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In Berlin, Obama says global threats call for stronger alliances

By Mike Dorning | Tribune correspondent

3:15 PM CDT, July 25, 2008

BERLIN - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama came to a city once divided by the Cold War and sustained in crisis by the Atlantic alliance to call today for a strengthened commitment to international alliances in a new era of international threats.

In a setting that evoked historic addresses by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, Obama came not as the leader of the free world but as a candidate for the office. The speech offered an opportunity for him to demonstrate his capacity to represent American ideals to the international public.

Obama drew a crowd that stretched much of the way down a nearly mile-long mall in front of the site of the speech, Berlin's Victory Column, which marks 19th Century military successes. At the beginning and end of the speech, the European crowd chanted Obama's campaign slogan in English: "Yes, we can."

Berlin police estimated more than 200,000 people attended the speech, more than twice as large a crowd as Obama has drawn at any event in the United States.

Obama used the imagery of the Berlin Wall to argue that the challenges of the modern era demand a strengthened rather than diminished commitment to the Atlantic alliance that overcame the Soviet Union in the Cold War, as well as to international alliances elsewhere.

"The greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another," Obama said.

"The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand," he continued. "These now are the walls we must tear down."

The theme of the speech reflected criticism made both by Democrats and Europeans that the unilateral approach the Bush administration pursued in response to global terrorism and particularly in entering the Iraq War has been counterproductive, though Obama did not name the president in the speech.

As he did in his speech on race relations and often has in his career, Obama suggested both the United States and Europe have legitimate grievances about the performance of their alliance but nonetheless have a greater common purpose.

"On both sides of the Atlantic, we have drifted apart, and forgotten our shared destiny," Obama said.

"In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common," he added. "In America, there are voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe's role in our security and our future."

But Obama, who is running for president and spoke more toward the audience at home, provided a defense of America as a nation with special purpose.

"We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions," he said.

"But I also know how much I love America," he continued. "I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived—at great cost and great sacrifice—to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world."