Obama's Nuclear Proffer Gets Russian Rebuff
In Berlin Speech, President Says U.S. Could Cut Deployed Arsenal by One-Third; a Call for 'Peace With Justice'
BERLIN—Standing before a towering emblem of the Cold War, President Barack Obama called for steep reductions in nuclear weapons through negotiations with the Russians, as a step toward what he conceded was the "distant" goal of eliminating global arsenals.
"We may no longer live in fear of global annihilation, but so long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not safe," Mr. Obama said Wednesday in an address in front of the Brandenburg Gate in his first visit to the German capital as president. "I intend to seek negotiated cuts with Russia to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures."
In a wide-ranging foreign-policy speech in Berlin, President Obama called for negotiations with Russia aimed at ending the two nations' Cold War military posture and reducing the arsenal of nuclear arms by up to one-third. Watch highlights here.
His public invitation—which included his assessment that the U.S. can cut the number of deployed nuclear weapons by one-third without compromising American security—received a cool reception from Moscow.
Mr. Obama's speech came five years after he visited Berlin and drew a crowd of 200,000 people who wanted a glimpse of the rising young candidate, and 50 years after former President John F. Kennedy showed solidarity with residents of the divided city, declaring "Ich bin ein Berliner."
He sought to link his moral and policy agenda to that of the 35th president. Reciting a less-known phrase from Kennedy's speech in Berlin that day, Mr. Obama said he, too, wants to achieve "peace with justice"—by doing away with nuclear arms, ensuring women have the same opportunities as men and reversing the effects of climate change. He pledged, without offering details, to take new measures to protect the environment.
"Peace with justice means refusing to condemn our children to a harsher, less hospitable planet," he said. "The effort to slow climate change requires bold action. … Our dangerous carbon emissions have come down. But we know we have to do more. And we will do more."
It remains unclear how a move to reduce nuclear arms could affect U.S. nuclear weapons stationed in Europe, particularly those delivered by aircraft. Mr. Obama raised his planned initiative in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week at a summit meeting in Northern Ireland, said Yuri Ushakov, the Kremlin's top foreign-policy official.
Mr. Putin, speaking to arms industry officials in St. Petersburg at about the same time Mr. Obama spoke in Berlin, didn't directly mention Mr. Obama's initiative. But he warned that Russia needs to preserve its deterrent and strategic stability in the face of threats from U.S. missile-defense plans as well as from increasingly powerful nonnuclear weapons that he said "are approaching the level of strategic nuclear arms in their strike capability."
Nuclear weapons play a larger role in Russia's defense posture than they do for the U.S., according to analysts and diplomats, because of the Kremlin's dramatically smaller conventional forces. That has rendered Russia much more skeptical about further cuts, according to analysts.
"The Obama initiative is a continuation of the consistent U.S. course toward drawing Russia into the process of further and quite dramatic nuclear disarmament, which for our country is of course absolutely unacceptable," the official RIA-Novosti news agency quotedIgor Korotchenko, a member of a Defense Ministry advisory panel, as saying.
Moscow also believes that talks on any further cuts in strategic-nuclear forces should include all major nuclear powers, Mr. Ushakov said, according to official Russian news agencies, in an apparent reference to China's growing arsenal.
"Today the situation is far from what it was in the 1960s and 1970s, when only the U.S. and U.S.S.R. had talks on reducing nuclear arsenals," Mr. Ushakov said, saying the parties needed to "enlarge the circle of participants."
Mr. Obama, in his speech, raised the importance of containing the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea and pledged to secure U.S. ratification of a comprehensive nuclear test-ban treaty. He appealed to all nations to begin talks to establish a treaty that ends the production of fissile materials used to make nuclear weapons. "These are steps we can take to create a world of peace with justice," he said.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
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U.S. President Barack Obama waves next to German Chancellor Angela Merkel before they deliver speeches in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on Wednesday.
Mr. Obama ran into a rare logistical hurdle in the course of the address—his teleprompter broke down, a White House official said, forcing him to look down at the pages of text in front of him.
One of the biggest bursts of applause during the speech came when Mr. Obama again pledged to close Guantanamo.
Earlier in the day, at a news conference, a German reporter asked Mr. Obama about the prison, saying that "there were a number of hopes in the world that were in a way shattered" because of his record.
The president acknowledged that closing Guantanamo hasn't been as easy as he had hoped. Citing congressional resistance, he said: "One of the things you discover as a politician is that people don't always do exactly what you want. It's shocking. And then you have to keep on working at it."
Mr. Obama also said the U.S. wasn't preparing to go to war in Syria and welcomed support from world leaders this week to pursue a political transition in the country and end the civil war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
The White House said last week that it would provide arms to moderate camps of Syrian rebels. On Wednesday, Mr. Obama said reports that Washington was laying the groundwork for a military intervention to oust Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad were "a little overcranked" and emphasized that the U.S. is determined to find a political solution to the civil war in Syria. He stressed that a peaceful solution could come only with a new government.
Full Speech
President Obama called for negotiations with Russia to end the two nations' military posturing, and a reduction of nuclear arms. Photo: Getty Images.
Mr. Obama arrived in Berlin on Tuesday night from Northern Ireland, where he had attended a meeting of the Group of Eight large industrialized nations. He spoke privately with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday morning. Later, at a joint news conference, Ms. Merkel said the two had discussed recent disclosures that U.S. intelligence agencies are examining Internet and phone records. German officials have voiced qualms about such intrusions on privacy. For her part, Ms. Merkel didn't seem entirely reassured by the president's explanations.
"People have concerns, precisely concerns that there may be some kind of blanket, across-the-board gathering of information," she said, speaking through a translator. "We talked about this. The questions that we have not yet perhaps satisfactorily addressed we will address later on."
About 4,500 people then turned out later at a sunny, 90 degree afternoon to hear Mr. Obama. At a dinner hosted by Ms. Merkel, the president made reference to the heat and cited a newspaper report that 1,000 people had fainted during the Kennedy speech, many because of their emotional response to the U.S. president's words.
"We did not have 1,000 people faint today," Mr. Obama said. "The few who did, did so because of the weather and not because of my speech."
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