President Obama will call Wednesday for reducing the number of deployed U.S. strategic nuclear warheads by one-third if the Russian government agrees to similar cuts, reviving a goal outlined early in his presidency to work toward a world without nuclear weapons. Obama will deliver the proposal as part of a much-anticipated speech that will echo with Cold War history and seek to shake Western nations from complacency at a time of economic hardship at home. He will speak at the Brandenburg Gate, along the route where the Berlin Wall once divided this city into the Soviet-aligned east and U.S.-allied west. Then-President Ronald Reagan used the backdrop in 1987 to call on Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” Obama's speech, expected to attract tens of thousands of Germans despite predictions of sweltering heat, will mark the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's message of solidarity to Berliners delivered just two years after the wall's construction. “This is a place where U.S. presidents have gone to talk about the role of the free world,” said Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. Rhodes said Obama will use the speech to urge private citizens and Western governments to solve the most pressing problems of the post-Cold War world – confronting borderless terrorism, addressing climate change, spreading democratic values and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.
