Outgoing United States president Barack Obama touched down in Berlin on Wednesday night on a farewell European visit he will use to press Chancellor Angela Merkel into assuming a greater leadership role at a time of global uncertainty.
With the US in a choppy transition to the Trump administration, Mr Obama will present first impressions of his successor on Friday morning to leaders from France, Italy, Spain and Britain. Before then, Mr Obama met Dr Merkel for a private dinner in Berlin’s Adlon Hotel ahead of formal talks on Thursday.
In a joint letter, the two leaders warned there could be “no return to a world before globalisation”. With an eye on growing political resistance worldwide to free trade and migration, they argued that “Germans and Americans have to seize the opportunity to shape globalisation to fit our values and our agenda” – in particular the battle to slow climate change.
And, in a clear reply to president-elect Donald Trump’s unilateral campaign rhetoric, they added: “We owe it to our companies and our cities – indeed the whole global community – to broaden and deepen our co-operation.”
Quasi-ambassador
Mr Obama’s two-day Berlin visit puts him in an unusual role. After dismissing Mr Trump as an unsuitable presidential candidate, the outgoing president will act as a quasi-ambassador for his successor.
After Trump the campaigner questioned all major US policy – towards Nato, Russia, climate change and transatlantic trade – Mr Obama will repeat his sense that the president-elect has a “great interest in maintaining our core strategic relationships”.
Eight years after Berliners cheered on Senator Obama, his six subsequent visits have moderated the enthusiasm and the looming Trump era has revived German frustrations about the US, as well as latent anti-American feeling.
Just one in five (19 per cent) of Germans agree that the US is the world's greatest defender of freedom and human rights – in continual decline from 57 per cent since the Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ) daily began asking the question in 1981.
While 54 per cent of West Germans viewed the US as its greatest friend in the FAZ 1977 poll, just 18 per cent in the united Germany feel the same way today.
In the era of globalisation, a majority of Germans (51 per cent) do not view the US as the “land of endless opportunities” and just 7 per cent view the US as a role model for Germany – down from 30 per cent two decades ago.
And, despite Mr Trump’s German heritage, some 85 per cent of Germans express a negative opinion of the president-elect.
That leaves Dr Merkel trapped between Mr Obama’s leadership expectations of her and Germany’s domestic political reality if, as expected, she announces shortly her wish to run for a fourth term next year.
After Mr Obama vowed in Athens to lobby in Berlin for further Greek debt relief, finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble said such calls would do Greece a “disservice”.
Long-term, sustainable growth is possible only with stable public finances and structural reforms, his ministry spokesman said, adding: “The visit of President Obama changes nothing.”
