Barack Obama’s visit to Germany yesterday on the first leg of a European tour that will take him to France today and the UK tomorrow, has unleashed what an “Obamania” among Germans more normally known for being unperturbable and serious-minded. He has been given a rapturous welcome by tens of thousands in Berlin who treated him as if he were a savior who will lift all the problems from a troubled world. There has been nothing quite like it since President Kennedy visited Berlin in 1963 — and Obama has not even been elected yet. In days past, victors — from the field of battle or in elections or any other contest — would make a victory tour after their triumph. Now it is done beforehand. The world is changing.
One of the reasons why Germans are so keen on Obama (recent polls show that more than three-quarters of them want him to win in November) is because they believe that he will rebuild ties with Europe. These are seen to have been deeply damaged during the Bush years because of the invasion of Iraq which Europeans largely opposed and the subsequent antagonism toward Europe within the Republican administration typified by “Old Europe” jibes from then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others of like mind.
German enthusiasm for Obama powerfully demonstrates a deep well of affection on the part of Germany toward the US. It may have been damaged by hostility to the Bush administration’s policies, but it is clearly still very strong. The same is not there among the French or the British. It would be difficult to see Barack Obama pulling the crowds in France or the UK as he had done in Germany, despite the fact that most French and British, like the Germans, approve of his plans to close Guantanamo Bay, withdraw from Iraq, talk to Iran about its nuclear plans, re-engage with the Middle East peace process and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They too would like him to win, although by a significantly smaller margin than the people of Germany.
Yet there is good reason to suspect that the Germans, in their great enthusiasm for Obama, have gone far too far in imagining that he will put the world to rights and restore trans-Atlantic harmony. For a start, although he undoubtedly wants better relations between the US and Europe, he also wants Europe to shoulder a far greater responsibility for peacekeeping in the world’s trouble spots. Specifically, that would mean more European troops in Afghanistan from where he has no intention of pulling out and where, in a powerful symbolic gesture, he started his global tour on Sunday. Germans would not be happy about that. Then there is the fact that Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy are conservatives with much more hard-line views on a number of issues than the Obama team is signaling. On Iran, for example. Their policy is that it has to be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons at all costs. Certainly, neither of them is afraid to take up anything they see as an issue. Chancellor Merkel, for example, has just been to Ukraine and there talked to its pro-Western government about the country’s future integration into the EU and NATO. Her predecessor did not go for fear of antagonizing Russia that regards Ukraine as part of its back yard and is bitterly opposed to it joining NATO and the EU. Merkel evidently does not care what the Russians think. For her, as for Sarkozy, EU and national interests, together with a strong commitment to a vision of a free world, come first. That will not change if Obama becomes president. They will welcome US cooperation but it would have to be in line with their worldview.
