Posted on 02/21/2003 10:53:02 PM PST by FairOpinion
Robin Gedye, Foreign Affairs Writer, tours the nations of 'new' Europe and finds them united against the 'old'
President Jacques Chirac's tirade against eastern Europe's fledgling democracies was the best news residents of the Polish village of Bidla Podlaska have had since the last Soviet tank rolled out of the nearby base nearly 10 years ago.
Hard against Poland's eastern border with Russia, about 100 miles out of Warsaw on Route 80, Bidla Podlaska is tipped to become the new American military headquarters in Europe if American forces relocate from the increasingly hostile German environment.
Equipped with a barracks for several thousand men and a hospital to treat front-line casualties, its airfield would provide the perfect headquarters for America's new army in a new Europe.
Poland believes that M Chirac's intervention has raised the likelihood of a move by several notches.
That would not create problems for the Poles. Their love affair with America, which endured covertly under communist rule, now flourishes.
"We are proud that the United States is our strategic ally," President Aleksander Kwasniewski told American special forces soldiers during a visit to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, last year.
"My countrymen understand the brotherhood of arms that binds American and Polish soldiers serves to defend the global order and our civilisation against the forces of barbarism and hatred."
It was hardly likely that Franco-German anti-Americanism would find resonance in Poland, with its staunch history of refusing to obey orders from foreign masters.
Eastern Europe, or central Europe as much of it chooses to be called these days, has moved on since the anti-communist revolutions of 1989 although it was still incongruous this week to see a group of German officers, wearing their finest pale-grey dress uniforms, waiting in the lounge of the Bristol hotel in Warsaw for the airport bus at the end of a defence ministers' meeting.
It was incongruous, too, to see troops from a country that has declared its opposition to war visiting one that has given it its unqualified support. Both, of course, are Nato members.
One American waiting to pay his hotel bill stared over in the direction of the German troops and sneered that they must have believed they were attending "a poor taste" fancy dress party.
By antagonising eastern Europe with his indelicately chosen threats, M Chirac has done more to create a "new" Europe than Donald Rumsfeld ever dared to hope.
The row began when Mr Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, responded to a reporter's question last month about "European" opposition to war. "You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't. I think that's Old Europe. If you look at the entire Nato Europe today, the centre of gravity is shifting to the east."
That sparked enormous irritation, particularly in Germany, where newspapers such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung devoted much space to the row.
M Chirac's comments, almost a month later, suggested that the eastern Europeans had done more damage to French pride than they had realised. By now America was trumpeting the fact that 18 European governments were backing Washington while only two backed Paris.
From the Baltic to the Black Sea, there has been a unanimity of government support and sympathy for America that, combined with burgeoning antagonism towards France and Germany, would have been unthinkable just seven days ago.
Judging by the reaction, M Chirac's outburst achieved precisely the opposite of what was intended, giving the new Europe a sense of common identity and purpose, albeit one born of a need to mount a joint defence of themselves and in support of America.
Not just that. There had been growing indications that public opinion in Eastern Europe was moving in the same anti-war direction as elsewhere on the continent. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Macedonia and Croatia are thoroughly pro-American.
But opinion polls had shown widespread scepticism about America's case. Yet that feeling may now have been overtaken by the row closer to home. As one Czech commentator noted, M Chirac had told the east European states that their views did not count.
Marek Nowakowski, foreign editor of Wprost, a Polish weekly news magazine, sees new Europe as something being created by the conflict between France's vision of a community of rich, stable, economically and politically connected states and a Europe which adheres to traditional values. He hopes it will eventually group eastern Europe with the Baltic states and, eventually, Ukraine.
Mr Nowakowski, an erstwhile student activist in the Solidarity free trade union movement, believes that, unless the EU drops its anti-Americanism, it will be overtaken by the emergence of a transatlantic free trade area integrating the developed western countries, including America and Canada.
"What Chirac said was horrible, truly awful. It has above all served to encourage the Eurosceptics while reinforcing the Rumsfeld doctrine by speaking of a 'family' that was old Europe and 'candidates' that are new Europe."
When Poles were asked in a recent Wprost opinion poll to name countries they considered "friends", 50 per cent put America first, 34 per cent Germany and 25 per cent France. At the same time, 50 per cent considered Poland's greatest enemy to be Russia, 40 per cent said it was Germany and seven per cent Iraq.
And that was even before M Chirac's outburst. "We understand that the fact that when Poland dared to express its opinion, it caused some confusion," said Poland's foreign minister, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz.
"But the fact is that France and Germany did not consult Poland when they put out their statement.
"The letter [from eight European leaders, including Tony Blair, backing America's Iraq policy] that we signed was to underline the significance of the transatlantic relationship. It was not about America and it was not about Europe. It was about America and Europe, the most important relationship of the 20th century."
From the American baseball caps that have become part of the smart new uniforms of Poland's gendarmes, to the McDonald's hamburger bars that punctuate the Stalinist drabness of many east European inner cities, America is not just high fashion. Its system and, above all, its perceived values are the political ideal.
"America speaks with passion for democracy which is something that you miss in Europe," said Linas Linkevicius, Lithuania's foreign minister, whose office decor includes a blue baseball cap with "Mr Nato" emblazoned above its peak.
"You cannot find the passionate defence of democratic values that you get from George W Bush and the likes of John McCain in Europe. There is a sense of welcome and understanding in America while Europe makes clear that it cannot be bothered with smaller nations."
Eastern Europe and the Balkans, unlike their western neighbours, have a sense of history which, because of their recent turbulence, has a relevance to the present.
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder makes a point of drawing a line under Germany's wartime guilt while France pointedly ignores its own wartime debt to America.
East European admiration for America is firmly seated in gratitude for the covert and overt support of successive Washington administrations for political dissent during the years of Soviet domination.
"Even under Soviet occupation, we trusted America rather than Europe," says Marius Laurinavicius, deputy editor of Lithuania's largest daily newspaper. "Unlike Europe, Washington never recognised the Soviet occupation of Lithuania."
Eastern European links to America via its millions of wartime emigrés lend a permanence to the relationship.
It is not merely that America is perceived as attaching a value to democracy that is lacking in other European states but also many parts of eastern Europe feel let down by France and particularly Germany for breaking promises, made during its own reunification process, to act as a bridge between eastern and western Europe.
Last week was a good time to visit eastern Europe. The blanket of snow that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea disguised and decorated some of the post-modern Stalinist architecture that desecrates so much of its landscape. And, for the first time since the Second World War, the "new" Europe had found something to unify it other than its common suffering.
The foreign ministers of the Vilnius 10 group, embracing former communist countries hoping to enter Nato, issued a declaration in Washington demanding a united response from Europe on the "clear and present danger posed by Saddam Hussein".
One concern, though, was Russia. Janusz Reiter, Polish ambassador to Berlin from 1990 to 1995 and now head of Warsaw's Centre for International Relations, a government think tank, was worried by the courting of Moscow's support by Paris and Berlin. "Russia will return one day as a great power," he said.
"This German-French-Russian initiative is a very bad signal. America is powerful and is not afraid of using that power while Europe has failed many times to deliver, not least during the Kosovo crisis."
Even Bulgaria, considered during the Soviet era to have been one of Moscow's most unquestioningly loyal satellites, recognised the moral justification for a war against Iraq from an early stage by lending its full support in the Security Council.
Despite some limited trappings of capitalism in Sofia, the western boutiques and fast-food outlets are restricted to a couple of streets near the city centre.
Ivan Krustev, head of the Centre for Liberal Studies, an advisory think tank to the Bulgarian government, said: "We understand that this is a war about values whereas for France and Germany it is about commercial interests.
"Unlike Mr Bush, Chirac has nothing to offer in the history of France except mistrust. We also know that if we are going to betray America at such a time it is irreversible, whereas the same cannot be said of our position towards France and Germany."
As with everything else, it all comes down to money, they keep wanting our fiat dollar even though it's buried in debt. Amazing!
These countries know that they can walk over France and Germany, and get away with it. They sense that these two countries are not as important as they used to.
I notice that central Europeans have certain wounded prides. They feel that they are part of "Europe", not Russia. But as a result of Soviet occupation, they are now shabbily treated by their western European counterpart, because they are poorer and "not sophisticated".
Chirac is really stupid to insult central Europeans this way. It confirmed their misgivings about western Europeans in the most explicit way possible. Chirac provided the focus to their angst, which is now turning rage. This could be a defining moment in Europe, where central Europeans as a group are galvanized enough to go on a independent path. This is a major blunder on Chirac's part.
The french are probably wondering what that horrible stench coming from their beloved president's shoes is. He stepped in a giant pile. We can thank Chirac for ONE thing. He has, singlehandedly, welded Central Europe and America together closer than our wildest dreams a mere month ago.
Nam Vet
"You cannot find the passionate defence of democratic values that you get from George W Bush and the likes of John McCain in Europe. There is a sense of welcome and understanding in America while Europe makes clear that it cannot be bothered with smaller nations."
Okay, i am happy the Lithuanians are with Pres Bush, but let's not let them get carried away with idolizing McNUT!
Here's a few of France's "great diplomats" on a mission to East-Central Europe in 1942:
Notice the tricolor bleu-blanc-rouge flashing on the Waffen-SS uniforms, marking these "premature EU citizens" as members of SS Division Charlemagne.
Plus-ce-que ca change, plus-ce-que c'est la meme chose?
(I apologize for the link to the photo, I get 'em where I can find 'em).
In essence they are stating that they are equals to any American in terms that any American can understand, and readily agree to as absolutely fair.
I don't know about you but I'm damn stick out your chest proud of the the Vilnius 10.
HipHip - Hooray!
HipHip - Hooray!
HipHip - Hooray!
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