Cruelbreed
07-17-2009, 01:54 PM
uly 17, 2009
Eastern Europe Is Uneasy Over U.S. Ties With Russia
By NICHOLAS KULISH
BERLIN — The deep concern among America’s Eastern European allies over improved relations between Russia and the United States spilled into the open on Thursday when 22 prominent figures, including Poland’s Lech Walesa and the Czech Republic’s Vaclav Havel, published an open letter to the Obama administration begging not to be forgotten.
In the letter, the leaders urged President Obama and his top policy makers to remember their interests as they negotiate with Russia and review plans for missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. Abandoning the missile defense plan or giving Russia too big a role in it could “undermine the credibility of the United States across the whole region,” the letter said.
The letter was published on the Web site of the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza and was signed by former presidents, like Mr. Walesa and Mr. Havel, as well as other former heads of state, top diplomats and intellectuals from a broad range of countries, including Hungary, Bulgaria and Estonia.
“Our region is one part of the world that Americans have largely stopped worrying about,” the letter said, even though “all is not well either in our region or in the trans-Atlantic relationship.”
While the letter covered a range of issues, including the dangers presented to the young democracies in the region by the economic crisis, Russia was clearly central to the worries expressed by the drafters.
“There is the fear among Central and Eastern Europeans that our interest in keeping the trans-Atlantic bond could be somehow sold out to the relationship with Russia,” Alexandr Vondra, a former minister of foreign affairs for the Czech Republic, said in a telephone interview from Washington.
Expressing concerns about the growing weakness of NATO, the leaders said that Mr. Obama’s call at the recent NATO summit for “credible defense plans for all Alliance members was welcome, but not sufficient to allay fears about the Alliance’s defense readiness.”
As geostrategic interests from Afghanistan to Iran to North Korea have demanded Russian logistical or diplomatic assistance, anxiety has risen among the states known collectively as New Europe. Russia’s invasion of Georgia last August only intensified those fears, as much through the American response as through Russia’s own actions.
“The Georgia war exposed that there is a limit to what the United States will or can do to respond to military conflict in the neighborhood,” said Angela E. Stent, who served as the top Russia officer at the United States government’s National Intelligence Council until 2006 and now directs Russian studies at Georgetown University.
She added that the intentions of the administration toward its allies were not yet completely clear. “Until now, we’ve heard a Russian policy but not a policy for Russia’s neighborhood,” Ms. Stent said.
The economic crisis masked these tensions for a while, but the problems never really went away in these countries, where Russia is seen as “a revisionist power pursuing a 19th-century agenda with 21st-century tactics and methods,” according to the letter, and where any warming of relations between Washington and Moscow raises hackles. Mr. Obama’s trip to Moscow last week did nothing to reassure nervous allies in Eastern Europe.
“We all understand that a deal must come with Russia, but we do not believe that a deal can be made at the expense of the security interests of the countries of our region or of Georgia and Ukraine,” said Eugeniusz Smolar, senior fellow at the Center for International Relations, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group in Warsaw.
There is also a sense among many analysts and politicians in the region that the new administration does not understand Russia’s true nature — that friendly words from the Russian leadership when Mr. Obama is in Moscow are just words, while events like the murder of a Russian human rights campaigner on Wednesday showed the true state of Russia’s civil society.
The former leaders also warned about threats within their own countries and across Europe, driven by the economic crisis, which had provided “opportunities for the forces of nationalism, extremism, populism and anti-Semitism,” according to the letter.
“Domestically these countries used to be led by idealistic leaders. That’s still the case in some of these countries, but not all,” said Kadri Liik, director of the International Center for Defense Studies in Tallinn, Estonia, who was among the drafters of the letter.
Eastern Europe Is Uneasy Over U.S. Ties With Russia
By NICHOLAS KULISH
BERLIN — The deep concern among America’s Eastern European allies over improved relations between Russia and the United States spilled into the open on Thursday when 22 prominent figures, including Poland’s Lech Walesa and the Czech Republic’s Vaclav Havel, published an open letter to the Obama administration begging not to be forgotten.
In the letter, the leaders urged President Obama and his top policy makers to remember their interests as they negotiate with Russia and review plans for missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. Abandoning the missile defense plan or giving Russia too big a role in it could “undermine the credibility of the United States across the whole region,” the letter said.
The letter was published on the Web site of the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza and was signed by former presidents, like Mr. Walesa and Mr. Havel, as well as other former heads of state, top diplomats and intellectuals from a broad range of countries, including Hungary, Bulgaria and Estonia.
“Our region is one part of the world that Americans have largely stopped worrying about,” the letter said, even though “all is not well either in our region or in the trans-Atlantic relationship.”
While the letter covered a range of issues, including the dangers presented to the young democracies in the region by the economic crisis, Russia was clearly central to the worries expressed by the drafters.
“There is the fear among Central and Eastern Europeans that our interest in keeping the trans-Atlantic bond could be somehow sold out to the relationship with Russia,” Alexandr Vondra, a former minister of foreign affairs for the Czech Republic, said in a telephone interview from Washington.
Expressing concerns about the growing weakness of NATO, the leaders said that Mr. Obama’s call at the recent NATO summit for “credible defense plans for all Alliance members was welcome, but not sufficient to allay fears about the Alliance’s defense readiness.”
As geostrategic interests from Afghanistan to Iran to North Korea have demanded Russian logistical or diplomatic assistance, anxiety has risen among the states known collectively as New Europe. Russia’s invasion of Georgia last August only intensified those fears, as much through the American response as through Russia’s own actions.
“The Georgia war exposed that there is a limit to what the United States will or can do to respond to military conflict in the neighborhood,” said Angela E. Stent, who served as the top Russia officer at the United States government’s National Intelligence Council until 2006 and now directs Russian studies at Georgetown University.
She added that the intentions of the administration toward its allies were not yet completely clear. “Until now, we’ve heard a Russian policy but not a policy for Russia’s neighborhood,” Ms. Stent said.
The economic crisis masked these tensions for a while, but the problems never really went away in these countries, where Russia is seen as “a revisionist power pursuing a 19th-century agenda with 21st-century tactics and methods,” according to the letter, and where any warming of relations between Washington and Moscow raises hackles. Mr. Obama’s trip to Moscow last week did nothing to reassure nervous allies in Eastern Europe.
“We all understand that a deal must come with Russia, but we do not believe that a deal can be made at the expense of the security interests of the countries of our region or of Georgia and Ukraine,” said Eugeniusz Smolar, senior fellow at the Center for International Relations, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group in Warsaw.
There is also a sense among many analysts and politicians in the region that the new administration does not understand Russia’s true nature — that friendly words from the Russian leadership when Mr. Obama is in Moscow are just words, while events like the murder of a Russian human rights campaigner on Wednesday showed the true state of Russia’s civil society.
The former leaders also warned about threats within their own countries and across Europe, driven by the economic crisis, which had provided “opportunities for the forces of nationalism, extremism, populism and anti-Semitism,” according to the letter.
“Domestically these countries used to be led by idealistic leaders. That’s still the case in some of these countries, but not all,” said Kadri Liik, director of the International Center for Defense Studies in Tallinn, Estonia, who was among the drafters of the letter.