Departing US president Barack Obama and German chancellor Angela Merkel have delivered a passionate defence of the transatlantic relationship and western values, urging people to resist the simple solutions that populists might offer to complex issues.
Ahead of talks in Berlin on Friday with leaders of France, Italy, Spain and Britain, Mr Obama warned president-elect Donald Trump not to deviate in office from US “values and international norms”.
Embracing crude nationalism and allowing divisions to creep into the western alliance, he said, would result in a “meaner, harsher and more troubled world”.
“If we don’t have a strong transatlantic alliance we will be giving to our children a worse world, we will be going backwards and not forward,” he said.
In their final, hour-long press conference, Mr Obama thanked Germany for its assistance in the fight against international terrorism and praised Dr Merkel’s leadership in the refugee crisis and her efforts to secure peace between Russia and Ukraine.
Given the rise of anti-establishment feeling on both sides of the Atlantic, both leaders said politicians must do more to listen to people’s concerns and explain complex policy to them – without sacrificing the core values of liberal, plural democracies.
‘Human face’
Echoing Mr Obama’s remarks in Athens this week, Dr Merkel said there was no way to turn the clock back on globalisation, but that more must be done to address people’s concerns and give globalisation a “human face”.
In a tacit farewell to TTIP, the EU’s trade deal with the US dismissed by Mr Trump in his campaign, Dr Merkel vowed to “come back one day to what we have achieved”.
The president-elect loomed large in Berlin, the target of a volley of warnings from the German and US leaders. In particular: do not betray western values or smaller European countries in pursuit of a new relationship with Moscow.
Mr Obama said: "My hope is [Trump] does not simply take a realpolitik approach and suggest that if we just cut some deals with Russia, even if it … leaves smaller countries vulnerable or creates long-term problems in regions like Syria, we just do whatever is convenient at the time."
Dr Merkel agreed that recent peaceful decades in Europe were conditional on mutual respect for national sovereignty and national borders.
“The reverse would a slippery slope, we have to nip this in the bud and stand resolutely against attempts to change this,” she said.
On Syria, Mr Obama warned his successor there was no way of securing lasting, durable peace given Russia’s support for the Assad regime’s military campaign against its own people.
“You cannot purchase people’s consent through killing them,” he said.
Returning again to what Mr Obama called a “bumpy” phase in western democracy, he said leaders had yet to learn how best the reach of social media, long mastered by “cynical” populist forces, could be turned to the common good.
“It’s easier to make negative attacks and simplistic slogans than to communicate complex policies, but we will figure it out,” he said.
Mr Obama departs Berlin and Europe today for the last time as president, full of praise for his “great friend and ally” Angela Merkel, the one constant and “steadfast” partner in his presidency.
Raised in East Germany and leader of a now united country, Dr Merkel, Mr Obama said, was the personification of Germany’s “incredible achievement” in recent decades.
Quizzed on whether he would welcome a fourth Merkel term next year, Mr Obama joked: “If I were here and I was German and I had a vote, I might support her, I don’t know if that hurts or helps.”
