Barack Obama will Wednesday propose major cuts in US and Russian nuclear stocks, making a pitch for his own place in history in an evocative open-air speech during his first visit as president to Berlin.
Almost 50 years to the day since John Kennedy declared "Ich bin ein Berliner" and 26 years since Ronald Reagan exhorted "Tear down this wall!" Obama will unveil plans for a one third reduction in Cold War nuclear arsenals.
He will also hold talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with whom he usually has respectful relations, but who is pointedly demanding details on the exact extent of US spy agency surveillance programs.
Obama will use the speech at the Brandenburg Gate to propose cutting US and Russian strategic nuclear warheads to around 1,000 each, and also seek cuts in tactical nuclear arms stocks in Europe.
Though he remains popular in Germany, Obama will struggle to meet the expectations he spun for himself as a presidential candidate, in a speech to 200,000 Berliners in 2008 that made him a political star in Europe.
Since that call for a joint US-European bid to "remake the world" by battling terrorism, global warming, Middle East violence and poverty, Obama has learned the power of the status quo at home and abroad to thwart change.
But frustration will not temper his rhetoric, according to US deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes.
In his meeting with Merkel, Obama is under intense pressure to explain the reach and scope of US National Security Agency spying programmes which hoover up data from phone records and the Internet in the United States and abroad.
The programs, which have special resonance in a nation where snooping operations by the communist Stasi secret police are a painful memory, have triggered alarm across the political spectrum in Berlin.
Read more: Obama to make landmark speech at Brandenburg Gate - GERMANY - FRANCE 24
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