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Not Going Wobbly

A new poll (see chart) by the German Marshall Fund, a think-tank, shows that western Europe is now much more pro-American and pro-NATO than the ex-communist east. Until last year, the eastern countries swallowed their misgivings about George Bush, while the west of the continent writhed in distaste at what many saw as his administration’s […]

A new poll (see chart) by the German Marshall Fund, a think-tank, shows that western Europe is now much more pro-American and pro-NATO than the ex-communist east. Until last year, the eastern countries swallowed their misgivings about George Bush, while the west of the continent writhed in distaste at what many saw as his administration’s incompetence and heavy-handedness. ~The Economist

This is quite misleading. The difference between eastern and western European reactions to the Bush administration and its foreign policy decisions could never be found among the actual voters in either part of the continent. What was different in France, Germany and (later on) Spain was that their governments sooner or later represented public discontent with U.S. policies, while the governments of so-called “New
Europe” sided with Mr. Bush against their own peoples.

In fact, what this article reminds us is that approval of both Bush and Obama is higher in countries such as Poland and Romania than it is in Germany and France, and Obama’s approval has increased in all four countries. The relationship with eastern European countries only appears “wobbly,” as the article puts it, because the relationship with western Europe is much better than it was and has improved more than in the east. There was some real, sizeable minority support for Bush in eastern Europe, but in western Europe he had very few sympathizers. Obama has greater support in both regions, which hardly amounts to a weakening between the U.S. and eastern Europe. To the extent that Obama has met with any significant criticism from eastern Europe, such as the “open letter” from earlier this summer, it has tended to come from many of the same political leaders who aligned their governments with Washington over the Iraq war, which means that they are once again taking a position that a vast majority of their fellow citizens does not hold.

If it is true that there are some questions in the Marshall Fund survey that yield better “pro-American and pro-NATO” results in western Europe than in the east, this may have something to do with the differences in the fortunes of the two regions. Having felt the full impact of the financial crisis and having fewer resources to draw to cope, eastern European publics are probably not going to respond well to the demands of Atlanticism, especially when Atlanticism these days seems to be defined by a willingness to send soldiers to places far removed from the Euro-Atlantic zone.

Eastern Europeans may have been under the silly impression that NATO was primarily a defensive alliance designed for collective security in Europe and that “out-of-area operations” were not going to become the main raison d’etre for the Alliance in the future. This more skeptical turn in the east may also be a product of the weariness many small ex-communist states may be feeling after having dutifully backed every U.S. initiative abroad without seeing any tangible gains for themselves. As militarily irrelevant and politically weak states, they were embraced for the token support they could and did provide, and they have been taken for granted ever since because their contributions were always nominal and mattered to Washington only inasmuch as these provided diplomatic and political cover for its invasion of Iraq.

The article mentions the “open letter” and discusses Obama’s rethinking of the missile defense installations, but as I said when the letter was first published these installations have been very controversial in the proposed host countries. Czech and Polish voters are evenly split over the question, and in the past clear majorities have been opposed to accepting the installations. Viewed in this light, it is clear that scrapping the proposal would not necessarily have to be a “a climb-down to suit Russian interests,” but could be an acknowledgment of the politically divisive and controversial nature of the plan within the host countries. Instead of pushing ahead with a security policy decision that ignores the opinions of at least half of Poland and the Czech Republic, Washington could instead show some respect for the diversity of opinion in these countries and recognize that building “defense” installations against chimerical Iranian missiles is not worth aggravating and worsening relations with two NATO allies over the long-term. That would work to strengthen a relationship founded on some kind of real respect for our allies, but that would require distinguishing between what eastern European nations want and what their leaders want to do in their name.

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