The east-west divide no longer exists, but it’s hardly surprising that Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller was one of the original eight European heads of government who signed this week’s call for unity with Washington on Iraq. Those leaders were clearly distancing themselves from Germany’s outright opposition and France’s ambiguous rejection of the Bush administration’s war plans. But the tensions within Europe transcend the Iraq debate. The war is only the latest litmus test of broader attitudes toward the United States. What really separates the continent into the new and old Europe, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld brashly put it recently, are the visceral emotions aroused by the superpower across the Atlantic, not Iraq per se. The first three new members of NATO–Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary–all signed onto the declaration that aligned them with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the more conservative leaders of Spain, Italy, Portugal and Denmark.
Nonetheless, a recent local public-opinion poll shows that 63 per cent of Poles oppose sending their own troops into Iraq, hardly a ringing endorsement of Bush’s war. But that’s less significant than the instinctive pro-American tilt of the “new Europeans.” A 2002 global survey by the Pew Research Center showed that 79 percent of Poles held a “favorable” view of the United States as compared to 63 percent of the French and 61 percent of Germans.
Those sentiments emanate from the cold war era when Ameryka, as the Poles call it, was a supersized symbol of hope. Of course it stood for wealth and success. If someone showed up in a fancy coat or a new car, his neighbor would say: “I see that Ameryka has opened up to you.” But, above all, Ameryka represented the forces of good versus the all-too-familiar forces of evil at home and across the Soviet border. When Ronald Reagan began speaking of “the evil empire,” Poles were ecstatic that finally an American president was echoing what they had been saying all along–and what most Western Europeans had never said. Little wonder that Czech dissident turned president Vaclav Havel, was particularly responsive to Bush’s appeal to confront “evil” early on.
The enduring lesson of the earlier struggles was that those who aspired to be free Europeans always needed to rely on the Americans, whether it was to liberate themselves from communism or fascism. Even with memories of the cold war receding, the “new Europe” is convinced that it still needs constant American involvement and support. “It is ingrained in the Polish foreign-policy psyche that the U.S. is absolutely vital to Europe,” says Nicholas Rey, a former American ambassador in Warsaw. “They see this as one of these times when you have to step up to make sure that the U.S. stays involved in Europe.”
The fact that ex-communists now hold top posts in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic hasn’t changed that underlying assumption. Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, who served in the last communist regime before its collapse in 1989, appears determined to convince the Bush administration that he can be the Tony Blair of his region, an equally dependable ally.
The French have always been far more ambivalent about Washington’s long reach, particularly in an era when it is the sole remaining superpower. The Germans, who no longer straddle the cold war divide, also appear less wedded to old alliances. Unlike Helmut Kohl, his resolutely pro-American predecessor who faced down the “peace” protesters in the 1980s missile debate, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder has openly played to anti-American sentiment to win votes. That doesn’t mean the “old Europe” is rushing into irrelevancy. Although currently in the economic doldrums, Germany remains the largest trading partner for its eastern neighbors, and France can still play the pivotal role politically in any international crisis–a position it has carefully staked out for itself. But Rumsfeld is right when he says “the center of gravity is shifting to the east.” And, paradoxically, further east also means further West.
