The U.S. Takes “New Europe” for Granted at its Own Peril
Abstract: The nations of "New Europe" have been staunch allies of the United States in the aftermath of 9/11, and have sacrificed resources and soldiers' lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. Again and again, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have shown their steadfastness and commitment to the United States. Yet America has not always returned the favor. Crucial ally Poland, as well as several other CEE countries, are still awaiting acceptance to the U.S. Visa Waiver Program.
The "Third Site" missile defense installations, eagerly anticipated by Poland and the Czech Republic, were traded away by the Obama Administration to win Russian support on resisting Iran's nuclear advances. CEE citizens have taken note, and public support for the U.S. and its policies has begun to waver. Russia stands poised—with an arsenal of propaganda, economic, and military might—to re-establish influence over the CEE region. The U.S. must not take support from New Europe for granted. The region has not yet been lost to Russian influence—but the U.S. must act now to preserve the crucial relationship with Central and Eastern Europe. Two of The Heritage Foundation's most senior foreign policy analysts explain what the American government can, and should, do.
An unfortunate side effect of the Obama Administration’s “reset” policy toward Russia was its impact on relations with some of the United States’ most loyal recent allies—the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). These ties had been nourished under previous Administrations, and reached a high point during the years of NATO enlargement (1999, 2004, and 2009). Despite firm government-to-government commitments to military cooperation, NATO enlargement, and support for building democratic institutions during the eight years of the George W. Bush Administration, popular discontent with the Iraq war started to grow among CEE citizens. Compared to many Western European nations, though, the countries of the former Iron Curtain remained staunch American allies.
Obama's Decision to Focus on Russian Relations has Upset US CEE Relationships
The Obama Administration’s decision to focus on great power politics with Russia severely upset the U.S.–CEE relationships at every level. For the CEE countries, the first year of the Obama Administration provided a tough lesson in the new realities of Washington. Despite the fact that President Obama enjoyed high personal approval ratings, among the diplomatic corps in Washington there was a widespread perception that the new White House team was not accessible to them.
In part as a result of Washington’s neglect, a strategic vacuum has developed in the CEE region. Not only is Washington’s rapprochement with Russia a major issue for CEE allies, but so is the cancellation of the “Third Site” missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. The slow progress of expanding the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) was a serious irritant for all the European countries formerly behind the Iron Curtain. It remains so for the Poles who have yet to be accepted for visa-less travel to the U.S. Shrinking U.S. public diplomacy budgets have also taken their toll as the U.S. presence in the region seems to have dwindled. Several avoidable public diplomacy missteps of Barack Obama’s first year in office have added more sour notes—such as the White House failure to appreciate the profound meaning of World War II anniversaries in Europe, and therefore failing to arrange proper U.S. representation, or the President’s snub of the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, allegedly because of too heavy a schedule.
As the distance between CEE and the United States has grown, the European Union and Russia have begun to move into the vacuum. As members of the EU, the countries of CEE—Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, and Romania—have benefited from major financial inflows as well as from the ability of their citizens to travel and seek jobs and education in other EU states. This pull has greatly increased the visibility of the EU.
At the same time, Russia has tried to re-establish ties with parts of the former Soviet empire—such renewal having been one of the chief aims of the Putin era, with Poland being the principal target of this policy. In 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin told the Russian nation that the collapse of the Soviet empire “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” and a tragedy for Russians.[1] Over the past decade, Russia has steadily put pressure on relations with neighbors in order to restore what it considers its rightful sphere of influence. In fact, Dmitry Medvedev, the current president, did not exclude CEE from his notorious mention of Russia’s sphere of “privileged interests.” Russia’s government continues to show a willingness to employ a range of instruments to achieve the ends of its “neighborhood policy” (essentially proclaiming Moscow’s veto power in areas controlled by the former Soviet Union). These include international propaganda, using critical infrastructure and energy as power levers, buying Russia-friendly political and business elites through lucrative business deals, and occasionally threatening in a not-so-veiled fashion to employ military power.
The U.S. government should not take the support from CEE countries for granted. As staunch allies as they have been after September 11, 2001, it will take determined effort by the United States to end the drift of CEE countries away from the U.S. Such effort should be a high priority as part of the bulwark protecting the transatlantic alliance from fracturing. Within NATO, CEE countries remain of strategic importance for the United States.
As Ambassador Sven Jürgenson, foreign policy advisor to the president of Estonia, stated at The Heritage Foundation in October 2009, U.S.–CEE relationships reached a high level of intensity, forged during the struggle against Communism and the fall of the Soviet Union. It took a great amount of effort to build the relationships on both sides, and it will require effort to sustain them. “I try to remind everyone,” Jürgenson said, that “it was an anomalous time, also in the United States.” During the 1990s, the Baltics and other CEE countries made their final break from Russian domination, and at the same time the United States established itself as the world’s sole superpower. The Baltic states saw the “United States as the main counter-balanced influence to Russia. The United States as a unipolar superpower had made itself available to the Baltic states…and we reached for it.”[2]
Now as then, the relationship between the United States and CEE is based on common values and interests. During the 1990s, the confluence of those interests produced an unusually close alliance, which now requires mutual effort to maintain. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration demonstrated a disturbing lack of concern for these alliances during its first year in power, which culminated in the abrogation of the Third Site missile defense agreements concluded between the second Bush Administration, Poland, and the Czech Republic. The fact that it happened with minimal prior warning to the Polish and Czech governments, and was announced on September 17, 2009, the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland in World War II, was a major blow to CEE trust in U.S. commitments. Since then, the Obama Administration has attempted to reassure regional CEE leaders of continued American friendship by making public statements and by sending members of the Administration to meet with them in person. But much more remains to be done to shore up these important relations, and public diplomacy should play a leading role.
Perceptions by the public in CEE countries of neglect by the U.S. can be countered by among other things visits from high-ranking U.S. officials. President George W. Bush made a number of trips to the region, which made an impact. The visit by Vice President Joseph Biden to Bucharest in October 2009 was an attempt to reassure allies in the region after the missile defense reversal, and his visit was received favorably. President Obama has made a number of trips, intended as a signal of reassurance, but the President’s decision to sign the 2010 START treaty with Russia in April in Prague carried a mixed message: The price for signing the treaty was the cancellation of Poland-based and Czech Republic-based missile defense systems. At least the dinner hosted after the signing ceremony by the U.S. President with 11 CEE leaders gave them a chance to voice their concerns and was seen by many political leaders and the public as a positive step.
Investing in visible, tangible symbols of the American commitment to CEE security is critical, as is establishing accessible cultural and educational institutions outside the forbidding perimeters of the new U.S. embassy compounds in CEE countries. Exchange scholarships and a more open visa policy can facilitate the individual exposure of citizens to the United States. The U.S. government should:
Formulate a strategic framework for cooperation with CEE countries that reaffirms their continued importance to the United States and for transatlantic relations;
Admit Poland and Romania to the Visa Waiver Program, thereby clearing up a serious irritant in the relationship with important allies;
Raise the visibility of the American presence in CEE countries by (1) increasing the frequency of state-to-state visits on both sides; (2) increasing the number of educational and cultural exchanges; and (3) increasing visible symbols of the American presence through speaker series featuring American political and cultural leaders; and
Fund symbols of the American presence, such as American centers at local universities and cultural institutions.
CEE Opinions Run Hot–Cold on U.S. Leadership
In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, the CEE countries invariably turned to the United States for guidance, protection, and investment opportunities.[3] The security guarantees of NATO were even more sought after than the perceived path to prosperity through the EU, as CEE countries sought protection from a declining Russia that did not readily accept their inclusion in Western institutions. NATO enlargement to include Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary in 1999 and the second round of NATO enlargement in 2004 to include Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia represented high points in the relationship with the United States. Unfortunately, those high points lasted less than a decade.
Public opinion statistics in Central and Eastern Europe tell the story. In 2003, a majority of Poles found United States leadership in the world to be desirable, according to the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Trends poll, and most supported the handling of international issues by President George W. Bush.[4] By contrast, in the 2008 survey, still under President Bush, the portion of Central and Eastern Europeans who found American leadership to be desirable had shrunk to just about one-third.
Even the “Obama-bounce” after the 2009 presidential election did not affect CEE as strongly as it did Western Europe. President Obama’s approval ratings in CEE were 64 percent, compared to 86 percent in Western Europe. When it comes to the desirability of U.S. global leadership as recorded in the Marshall Fund’s 2009 survey, CEE registered just 44 percent approval as opposed to 56 percent for Western Europe.[5] “Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin wall, enthusiasm for Obama, for American leadership, and for the United States in general is far more subdued in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Turkey,” write the authors, identifying this trend as one of the most notable finding of the survey.[6]
Also troubling was the finding by the Pew Research Center in the Global Attitudes Project poll released in November 2009. This poll found not only that attitudes toward the United States are on a downward trajectory in the region, but so are attitudes toward democracy, free markets, and the political and economic systems of the West. Clearly, expectations for the post-Communist way of life have fallen short.
Some of the CEE countries have struggled to transform their societies into true democracies and some have seen massive and persistent unemployment resulting from the closing of their state enterprises. The Pew report does reveal that the people of “former Iron Curtain countries generally look back approvingly at the collapse of communism,” and that the majorities of people in most former Soviet Republics and Eastern European countries endorse the emergence of multiparty systems and a free market economy.” However, since 1991, when the original survey was conducted, “the initial widespread enthusiasm about these changes has dimmed in most of the countries surveyed.”[7] Among the most afflicted in the survey were Hungarians, of whom 72 percent say they are worse off now than they were under Communism. Though the April 2010 election was won by Viktor Orban’s conservative Fidesz Party, this dissatisfaction with democracy and capitalism has translated into the increased (19 percent) far-right vote for the Jobbik Party, which won parliamentary representation for the first time.
A Tale of Two Letters.
A decline in public opinion of American leadership and democracy is worrisome in itself, but when combined with a souring of the governing elites, the effect on U.S. national interest becomes more palpable. The two famous public letters from leaders in the CEE region illustrate the deeply felt decline in the relationship with the United States.
On January 30, 2003, political leaders from Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic—along with the leaders of Spain, Portugal, the U.K., and Denmark—risked the wrath of the EU by stating publicly in an open letter why they stood with the United States on the Iraq war.[8] Even though the letter provoked French President Jacques Chirac to lash out against the signatories, a number of other
CEE nations soon signed on to a second letter in support of the United States, this time including Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania, and the Balkan nations of Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia, and Albania. In the view of nearly all the governments of CEE countries, the relationship with the United States was more important than the relationship with the EU, which they were soon hoping to join. Indeed, the issue of the Iraq war splintered EU aspirations for a common foreign policy, as the U.K., Italy, and Spain supported the U.S. while France and Germany fiercely opposed it. A fault line opened between Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s “New Europe” of the East and “Old Europe” of the West.
The letter hailed U.S. “bravery, generosity and farsightedness” during the struggles with Nazism and Communism in the 20th century, and it called for “unwavering determination and firm international cohesion on the part of all countries for whom freedom is precious.”[9] This statement captured not only the common interests, but also the deeply held common values that made the connection between the United States and CEE so powerful.
Just six years later, a dramatically different letter was put together by CEE leaders, a story of a “faded romance” as Charles Gati wrote in The American Interest. The open letter from a distinguished group of CEE leaders to the Obama Administration published in the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza on July 16, 2009, talked about disappointment, abandonment, and of allies being taken for granted. The letter expressed a fear of CEE interests being neglected by the United States in favor of a renewed relationship with Russia.
“Twenty years after the Cold War, however, we see that Central and Eastern European countries are no longer at the heart of American foreign policy,” the signatories said as they warned against taking the relationship with the U.S. for granted. “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.”[10] The specific factors cited in the letter were the troubling outcome of the 2008 Russo–Georgian war, the declining relevance of NATO, the slide in American popularity among the publics of their countries, the growing relevance of the EU, political turmoil resulting from the global economic crisis, and the “reset” of the relationship between the United States and Russia.
Visa Waiver and the Iraq War
Another critical factor was the “Visa Waiver issue” with CEE countries, which has cost the United States greatly in terms of public diplomacy (and which should therefore be at the top of the list of issues that need resolution). America’s Visa Waiver program itself dates back to 1986, and as originally configured, applied to friendly, prosperous allied nations (a total of 27) whose citizens could be expected to return to their respective homes if granted a visa-free stay in the United States for tourism or business. A country could qualify for the program if the rate of citizens overstaying their visas did not exceed 5 percent, and the rate of rejection of visa applicants did not exceed 3 percent. Following the inception of the program, citizens from Western Europe found short-term travel for business or tourism to the United States greatly facilitated. (The limit of a visa-free stay is 90 days.)
As a public diplomacy tool, as well as an economic tool, the program works brilliantly. People-to-people contacts are perhaps the most powerful component of public diplomacy, and making visitors feel welcome creates a positive first impression. Surveys have shown that foreigners who have had the opportunity to visit the United States are more than 74 percent likely to have a favorable view of the country and 61 percent of travelers to the United States are more likely to support the United States and its policies than people who have never visited the U.S.[11]
However, as the division of Europe ended after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and former East Bloc countries became members of both the European Union and NATO, the Visa Waiver program had the unintended consequence of perpetuating the historical division of Europe, leaving the CEE countries stuck with the old visa system. Their citizens had to pay a non-refundable $100 visa-application fee, and show up for individual interviews with consular personnel. The perception among CEE applicants was often that decisions whether or not to grant visas was made on an arbitrary basis by U.S. consular personnel. CEE citizens felt they were second class in the eyes of the U.S. government, understandably causing resentment. Countries that had looked to America for protection, leadership, and friendship in the 1990s began to experience a rise in anti-Americanism in the beginning of the new millennium.
The staunch support for the United States exhibited by the CEE governments after 9/11, including the open letter of January 30, 2003, made the Visa Waiver issue appear even more of an injustice. While the United States tightened visa requirements to deal with the new security threats from abroad, its new allies demanded recognition of the risks they were taking to stand in solidarity alongside Americans.[12] Polish soldiers are “daily risking their lives for America’s war on terror, and these are people who while they are in Iraq, they learn that they will have to be fingerprinted [when they visit the United States]. They feel that they will be treated as criminals,” said Radek Sikorski, then executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative, and later to hold posts as his country’s defense and foreign minister (as well as holding previous ministerial posts in the Polish government). “Isn’t there a better way to treat allies?” Sikorski asked. Poland was among the first four countries in the Iraq war coalition and led the international division in Iraq, contributing some 2,500 troops.[13] Military and material contributions for U.S. efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Kosovo have been forthcoming from all new NATO allies.
By Helle Dale and Ariel Cohen PH.D.
Read the full article here :
http://www.rightsidenews.com/2010102311947/world/geopolitics/the-us-takes-new-europe-for-granted-at-its-own-peril.html?awesm=fbshare.me_AVlGS
The "Third Site" missile defense installations, eagerly anticipated by Poland and the Czech Republic, were traded away by the Obama Administration to win Russian support on resisting Iran's nuclear advances. CEE citizens have taken note, and public support for the U.S. and its policies has begun to waver. Russia stands poised—with an arsenal of propaganda, economic, and military might—to re-establish influence over the CEE region. The U.S. must not take support from New Europe for granted. The region has not yet been lost to Russian influence—but the U.S. must act now to preserve the crucial relationship with Central and Eastern Europe. Two of The Heritage Foundation's most senior foreign policy analysts explain what the American government can, and should, do.
An unfortunate side effect of the Obama Administration’s “reset” policy toward Russia was its impact on relations with some of the United States’ most loyal recent allies—the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). These ties had been nourished under previous Administrations, and reached a high point during the years of NATO enlargement (1999, 2004, and 2009). Despite firm government-to-government commitments to military cooperation, NATO enlargement, and support for building democratic institutions during the eight years of the George W. Bush Administration, popular discontent with the Iraq war started to grow among CEE citizens. Compared to many Western European nations, though, the countries of the former Iron Curtain remained staunch American allies.
Obama's Decision to Focus on Russian Relations has Upset US CEE Relationships
The Obama Administration’s decision to focus on great power politics with Russia severely upset the U.S.–CEE relationships at every level. For the CEE countries, the first year of the Obama Administration provided a tough lesson in the new realities of Washington. Despite the fact that President Obama enjoyed high personal approval ratings, among the diplomatic corps in Washington there was a widespread perception that the new White House team was not accessible to them.
In part as a result of Washington’s neglect, a strategic vacuum has developed in the CEE region. Not only is Washington’s rapprochement with Russia a major issue for CEE allies, but so is the cancellation of the “Third Site” missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. The slow progress of expanding the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) was a serious irritant for all the European countries formerly behind the Iron Curtain. It remains so for the Poles who have yet to be accepted for visa-less travel to the U.S. Shrinking U.S. public diplomacy budgets have also taken their toll as the U.S. presence in the region seems to have dwindled. Several avoidable public diplomacy missteps of Barack Obama’s first year in office have added more sour notes—such as the White House failure to appreciate the profound meaning of World War II anniversaries in Europe, and therefore failing to arrange proper U.S. representation, or the President’s snub of the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, allegedly because of too heavy a schedule.
As the distance between CEE and the United States has grown, the European Union and Russia have begun to move into the vacuum. As members of the EU, the countries of CEE—Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, and Romania—have benefited from major financial inflows as well as from the ability of their citizens to travel and seek jobs and education in other EU states. This pull has greatly increased the visibility of the EU.
At the same time, Russia has tried to re-establish ties with parts of the former Soviet empire—such renewal having been one of the chief aims of the Putin era, with Poland being the principal target of this policy. In 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin told the Russian nation that the collapse of the Soviet empire “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” and a tragedy for Russians.[1] Over the past decade, Russia has steadily put pressure on relations with neighbors in order to restore what it considers its rightful sphere of influence. In fact, Dmitry Medvedev, the current president, did not exclude CEE from his notorious mention of Russia’s sphere of “privileged interests.” Russia’s government continues to show a willingness to employ a range of instruments to achieve the ends of its “neighborhood policy” (essentially proclaiming Moscow’s veto power in areas controlled by the former Soviet Union). These include international propaganda, using critical infrastructure and energy as power levers, buying Russia-friendly political and business elites through lucrative business deals, and occasionally threatening in a not-so-veiled fashion to employ military power.
The U.S. government should not take the support from CEE countries for granted. As staunch allies as they have been after September 11, 2001, it will take determined effort by the United States to end the drift of CEE countries away from the U.S. Such effort should be a high priority as part of the bulwark protecting the transatlantic alliance from fracturing. Within NATO, CEE countries remain of strategic importance for the United States.
As Ambassador Sven Jürgenson, foreign policy advisor to the president of Estonia, stated at The Heritage Foundation in October 2009, U.S.–CEE relationships reached a high level of intensity, forged during the struggle against Communism and the fall of the Soviet Union. It took a great amount of effort to build the relationships on both sides, and it will require effort to sustain them. “I try to remind everyone,” Jürgenson said, that “it was an anomalous time, also in the United States.” During the 1990s, the Baltics and other CEE countries made their final break from Russian domination, and at the same time the United States established itself as the world’s sole superpower. The Baltic states saw the “United States as the main counter-balanced influence to Russia. The United States as a unipolar superpower had made itself available to the Baltic states…and we reached for it.”[2]
Now as then, the relationship between the United States and CEE is based on common values and interests. During the 1990s, the confluence of those interests produced an unusually close alliance, which now requires mutual effort to maintain. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration demonstrated a disturbing lack of concern for these alliances during its first year in power, which culminated in the abrogation of the Third Site missile defense agreements concluded between the second Bush Administration, Poland, and the Czech Republic. The fact that it happened with minimal prior warning to the Polish and Czech governments, and was announced on September 17, 2009, the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland in World War II, was a major blow to CEE trust in U.S. commitments. Since then, the Obama Administration has attempted to reassure regional CEE leaders of continued American friendship by making public statements and by sending members of the Administration to meet with them in person. But much more remains to be done to shore up these important relations, and public diplomacy should play a leading role.
Perceptions by the public in CEE countries of neglect by the U.S. can be countered by among other things visits from high-ranking U.S. officials. President George W. Bush made a number of trips to the region, which made an impact. The visit by Vice President Joseph Biden to Bucharest in October 2009 was an attempt to reassure allies in the region after the missile defense reversal, and his visit was received favorably. President Obama has made a number of trips, intended as a signal of reassurance, but the President’s decision to sign the 2010 START treaty with Russia in April in Prague carried a mixed message: The price for signing the treaty was the cancellation of Poland-based and Czech Republic-based missile defense systems. At least the dinner hosted after the signing ceremony by the U.S. President with 11 CEE leaders gave them a chance to voice their concerns and was seen by many political leaders and the public as a positive step.
Investing in visible, tangible symbols of the American commitment to CEE security is critical, as is establishing accessible cultural and educational institutions outside the forbidding perimeters of the new U.S. embassy compounds in CEE countries. Exchange scholarships and a more open visa policy can facilitate the individual exposure of citizens to the United States. The U.S. government should:
Formulate a strategic framework for cooperation with CEE countries that reaffirms their continued importance to the United States and for transatlantic relations;
Admit Poland and Romania to the Visa Waiver Program, thereby clearing up a serious irritant in the relationship with important allies;
Raise the visibility of the American presence in CEE countries by (1) increasing the frequency of state-to-state visits on both sides; (2) increasing the number of educational and cultural exchanges; and (3) increasing visible symbols of the American presence through speaker series featuring American political and cultural leaders; and
Fund symbols of the American presence, such as American centers at local universities and cultural institutions.
CEE Opinions Run Hot–Cold on U.S. Leadership
In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, the CEE countries invariably turned to the United States for guidance, protection, and investment opportunities.[3] The security guarantees of NATO were even more sought after than the perceived path to prosperity through the EU, as CEE countries sought protection from a declining Russia that did not readily accept their inclusion in Western institutions. NATO enlargement to include Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary in 1999 and the second round of NATO enlargement in 2004 to include Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia represented high points in the relationship with the United States. Unfortunately, those high points lasted less than a decade.
Public opinion statistics in Central and Eastern Europe tell the story. In 2003, a majority of Poles found United States leadership in the world to be desirable, according to the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Trends poll, and most supported the handling of international issues by President George W. Bush.[4] By contrast, in the 2008 survey, still under President Bush, the portion of Central and Eastern Europeans who found American leadership to be desirable had shrunk to just about one-third.
Even the “Obama-bounce” after the 2009 presidential election did not affect CEE as strongly as it did Western Europe. President Obama’s approval ratings in CEE were 64 percent, compared to 86 percent in Western Europe. When it comes to the desirability of U.S. global leadership as recorded in the Marshall Fund’s 2009 survey, CEE registered just 44 percent approval as opposed to 56 percent for Western Europe.[5] “Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin wall, enthusiasm for Obama, for American leadership, and for the United States in general is far more subdued in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Turkey,” write the authors, identifying this trend as one of the most notable finding of the survey.[6]
Also troubling was the finding by the Pew Research Center in the Global Attitudes Project poll released in November 2009. This poll found not only that attitudes toward the United States are on a downward trajectory in the region, but so are attitudes toward democracy, free markets, and the political and economic systems of the West. Clearly, expectations for the post-Communist way of life have fallen short.
Some of the CEE countries have struggled to transform their societies into true democracies and some have seen massive and persistent unemployment resulting from the closing of their state enterprises. The Pew report does reveal that the people of “former Iron Curtain countries generally look back approvingly at the collapse of communism,” and that the majorities of people in most former Soviet Republics and Eastern European countries endorse the emergence of multiparty systems and a free market economy.” However, since 1991, when the original survey was conducted, “the initial widespread enthusiasm about these changes has dimmed in most of the countries surveyed.”[7] Among the most afflicted in the survey were Hungarians, of whom 72 percent say they are worse off now than they were under Communism. Though the April 2010 election was won by Viktor Orban’s conservative Fidesz Party, this dissatisfaction with democracy and capitalism has translated into the increased (19 percent) far-right vote for the Jobbik Party, which won parliamentary representation for the first time.
A Tale of Two Letters.
A decline in public opinion of American leadership and democracy is worrisome in itself, but when combined with a souring of the governing elites, the effect on U.S. national interest becomes more palpable. The two famous public letters from leaders in the CEE region illustrate the deeply felt decline in the relationship with the United States.
On January 30, 2003, political leaders from Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic—along with the leaders of Spain, Portugal, the U.K., and Denmark—risked the wrath of the EU by stating publicly in an open letter why they stood with the United States on the Iraq war.[8] Even though the letter provoked French President Jacques Chirac to lash out against the signatories, a number of other
CEE nations soon signed on to a second letter in support of the United States, this time including Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania, and the Balkan nations of Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia, and Albania. In the view of nearly all the governments of CEE countries, the relationship with the United States was more important than the relationship with the EU, which they were soon hoping to join. Indeed, the issue of the Iraq war splintered EU aspirations for a common foreign policy, as the U.K., Italy, and Spain supported the U.S. while France and Germany fiercely opposed it. A fault line opened between Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s “New Europe” of the East and “Old Europe” of the West.
The letter hailed U.S. “bravery, generosity and farsightedness” during the struggles with Nazism and Communism in the 20th century, and it called for “unwavering determination and firm international cohesion on the part of all countries for whom freedom is precious.”[9] This statement captured not only the common interests, but also the deeply held common values that made the connection between the United States and CEE so powerful.
Just six years later, a dramatically different letter was put together by CEE leaders, a story of a “faded romance” as Charles Gati wrote in The American Interest. The open letter from a distinguished group of CEE leaders to the Obama Administration published in the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza on July 16, 2009, talked about disappointment, abandonment, and of allies being taken for granted. The letter expressed a fear of CEE interests being neglected by the United States in favor of a renewed relationship with Russia.
“Twenty years after the Cold War, however, we see that Central and Eastern European countries are no longer at the heart of American foreign policy,” the signatories said as they warned against taking the relationship with the U.S. for granted. “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.”[10] The specific factors cited in the letter were the troubling outcome of the 2008 Russo–Georgian war, the declining relevance of NATO, the slide in American popularity among the publics of their countries, the growing relevance of the EU, political turmoil resulting from the global economic crisis, and the “reset” of the relationship between the United States and Russia.
Visa Waiver and the Iraq War
Another critical factor was the “Visa Waiver issue” with CEE countries, which has cost the United States greatly in terms of public diplomacy (and which should therefore be at the top of the list of issues that need resolution). America’s Visa Waiver program itself dates back to 1986, and as originally configured, applied to friendly, prosperous allied nations (a total of 27) whose citizens could be expected to return to their respective homes if granted a visa-free stay in the United States for tourism or business. A country could qualify for the program if the rate of citizens overstaying their visas did not exceed 5 percent, and the rate of rejection of visa applicants did not exceed 3 percent. Following the inception of the program, citizens from Western Europe found short-term travel for business or tourism to the United States greatly facilitated. (The limit of a visa-free stay is 90 days.)
As a public diplomacy tool, as well as an economic tool, the program works brilliantly. People-to-people contacts are perhaps the most powerful component of public diplomacy, and making visitors feel welcome creates a positive first impression. Surveys have shown that foreigners who have had the opportunity to visit the United States are more than 74 percent likely to have a favorable view of the country and 61 percent of travelers to the United States are more likely to support the United States and its policies than people who have never visited the U.S.[11]
However, as the division of Europe ended after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and former East Bloc countries became members of both the European Union and NATO, the Visa Waiver program had the unintended consequence of perpetuating the historical division of Europe, leaving the CEE countries stuck with the old visa system. Their citizens had to pay a non-refundable $100 visa-application fee, and show up for individual interviews with consular personnel. The perception among CEE applicants was often that decisions whether or not to grant visas was made on an arbitrary basis by U.S. consular personnel. CEE citizens felt they were second class in the eyes of the U.S. government, understandably causing resentment. Countries that had looked to America for protection, leadership, and friendship in the 1990s began to experience a rise in anti-Americanism in the beginning of the new millennium.
The staunch support for the United States exhibited by the CEE governments after 9/11, including the open letter of January 30, 2003, made the Visa Waiver issue appear even more of an injustice. While the United States tightened visa requirements to deal with the new security threats from abroad, its new allies demanded recognition of the risks they were taking to stand in solidarity alongside Americans.[12] Polish soldiers are “daily risking their lives for America’s war on terror, and these are people who while they are in Iraq, they learn that they will have to be fingerprinted [when they visit the United States]. They feel that they will be treated as criminals,” said Radek Sikorski, then executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative, and later to hold posts as his country’s defense and foreign minister (as well as holding previous ministerial posts in the Polish government). “Isn’t there a better way to treat allies?” Sikorski asked. Poland was among the first four countries in the Iraq war coalition and led the international division in Iraq, contributing some 2,500 troops.[13] Military and material contributions for U.S. efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Kosovo have been forthcoming from all new NATO allies.
By Helle Dale and Ariel Cohen PH.D.
Read the full article here :
http://www.rightsidenews.com/2010102311947/world/geopolitics/the-us-takes-new-europe-for-granted-at-its-own-peril.html?awesm=fbshare.me_AVlGS
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