the sidewalk near the temporary U.S. embassy. I heard Jocelyn B. Smith, the soul singer from Queens who now makes her home here, belt out a version of "Amazing Grace" that really did send shivers up my spine. But most of all, I was there to hear German president Johannes Rau proclaim, "Amerika steht nicht allein!" - "America does not stand alone."

It was an amazing moment when Germans and other Europeans rallied to stand with us - and only by understanding how much was squandered by President George W. Bush and his reckless sense of mission, coupled with incompetence and blinding arrogance, can there be any hope of moving forward.

Many Americans have come to the false impression that people in Europe and elsewhere currently hold negative views of the U.S. role in the world because of some deep-seated anti-Americanism that has little to do with Bush himself and will surely continue to thrive after he's back in Texas. In fact, people in other countries are ready and willing to revise their views of U.S. leadership. And, given the dangerous and chaotic state in which Bush will be leaving the world, healthy alliances are an important tool, not to be lightly dismissed.

Obama cannot appear too eager to woo the Europeans, who after all can't vote for him. He will probably feel compelled in Berlin to stake out a relatively tough position on NATO cooperation in Afghanistan or risk being flayed back home for going Euro-soft.

If Obama treads carefully and demands more "help" from the Germans, without specifically evoking more boots on the ground, he should be all right, even though various German politicians have been specifically warning him in the media not to push them on Afghanistan, the way that Defense Minister Robert Gates did earlier this year with a notable lack of diplomacy or tact.

Obama will surely look to the big picture. He knows he's hugely popular in Europe and that being liked and respected is not a bad thing - no matter how often incoherent U.S. commentators trot out the notion that if you're admired, that somehow equates to being the "lapdog" of Europe. Have so many Americans really forgotten what it was like when being admired abroad felt like the natural order of things?

As a candidate whose mere existence announces to the world that the U.S. is capable of moving forward, Obama can look to the recent past as a way to announce his seriousness about forging a new dynamic in transatlantic relations. He should evoke the words of Rau, who passed away in January 2006 and is widely missed in Germany.

Reaching for the obligatory memorable phrase in German, Obama can riff on Rau's "Amerika steht nicht allein," repeating those words and adding, also in German, "Amerika kann nie allein stehen!" (America can never stand alone). In English, he can add that America is not alone because it has friends in the world - friends that, if treated with respect, can make it stronger and smarter, and also that America can never be without its friends, because an America alone in the world would no longer be America.

If nothing else, he will have made an important statement that in any Barack Obama administration, he will go beyond campaign rhetoric and get down to the actual work of rebuilding relations with key allies by listening and learning.