"New Europe" Longs for Bush as Obama Turns Focus to EU

Eastern European governments that ran political risks to support former President George W. Bush’s security policies are now concerned that his successor, Barack Obama, will backtrack on those regional commitments.Leaders in the Czech Republic, Poland and other former communist nations face a backlash at home over their support of Bush-era initiatives, including the proposed U.S. missile-defense system and troop participation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, concern is growing in eastern Europe that it will be put on “the back burner” as the Obama administration talks about working with Russia and western Europe on issues such as Iran, says Annette Heuser, executive director of the Bertelsmann Foundation, a policy group in Washington.Obama, 47, will have a chance to personally assuage concerns next month. After ignoring pleas from the east on his trip to Berlin, Paris and London as candidate last year, he will make his first visit there as president on April 5, Czech Premier Mirek Topolanek said yesterday. The president will travel to Prague to meet with European Union leaders, Topolanek said; the Czech Republic currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency.While it’s too early to say what the president’s overall foreign policy will be, “we can see that Obama wants better relations with Russia and that he’s skeptical about missile defense,” says Jaroslaw Walesa, a lawmaker in Poland’s ruling Citizens’ Platform party and the son of the country’s first post-communist president, Lech Walesa.
Eastern Europe’s Angst
Eastern Europe’s angst over U.S. priorities stands in stark contrast to just a few years ago, when Bush’s Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld lauded the former communist states of what he called “New Europe” for their willingness to commit troops to the U.S.-led war in Iraq in 2003, while “Old Europe” nations including Germany and France refused.Concern is particularly acute now because of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s recent muscle-flexing, including last year’s war in Georgia and this year’s natural-gas dispute with Ukraine.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski on Feb. 25 in Washington, where they confirmed an agreement that the U.S. would put Patriot missiles in Poland even if the missile-defense system-the U.S. portion of which would cost $37.3 billion-isn’t built....

By James M. Gomez and Katya Andrusz
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