America Shows Her Colors Again

With a huge festival around the new embassy at the old location, the Pariser Platz, America opens up to Berliners once again. After years of shielding behind concrete barriers and barbed wire-topped steel fences, the western superpower is finally showing its colors anew and is again part of Berlin’s “living room” between the Brandenburg Gate and the Adlon Hotel. It’s about time.

America’s reputation and appeal have suffered badly in the last few years. That’s due to political as well as military decisions and, of course, to a president whose sense of mission and radical rhetoric often scared us Germans. The result was an alarming cooling of relations with the United States. Not between the nation and the people, and certainly not in regard to the shared values of freedom, democracy and human rights, but very strongly vis-à-vis America’s president of the last eight years and his administration. Winning back lost credibility is of the essence.

The new embassy near the Brandenburg Gate, exactly where The Wall once divided Berlin, Germany and Europe, is ideally located. It symbolizes the victory of freedom over tyranny and oppression. It reminds us that the seemingly impossible is still possible if a goal like reunification is relentlessly sought and one has dependable allies like America on its side. Nostalgia should only be a small part of our memories. A signal for the future must radiate from this embassy – its controversial architecture notwithstanding – that America is emerging from the fortress necessitated by threats of terrorism and is once again showing her colors in Germany’s capital, actively competing for appreciation of its role as the last remaining superpower. Nowhere in the world has America achieved its self-imposed challenge as successfully as it has in Berlin. The tattered mutual trust caused on one side by suspicion and second-guessing and on the other side by arrogance and resistance to advice can be repaired and turned around to achieve a true mutual partnership.

A new president and his new ambassador will bring the chance for a renewing of both perceived and tangible German-American friendship. Today’s festival, to which the departing ambassador has invited one and all, is such an example of good will. Berliners will appreciate that fact despite the unfortunate but still necessary security measures. Nobody expects that despite terrorist threats the new embassy will become an open house. But there are reasonable limits, and Americans tend to overstep these due to a certain security hysteria. That deters people more than is necessary. Absolute security is illusory anyway. That’s why the future ambassador should realize that a bit less martial behavior around his house would be beneficial to the common cause.