Posted on 03/03/2006 10:47:40 AM PST by lizol
The Czech Card of Russian-Polish Confrontation
Simon Araloff, AIA European section
President of Russia Vladimir Putin this week paid official visits to Hungary and Czech Republic – two of the four states forming the "Visegrad Group" (V4). During month and a half prior to that, the Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz and the President Lech Kaczynski visited Prague. During the same period, the Head of the Polish Cabinet was also in the capitals of Hungary and Slovakia, and the President held talks in Kiev.
The same as does Katchinsky's February trip to Washington, Warsaw's regional activity is aimed at guaranteeing support to Poland's new geopolitical initiative by Central and East European states, and first of all – by the V4 members. On 22-23 of March, during the EU summit in Brussels, Poland is due to present a plan of diversification of the power supply sources of the European Continent. Its main goal is to end up with dependence on Russian oil and gas supplies. Doing this, Warsaw strives to spare Europe of a constant threat of Moscow's potential use of "energy weapon", which was vividly demonstrated during its confrontation with Kiev and Tbilisi.
The Kremlin tries by all means to block the Polish initiative. Opportunities of Russian-German alliance are being broadly used for this purpose, as well as economic gears of Moscow's influence on Central and East European countries. The outcome of this growing confrontation between Poland and Russia depends to many respects on a position which the states of Central and Eastern Europe will take (in particular, the V4 states). Geographical location of these countries, as well as their place in the European system of oil and gas pipelines, guarantees them a special role almost in any project concerning the EU power supplies (be it from Norway or Russia, from Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, Iran or the Arab countries). Against this background, it is obvious that Putin's visits to Budapest and Prague were aimed at strengthening Moscow's efforts on blocking the Polish initiative. It was not by chance at all, that during this trip, the main accent was put at negotiations with the Czech leadership. In the last years, Prague systematically steps forward as Warsaw's strategic partner in the framework of "Visegrad Group". However, the recent past of the Polish-Czech relations allows Moscow to hope that when the decisive moment comes, this alliance won't stand a tenacity test…
Late Discernment
Despite the fact that the idea of the "Visegrad Group" was offered in 1991 by the President of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel, the relationship of Prague to the alliance, especially after delimitation with Bratislava in 1993, was not so unequivocal. First of all, the issue was in a rather problematic perception of Poland by the Czech political establishment. At that time even a special "Czech" view of Poland existed, being an attempt to exclude Warsaw conceptually and politically from Central Europe. Prague was afraid of the union of Warsaw and Budapest, which had historical precedents, and also of the rivalry with the Polish capital for the role of "the bridge between West and East". Also the Czechs feared the geographical and psychological affinity of the Poles to the restless eastern suburbs of the continent.
The suspiciousness of the Czechs towards their northeast neighbors had reached an apogee during the initial stage of the rule (1993-1997) of the Czech Civic Democratic Party (Obcanska demokraticka strana - ODS). The Prime Minister at that time, Vaclav Klaus, and his coterie saw the Visegrad idea without any superfluous piety. Klaus considered that his country occupied an especially advantageous position in negotiations with the EU, and had no need of any regional structure for conducting them. In many respects, the ODS government was responsible for the actual hampering of the regional integration process in Central Europe in the first half of the nineties. However, soon enough it suffered from its short-sighted policy.
The level of damage caused to Czech Republic by its own isolationist position became obvious already during the Czech-German negotiations in 1993, when Berlin demanded from Prague that they take back all its illegal emigrants who arrived on German territory through Czech Republic. The government of Klaus suddenly realized its weakness compared to powerful Germany and started to support development of a joint position on the given question by the Visegrad countries. However the right moment for integration was lost. The "enlightenment" of Klaus and his coterie, based on an aspiration to gain momentary benefit, got quite a cold reception on behalf of the partners in the "Visegrad Group". Effective cooperation did not come out of that. Besides, relations between Prague and Bratislava in which Vladimir Mechiar's problematic nationalist government ruled remained tense. This circumstance also affected relations with Warsaw, which did not stop active contacts with the Slovak leadership.
The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs believes that real change in the position of Czechia in relation to the regional integration processes in general, and to Poland in particular, started in 1995. The Czechs understand that the Poles are firmly focused on integration into NATO and EU and, due to their favorable geopolitical position, will necessarily be in the center of the process of expansion of these structures. Thus, in the middle of the nineties, the Czech political leadership realized that the union with Poland is equitable with Czech strategic interests. It is necessary to note that initially Prague's rejection of the policy of multilateral regional cooperation minimized its ability of really influencing the processes on a regional and continental scale. The common, appreciably depressive, emotional mood of the Czech leadership in the middle of the nineties also essentially affected that. It was believed that the defeats of 1938, 1948 and 1968 evidently have proven the inability of their country to influence processes on an all-European scale during any period of time. Such a self-abasement at the European level, finally, led to Prague's dependence on the political will of Warsaw for promotion of the process of integration of the "Visegrad Group" countries in the EU and NATO. Actually, during this period (the beginning of the second half of the nineties) Czechia named Poland its main partner and an example of how the country - candidate should carry on a dialogue with the EU. In this situation, Poland served as a kind of battering-ram for Czechia, capable of breaching the high bureaucratic fencing of Old Europe. As a result of this "wonderful enlightenment" of the Czech leadership and Polish-Czech rapprochement which followed, even a special term, "Post-Visegrad Two", was invented in the second half of the nineties to describe this situation.
A New Page in Relations
Vaclav Klaus and his team's rule finished at the end of 1997. The country was supervised up to the elections of 1998 by the head of the National bank of Czechia, Josef Tosovsky, assisted by the provisional government. Already under his rule concrete steps on increasing the level of regional cooperation in the framework of the "Visegrad Group" were undertaken, and a frankly pro-European policy was carried out. Thus Tosovsky and his people, especially the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jaroslav Sedivy, in every possible way emphasized their negative attitude towards Klaus' team policy. However, Sedivy avoided to use "self-compromised", from his point of view, term "Visegrad". The oppositionists from the Czech social-democratic party (Ceska strana socialne demokraticka - CSSD) who replaced Tosovsky in June 1998 continued paving a way towards regional and European integration. They, and, first of all, the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jan Kavan, revived cooperation within the framework of the "Visegrad Group", including Poland, to full volume.
In March 1999, alongside the other "Visegrad Group" countries, Czechia and Poland joined the European Union. Marking an anniversary of this event and wishing to emphasize the cordiality of relations between Warsaw and Prague, the Polish President, Aleksander Kwasniewski, who arrived in Prague, recollected an event of 10-th century – the wedding of the Polish King, Mieszko I, and a Czech Duchess, Dobrava. "The relations between our countries started in bed, and are proceeding in the European Community" - the Polish President said jokingly.
The Cloudy Skies of Cooperation
Meanwhile, two months after Kwasniewski's visit to Prague, in May 2000, mutual relations between Warsaw and Prague were clouded with an unexpected espionage scandal. According to the Polish and Czech press, a Colonel of the Czech military intelligence, being an employee, and later chief of the Czech Defense Attaché office in Warsaw, tried to buy, for ten thousand dollars, information on personal rearrangements among the army elite – a state secret of the Polish republic, from an officer in the Polish Army. The Czech spy was well known to his colleagues from Polish counterespionage since Communist times and, therefore, after his assignment to Warsaw he was under their steadfast supervision. After his assignment to head the Defense Attaché office, the Polish side sent an official protest to Prague, after which this troublesome spy was hastily withdrawn. After the scandal became public, a special Polish delegation of the Sejm Committee for Secret Service Control arrived in Prague. The Czech side apologized to the Poles, having declared that the failed spy operated under his personal initiative, and, probably, under orders of a third party - for example, Russia.
Fruitful Cooperation
In September 2004 the Czech Prime Minister, Stanislav Gross, who came on a working visit to Warsaw, declared that from the point of view of the Czech side, relations with Poland were one of the prioritized directions of its foreign policy, which they were going to develop indefatigably. In this connection it was noted that during the period from 1993 up to 2003 the volume of mutual trade between both countries increased more than six fold - from $70 million up to $4.5 billion. The Czech Republic is ranked seventh among the trading partners of Poland, while in the list of trading partners of Czechia the Poles take sixth place. Already at the beginning of 2006, official Prague again confirmed its course on its strategic partnership with Warsaw. It was declared there on February 17, during the visit to the Czech capital of the new Polish President, Lech Kaczynski. The twist of fate is that the high-ranking Polish visitor was welcomed, by the President, Vaclav Klaus – the one, who in the first half of the nineties, headed the Czech government, and opposed development of cooperation with the Poles. This time he was in completely solidarity with his Polish colleague concerning the processes of Eurointegration. Both leaders emphasized that the present Czech-Polish relations are simply magnificent. Representatives of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs add in this connection that both countries are preparing, together with their colleagues from Slovakia and Hungary, a power security initiative project, which will be submitted at the coming March summit of the EU.
What is the agenda of this axisglobe? They looks like some strange analysts but cannot spell correctly Kaczynski’s name or numerously call Czech Republic “Czechia”.
I don't really know.
So they should be very popular on FR :-)))
It would be much worse, if they were Czech Democrats.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.