The world needs a strong, democratic and united Europe, Barack Obama said on Tuesday, to guard against rising intolerance and authoritarianism within the EU and across the globe.
Speaking in Germany on the final day of his tour of Europe and the Middle East, Obama had a blunt message for the continent. “Perhaps you need an outsider to remind you of the magnitude of what you have achieved from the ruins of the second world war.”
Obama – who is to hold talks on Wednesday afternoon with the leaders of Germany, France, Italy and the UK – also announced thwe US would be sending an extra 300 troops to Syria, mainly special forces, to help train local fighters, predominantly Kurds fighting Isis in the country’s north. He said Europe had been complacent on defence and warned that at the next Nato summit in Warsaw this summer he will seek more contributions to the US-led air campaign against Isis in Syria and Iraq.The speech also demonstrated a strong personal defence of Angela Merkel’s liberal approach to refugees. He said this was a defining moment for Europe in which it could choose pluralism or, in rejecting its own progress, give support to those who argue democracy cannot work.
“These are unsettling times and when the future is uncertain there seems to be an instinct in human nature to withdraw to the perceived comfort of our own tribe, our own sect, our own nationality: people who look like us, sound like us,” he said. “But in today’s world more than in any time in our human history that is a false comfort. It pits people against one another because of what they look like, or how they pray or who they love.”
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