The overall reaction that I had to watching Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin this afternoon was mainly visceral. What he said made much less of an impression on me than the spectacle itself. The most remarkable part of it was that Barack Obama has not yet been elected president. And, yet, over a hundred thousand Germans turned out to hear what he had to say and they mobbed him after the speech just trying to get close enough to touch him.
No polling can really express how Europeans view America and American leadership. After eight years of policies that the majority of Europeans oppose it is easy to forget how much they accept and expect America to lead the West. The reservoir of legitimacy for America’s lead-role was on full display in the Tiergarten. And so was the tremendous amount of hope that the crowd placed in Barack Obama’s ability to lead.
This is not to say that Barack Obama’s message was about American Exceptionalism. It was a call for unity and a commonality of purpose for tackling the big issues we all collectively face. Perhaps his boldest proposal was to move toward total nuclear disarmament. But he also hit on the need for NATO to succeed in Afghanistan, for Iraq to succeed in their reconstruction, for Lebanon to achieve stability, for progress on the Israeli/Palestine issue, for America to do more on global warming, and for more to be done on human rights and HIV/AIDS. Obama didn’t suggest that America can tackle these problems alone. He explicitly stated the opposite. But he also made clear that America is ready to lead on these issues and it was clear the audience eagerly embraced that strategy.
It would have been an amazing event even if a president had given the speech. That a mere nominee gave the oration speaks volumes about how out of balance Trans-Atlantic relations have become during the Bush administration. I think an apt comparison is how Rudy Guiliani gained fame and goodwill on 9/11 when the president went AWOL and left the country craving leadership and direction. Once again, Bush’s glaring failures have opened the door for someone else to step up and do the job that he is singularly incapable of performing.
And, yet, parts of this make me uneasy. I’m all for an American Restoration up to a point. But I’m also firmly convinced that America cannot afford the costs in dollars and security risks that are entailed in being the sole hegemon of the West. We cannot be responsible for carrying the load on anti-proliferation, UN Security Council enforcement, and humanitarian efforts. We need to share more of the load and that involves sharing more of the leadership. Other countries need to increase their capabilities. In return, we need to become more deferential and collaborative. If nothing else, our taxpayers need the relief. But it’s more than that. There is a cost to being the leader that goes beyond dollars. We also suffer increased security risks and with that comes pressures that undermine our basic civil liberties. We can be a Republic or an Empire, but I am not sure we can long be both.
Nevertheless, Obama’s performance was excellent. And it demonstrated for the first time in a long time just how indispensable American power is in the short-term.
