Barack Obama, the president of Europe

BBC NEWS

James Norman

July 28, 2008 12:00am

AFTER his world tour through the Middle East, Barak Obama’s arrival in Europe became a spectacle of historic proportions – and possibly ramifications.

About 200,000 Berliners flocked to the Victory monument in Tiergarten Park to listen to the man many see as the best chance of bringing real change to the direction of US foreign policy under George W. Bush.

In a phenomenon that has been dubbed “Obamamania“, the hype surrounding the Democrat presumptive presidential candidate is intense in Europe right now.

Polls indicated that Obama was enjoying support in the range of 86 per cent before he even visited Germany and Britain, while support for Republican John McCain is as low as 6 per cent across mainland Europe.

One German newspaper featured a front page image of Obama dressed as Superman.

Another compared Obama with John F Kennedy, that other young charismatic Democrat who came to Berlin amid much fanfare in 1963, articulating a bold vision of how to bring an end to the cold war.

Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe, Obama said. No doubt, there will be differences in the future.

“Partnership and co-operation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity,” he said.

The speech came against a backdrop of Obama’s high profile world tour.

Significantly, he had won the support of the Iraqi leader Nuri al-Maliki for a timetable to withdraw US troops from Iraq by 2010, putting him squarely at odds with McCain, who says it would be premature to set a schedule for withdrawal.

Obama favours increasing troop numbers in Afghanistan by 13,000 to make up ground that has been lost owing to the Bush Administration’s fixation on Iraq.

That will mean a bigger commitment from European allies in Afghanistan, which must have big ramifications for Australia’s forces.

The German capital was most likely chosen as the best site for Obama’s speech because it is in the centre of Europe, and it has deep historical relevance to US-European relations.

After all, it was US president Ronald Reagan who addressed a similarly huge crowd in Berlin on June 12, 1987 demanding USSR president Mikhail Gorbachev: “Tear down this wall”.

The mood at Obama’s Berlin speech was not dissimilar to a rock festival complete with DJ’s spinning tracks before and after Obama took to the stage and scores of young people dancing in the streets.

The feel-good atmosphere was an indicator of just how deep the desire outside the US is to see the end of this current era.

If we are honest with each other, we know that sometimes, 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 unfortunately become all too common.

In America, there are voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe’s role in our security and future. Both views miss the truth.

It was this kind of bridge-building language, and the clear signal that under Barack Obama America would not operate as a unilateral power in its foreign policy, that inspired the loudest applause.

Clearly, Europeans are ready to end their anti-US mindset and start afresh.

But American voters, with a reputation as insular, are notoriously prickly about Europeans telling them what to do with their nation’s affairs.

All Obama has to do now is focus on the real challenge, by winning the same kind of support evident in Berlin from his countrymen come November.

James Norman is a Melbourne journalist and author, currently based in Berlin