This summer, in a year that marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, 22 Eastern and Central European intellectuals and former political leaders sent an extraordinary open letter to the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama. The signatories included former prime ministers and presidents from across the region—among them democratic revolutionaries Vaclav Havel, first president of the Czech Republic, and former Polish president and trade union leader Lech Walesa, whose Solidarity movement helped trigger the collapse of Communism in Europe.
All are staunchly pro-American, and many, like Havel and Walesa, veterans of the anti-Soviet struggles that won political freedom for their countries two decades ago. Their letter therefore reads like a missive to an old friend. But a current of anguish runs through it. They fear that the United States is turning away from their region at a time when its engagement is once again most needed.
“Many of us know first-hand how important your support for our freedom and independence was during the dark Cold War years,” the letter reads. “Twenty years after the end of the Cold War, however, we see that Central and Eastern countries are no longer at the heart of American foreign policy.” The letter suggests the new Obama administration has concluded that Eastern and Central Europe is a part of the world it doesn’t need to worry about. “That view is premature. All is not well in our region or in the transatlantic relationship. Central and Eastern Europe is at a political crossroads and today there is a growing sense of nervousness in the region.”
The source of much of this nervousness is a familiar Cold War adversary: Russia, which, the letter’s authors claim, “is back as a revisionist power” and is throwing its weight around. Coupled with a more belligerent Russia, the former political leaders warn that a new generation of political leaders is emerging whose members didn’t experience and don’t appreciate Washington’s role in “securing our democratic transition and anchoring our countries in NATO and the EU.” Instead, these new leaders follow what the letter’s authors describe, in ironic quotation marks, as a “realistic” policy. In other words, they seek to accommodate Russia.
The issue identified in the letter as the “thorniest” was a planned missile defence system that would have seen 10 interceptor rockets deployed in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic. Announced during the presidency of George W. Bush, the system was said to offer protection against Iranian missiles, but Russia saw it as a provocation and protested. “Regardless of the military merits of this scheme and what Washington eventually decides to do, the issue has nevertheless also become—at least in some countries—a symbol of America’s credibility and commitment to the region,” the letter concluded. “How it is handled could have a significant impact on their future transatlantic orientation.”
That letter was written in July. In September, Obama cancelled the missile defence plan, promising to replace it with land and sea-based interceptors. It’s difficult to imagine how he could have more dramatically bungled the announcement. It was made on Sept. 17, the 70th anniversary of the Soviet attack on Poland. The Czech prime minister was woken up to receive the news in a brief phone call from Obama the night before. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the call to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. He refused to speak to her.
Press reaction in Poland and the Czech Republic was hot and bitter. “Betrayal! The U.S. sold us to Russia and stabbed us in the back,” declared the Polish tabloid Fakt on its front page. “No radar. Russia won,” read the front-page headline in Mlada fronta DNES, a popular Czech daily. An editorial in the Czech business newspaper, Hospodarski noviny, also accused the United States of perfidy: “An ally we rely on has betrayed us, and exchanged us for its own better relations with Russia, of which we are rightly afraid.” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev welcomed Obama’s decision as a “responsible move.”
Although support for missile defence was far from universal in the Czech Republic, Petr Drulak, director of the Institute of International Relations in Prague, says that those who supported the plan did so because it implied defiance toward Russia. “It was about the symbolic value of having an American military presence on Czech territory,” he said in an interview with Maclean’s.
The missile defence dust-up was a skirmish in a much larger, undeclared conflict between Russia and the United States and its allies for influence in Eastern Europe and in other countries that were once part of the Soviet Empire. At its most extreme, this has manifested itself in outright war, as was the case in Georgia last summer. But much more common are implied threats, chest-thrusting diplomatic posturing, and economic blackmail by Russia. “It challenges our claims to our own historical experiences,” write the letter’s authors. “It asserts a privileged position in determining our security choices. It uses overt and covert means of economic warfare, ranging from energy blockades and politically motivated investments to bribery and media manipulation in order to advance its interests and to challenge the transatlantic orientation of Central and Eastern Europe.”
