precisely for that reason that Central Europeans, anxious to preserve
it, started to compete for the title of the most devoted ally of the
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United States. Both attitudes to the United States, thus, have to do
with different responses to the post–Cold War realignments in Europe
and post-9/11 assertion of American power on the international
scene. The contrasting perceptions of America in Western and East-
Central Europe can usefully be analyzed by focusing on the three
main pillars not of wisdom, but of anti-Americanism in France with its
three facets: fear (of power), resentment (of the American economic
model and contempt (of mass culture)):8
1. Opposing attitudes toward the centrality of American power in
the post–Cold War world. The differences over the future of
NATO and its American leadership are among the extensions
of that divide.
2. Contrasting attitudes toward the U.S.-led globalization drive and
the relevance in that context of an “Anglo-Saxon” (i.e., free market)
socioeconomic model seen as a threat to the continental European
welfare state in Western Europe and as an inspiration for the
dismantling of the legacy of communist étatisme, East of the Elbe.
3. There are also different responses to the penetration of American
mass culture and lifestyles and its implications for the national (or
European) identity.
American “Hyperpower” or the
“Indispensable Nation?”
After the end of the Cold War, small is beautiful, big is powerful, and
medium size has become uncomfortable. That certainly seems to be
the case of France, which has lost some of the room for maneuver it
used to enjoy during the Cold War era. France found itself at odds
with the “unipolar moment” as Charles Krauthamer described it, and
pleaded, under Mitterrand as under Chirac, for a multipolar world.
The Iraqi crisis simply accentuated a trend that was already well estab-
lished. As an illustration, one can turn to the leaders (and more
broadly to the editorial policy) of Le Monde. Its editor, Jean-Marie
Colombani, the author of the famous “We are all Americans” in
the immediate aftermath of 9/11, had earlier written a front-page
piece entitled “Arrogances américaines”9 where he defined some of
the main features of French resentment of American power. First,
“What was supposed to be a ‘new international’ order is nothing but
a hegemony, the claim to a monopoly, that of the United States.”
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97
Second, American foreign policy, a mix of power and parochialism,
“should avoid running the planet according to the whims of this or
that lobby or the moods of Senator Helms.”10 Third, unilateralism and
the reliance on force as opposed to negotiation and the legitimacy
of the international community. The thought that the latter was effec-
tive sometimes thanks to the threat of the former (as the Balkan wars
demonstrated) did not cross the mind of the director of France’s leading
newspaper.
The important thing here, however, is that the basic arguments
against American unilateralism and the quest in the UN and in the
E.U. of counterweights to it, pre-dates 9/11 and the Bush adminis-
tration. It has gradually developed a European dimension through the
E.U. countries’ involvement in a number of multilateral efforts opposed
by the United States. Among the most widely publicized were: the
signing in December 1977 in Ottawa of the landmine treaty (opposed
by the United States but also Russia and China), the Kyoto environ-
mental treaty on the measures against global warming in 1998, the
creation of an International Criminal Court, which is supported by all
E.U. countries and opposed by the United States, demanding exemp-
tions from prosecution for U.S. nationals.
opposition to the concept of a preventive war without the legitimacy
of a UN mandate is to be understood in terms of the cumulative effect
of accumulated grievances on both sides. The German chancellor’s
refusal to participate in any “adventure” (intervention in Iraq) and to
write any checks to pay for it, and the European public’s opposition
to the war only emboldened the French to move one notch higher
from Hubert Védrine’s formula “amis, alliés, mais pas alignés.”11 The
Franco-German partnership in opposing U.S. policy on Iraq seemed
to give substance to the emergence of a “Euro-Gaullist” posture, an
attempt to see Europe as a counterweight to U.S. power and leader-
ship in matters of foreign and security policy. That is precisely where
the East European newcomers to the Atlantic alliance parted ways with
France and Germany.
Why are the Central Europeans “Pro-American?”
If the centrality of American power is a concern to “old Europeans” in
France and Germany, it certainly is not seen as a problem by East-
Central Europeans. They (particularly the Poles) consider that it was
Ronald Reagan’s confrontation with the “evil empire,” rather than
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West European emphasis on détente and Ostpolitik that contributed
most to the demise of the Soviet system. The Cold War years have
reinforced their commitment to the transatlantic bond, which, in con-
trast, is being eroded in West European perceptions since 1990. They
feel European because they belong to the West,12 while the French or
the Germans belong to the West because they are Europeans. The two
Europes are out of sync in their attitudes toward the implications
of the end of the Cold War. In West European eyes, the Eastern
Americanophilia is, at best, an anachronism. In East-Central Europe,
Franco-German challenge to American leadership is seen as a reckless
undermining of their security.
They closely associate their security with NATO and the U.S. pres-
ence on the continent. The French may be concerned about a unipolar
world; the East Europeans have no nostalgia for a bipolar one. It
stems from a certain reading of history that could be summarized as
follows: after World War I, the United States had left the old conti-
nent, which did not bode well for Europe, particularly its Eastern
part. After World War II, the United States stayed on, which allowed
at least half of Europe to remain free and prepare for the emancipation
of the Eastern part of the continent. In this way the United States can
be seen as protecting Europe against the demons of its past.13 In East-
Central Europe, there is a widespread distrust of collective security
and of pacifism identified since Munich with the appeasement of dic-
tators. Paris would like to restrain American power, while Budapest,
Prague, or Warsaw would point out that the UN failed to restrain
anything in 1956, 1968, or 1981, let alone in Afghanistan or Bosnia.
Among the three
main modes of management of the international sys-
tem (hegemony, collective security/multilateralism, and balance of
power), the West Europeans nowadays tend to prefer the second
while the East Europeans do not mind the first, so long as it is “benev-
olent.” As for “balancing” American power with a Paris–Berlin–
Moscow diplomatic axis, it is enough to raise Poland’s fears of a
“new Rappallo.”
Beyond the lessons of history, there are the lessons from the
Balkans. The Common Foreign and Security Policy of the E.U. was
nowhere to be seen in the 1990s and it was eventually a U.S.-led
military intervention under a NATO umbrella that put an end to ethnic
cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo. NATO, therefore, remains the only
security guarantee in the eyes of the former Eastern bloc newcomers
because it involves U.S. “hard security” capability. The E.U. is seen as
a “soft security” institution; definitely not a substitute for American
power. This act of faith is repeated all the more loudly as doubts have
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99
appeared in recent years over the American commitment to NATO.
On the eve of its first enlargement in 1999 (Poland, Hungary, the
Czech Republic), there were three main views about the future of the
Alliance. The U.S. approach was summed up by the formula “out
of area or out of business.” The French priority was to build a
“European Defense Identity.” The Central Europeans wanted to
“end the uncertainty”14 about their geopolitical status, and would not
have minded sticking to the old, well-tried formula of the first secretary
general of NATO, who defined its purpose as “to keep the Americans
in, the Russians out and the Germans down.” Hence, the great anxi-
ety on the part of the new members to see, after 9/11, the erosion of
American interest in the Atlantic alliance. Partnership with Putin’s
Russia and coalitions of the willing became Washington’s priority in
the “war on terrorism.” There, the French and other West Europeans
saw a confirmation of the declining relevance of the Alliance. Fearing
this and a strategic downgrading of East-Central Europe, the new-
comers to NATO tried to compensate by an even closer alignment
with the positions of the United States. That meant refitting NATO
for the new U.S. strategic doctrine: “out of area” now meant “out of
Europe,”15 to follow America in the Middle-East in order to preserve
its involvement in Middle Europe.
In the contest for the most loyal ally of Washington—at the very
moment when old Europe marked its distance—Poland was certainly
difficult to beat. The Iraqi crisis provided the Bush loyalty test, which
the French and Germans failed in contrast to the sometimes-overzealous
East Europeans. When President Kwasniewski said, “If it is
President Bush’s vision, it is mine”16 one could not help thinking that
old habits of obedience die hard. Interestingly, the most committed to
support the American leadership and the war in Iraq were the veterans
of Soviet bloc communism such as Poland’s premier, Leszek Miller
and Romania’s president, Ion Illiescu.17 Interestingly enough, both
(and their parties in Parliament) had opposed the U.S.-led interven-
tion in Kosovo in the spring of 1999. They are now in office and, in
the contest between old Europe and America, they chose, quite prag-
matically, the most powerful. This provides a double advantage: the
completion of the political laundering of the ex-communists as
respectable democrats now receiving from Washington the title of the
most trusted allies on one hand, and the prospect (at least the hope)
of more tangible dividends on the other. Warsaw hopes that it might
entice the Americans to move their military bases from ungrateful
Germany to welcoming Poland. Romania and Bulgaria have provided
their military bases on the Black Sea as a substitute for the defection
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of Turkey18 and hope that they will become permanent. Whether or
not the idea of the substitution of Germany and Turkey, the two
major post-war pivot of U.S. political and military presence in
Europe, with Poland and Romania is a wise move from the U.S. point
of view, it certainly is seen as a major strategic asset in Warsaw and
Bucharest.
Indeed, throughout the 1990s, Poland’s policy has been gradually
to “swing firmly into Washington’s orbit.”19 The Polish foreign
minister defined the goal as “strengthening Poland’s position as the
United States principal partner in the region and a major player in
Europe as well. It is in our national interest to ensure continued U.S.
presence in Europe and commitment to its affairs.”20 Historically,
Poland’s geopolitical predicament was between Russia and Germany.
Now it is between the United States and Europe. It hopes, after a long
eclipse, to have returned to the fore of the European political scene
using its American connection (including an occupation zone in Iraq)
as a leverage within the E.U. It is just possible that Poland has not
fully measured the extent to which it was also being used by the
United States not just for the purpose of “cherry picking” among
Europeans but also explicitly for the purpose of dilution or even
“disaggregation” of the European Union.21 Such an outcome would,
of course, be disastrous for Poland as for the other Central Europeans
now joining the E.U. in the hope that it would do for them in terms
of economic modernization, what it has so successfully done for
Southern Europe in the previous two decades. In siding with the
United States, the Central Europeans give primacy to what they see
as a strategic priority but certainly not their long-term economic
interests.
Beyond the foreign policy realignments of newly sovereign states
and pure pragmatism of ex-communist politicians, there is another
distinct brand of Americanophilia—that of the former dissident intel-
lectuals. It recognizes America’s “democratic mission” in bringing
down dictatorships: just as the United States contributed to the down-
fall of communism, it can today contribute to that of other brands of
totalitarianism.
In the 1980s, Timothy Garton Ash had in an essay defined Central
Europe’s new politics through three leading intellectual figures involved
in the dissident movement: Vaclav Havel in the Czech Republic, Adam
Michnik in Poland, and György Konrad in Hungary. Interestingly, the
three adepts of nonviolent change in Central Europe have supported
the American war in Iraq in the name of democratic “regime change.”
Havel signed the “letter of the eight” on his last day in office,22
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101
Michnik joined the Washington-based Committee to Liberate Iraq,
Konrad wrote in an article entitled “Why I support the war”: “The
bringing down of a bloody tyrant can only
be sympathetic to former
dissidents.”23 In reply to a German critic who saw in the three
ex-dissident intellectuals’ support for the war the latest illustration of
the “betrayal of the intellectuals” (la trahison des clercs, to use Julien
Benda’s phrase), Michnik pleaded for the support of the United States
as politically and morally justified. In substance, a new totalitarian
threat had replaced Eastern communism—the Islamic fundamentalist
terror.24 Milan Simecka, a former Slovak dissident, now editor of the
daily SME in Bratislava, called America a “dissident power” given its
readiness to assert democratic values even alone against the rest of the
world.25 Veton Suroi, editor of Koha Ditore in Prishtina, Kosovo,
drew a parallel between the way the United States was ready to use
force against Milosevic and the military intervention that brought
down Saddam’s dictatorship.26 For the former dissidents, America
remains the “indispensable nation” because it has kept alive its demo-
cratic mission in the post–Cold War world. They do not seem to be
deterred in their judgment by the shift from the concept of humani-
tarian intervention of the 1990s to the logic of power that pre-
vailed after 9/11, from what Samantha Power called “liberalism
without power” of the Clinton era to “power without liberalism” under
George Bush.27
The fact that governments and intellectual elites have, to a large
extent, provided support for the assertion of American power on the
international scene should, however, be qualified by the diversity of
views (the Soviet bloc has not been replaced by an American bloc) and
by the great divide between elites and public opinion. This has been
confirmed by a series of independent public opinion surveys, which
show that East European candidate countries shared with the citizens
of the member states a considerable reluctance to an American inter-
vention in Iraq.28 Interestingly, their reluctance was even greater than
that of E.U. member in the case Weapons of Mass Destruction were
found in Iraq and a UN resolution was reached.29
These data concerning the U.S. war in Iraq should be read against
the background of other surveys conducted in 2002 and 2003 by