It was a sunny day in June, and George W. Bush was making a speech at the University of Warsaw. Inside, the politicians listened with interest; outside, crowds gathered to cheer. Afterward, the press was full of praise.
Hard to imagine, but true. That's what President Bush's first visit to Poland was really like—I was there—back in the unfathomably distant summer of 2001. On that same trip, Bush also went to Spain. During a joint press conference, Spanish President José Maria Aznar thanked Bush for his administration's "kindness." "Spain is a friend of the United States, and President Aznar is a friend of mine," said Bush.
Not all of the trip went so smoothly: There were protests at a U.S.-European summit and elsewhere. Nevertheless, these predictable displays of outrage were tempered by the first hints of something new: a pro-American, European alliance consisting of Tony Blair's Britain; Silvio Berlusconi's Italy; the center-right governments of Spain, Portugal, and Denmark; and, of course, the ex-Communist states of Central Europe. These were all countries that had recently undergone market liberalization, countries prone to resent the Franco-German domination of continental politics. In 2003, when Donald Rumsfeld slightingly referred to Germany and France as "Old Europe," this vague, almost-alliance acquired a name: "New Europe." It meant pro-American, accepting of global capitalism, and supportive of the war on terrorism. Not coincidentally, these were the countries that eventually made up the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq.
A mere four year later, New Europe no longer exists. Aznar, Blair, and Berlusconi are finished, partly victims of failure in Iraq. Central Europe's mood has changed profoundly, from pro-American to deeply skeptical. On Friday, President Bush plans to spend precisely 3 hours and 10 minutes on the ground in Poland, making no speeches and seeing no one much besides the Polish president. And it won't be a very wide-ranging discussion. Mortally wounded by Iraq, damaged further by the U.S. administration's lack of interest in its concerns—change in the U.S. visa regime, military assistance—New Europe probably will now be killed off completely by American plans to build a missile-defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Belatedly, the State Department has done its best to promote the project, and pro-American politicians in both countries are scrambling to find a way to support it. But it remains deeply unpopular, and it isn't clear whether the parliament of either country could accept it. Europeans don't understand why a piece of equipment designed to protect the United States from Iran needs to be placed in their territory, particularly since Iran in fact threatens Israel, not the United States or Europe. Nor do they see why they should accept without question a piece of military hardware that opens them up to new risks. This week, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to point his own nuclear missiles at Europe if the missile shield is built. "It is obvious," Putin told journalists Sunday, that "if part of the strategic nuclear potential of the United States is located in Europe and will be threatening us, we will have to respond."
This is, of course, entirely cynical: There are good reasons to ask whether this particular system really has to be built right now, but it isn't "strategic nuclear potential," and it isn't designed to threaten Russia, as the Russians know perfectly well. Still, Putin's Cold War rhetoric is beginning to worry people all across the continent; he must be counting it a huge success. Yet it seems no one in the Pentagon ever imagined that anyone might object to the project, or that the locals might want some extra reassurance, or that a bit of judicious diplomacy might have smoothed the way in advance. According to some, the State Department didn't even know the missile shield was going ahead until the Pentagon had already made the decision. Sound familiar?
And all this, every bit of it, was avoidable. Indeed, New Europe is expiring just as France and Germany have acquired leaders distinctly more pro-American than their predecessors. With a bit more attention, and a bit less arrogance, the trans-Atlantic alliance might now be reinvigorated instead of angry and resentful. When, if ever, we get around to assessing Bush's foreign policy, the damage done on the old continent may loom almost as large as the damage done in Iraq.
Alright, we will skip over the silly and fatuous part about Aznar, Blair and Belusconi being "finished" because of Bush. We have also seen Bush critics Chirac and Schroder leave office over the same time as well, both replaced by relatively pro-American successors. Damn, that doesn't fit the meme...lets just forget it ever happened, shall we?
What is striking about the thrust of the argument here is that every U.S. action in "New Europe" must be subservient to placating Russia. Indeed, Applebaum only mentions Putin's criticisms in the piece and says nothing about how the governments in Poland or the Czech Republic view the matter. Why, in a piece ostensibly about these Eastern European countries, does Applebaum basically ignore them?
The answer is that they are not important, at least to Applebaum and her ilk. For them, the U.S. can have no real interest in these countries because the pundits feel they properly belong to Russia's sphere of influence. The classical expression of this view can be seen in Stephen F. Cohen's The New American Cold War. In this view every whim of Russia to be involved in the internal workings of the countries that used to make up her empire, including the satellite nations, must be given priority. Thus, to these zealots the U.S. being involved politically and militarily with countries that were brutally repressed by Russia in the not so distant past is really:
A growing military encirclement of Russia, on and near its borders, by US and NATO bases, which are already ensconced or being planned in at least half the fourteen other former Soviet republics, from the Baltics and Ukraine to Georgia, Azerbaijan and the new states of Central Asia. The result is a US-built reverse iron curtain and the remilitarization of American-Russian relations.
For Cohen, the desires of the actual nations involved are immaterial. He doesn't mention them because he doesn't care about them. That tens of millions might look for friendship from a powerful U.S. because of the historical abuse they received from the imperial ambitions of Russia doesn't register to Cohen in the least. And folks like Applebaum and Fred Kaplan seem to be along with that point of view as well.
I once accused Cohen of "yearning for Stalin." I may have jumped the gun there. Cohen doesn't need Stalin. Putin suits him just fine.
What Cohen really seem to yearn for is a new Yalta. He wants Europe divided into spheres of influence, and where Russia is given sway all U.S. influence is, by definition, illegitimate. I suppose Cohen thinks of himself as a frustrated Metternich, but he doesn't realize Metternichs only work in an autocratic world. Or maybe Cohen does realize that, which might explain why the democratic aspirations of Eastern Europe matter to him not at all.
Cohen might retort that the choice is between his hard bitten "realism" and some idealistic pie in the sky vision of democracy.
I'd reply that the people of Poland, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Estonia and all the other places that wish to determine their own fate seem real enough to me.
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