Jeremy Druker for ISN Security Watch

Asked recently if he had any regrets over his decision to support the U.S.-led war in Iraq, Polish President Aleksandar Kwasniewski replied, “Next question, please.” That non-answer, as well as other comments Kwasniewski has made of late, indicates just how hard it is to be a confirmed transatlanticist these days, especially in Poland. The release last week of Transatlantic Trends 2004, a survey of 11,000 U.S. and European citizens, has provided the numbers to prove that Kwasniewski is not the only one in Central and Eastern Europe who is sleeping poorly. The survey, conducted by the German Marshall Fund of the U.S. and the Turin-based Compagnia di San Paolo, confirmed what has been hard to miss: The deterioration in U.S. relations inspired by the Iraq war has continued to spiral downward, leaving Europe upset at what it views as Washington’s “unilateralism” and more assertive in its discontent. A full 76 percent of Europeans now express disapproval at current U.S. foreign policy, up 20 percentage points in the space of just two years. More Europeans would like the EU to become a superpower that will have the resources to act independently from the U.S. - though many still don’t want to raise defense allocations to achieve that objective. The divisions over the use of force remain very wide: While 54 percent of U.S. citizens agreed that the “best way to ensure peace is through military strength”, only 28 percent of the Europeans polled agreed. Many more European than U.S. citizens continue to support a UN mandate for military action (82 percent versus 58 percent). Those figures, and many more the survey provides, offer key insights into the transatlantic split, which has often focused on key Western allies such as France and Germany. Overall, however, there has been little discussion in foreign policy debates on how U.S. actions have affected attitudes in Central and Eastern Europe over the past few years. That task has been made a little easier this year by the addition of a second Central and Eastern European country - Slovakia - to the list of 10 European countries polled in the survey. The other is Poland.

A confusing rift

Arguments between key allies across the Atlantic continue to be disorienting for many in the post-communist region. Every day seems to bring new examples of how different NATO and the EU are today from the institutions that seemed so attractive in the early 1990s. The same is true of the transatlantic relationship, now so much in flux after many years of dependable cooperation. Being caught in the middle of EU and US interests has caused consternation in capital cities throughout post-communist Europe. Governments have been forced to choose sides - the Iraq war and the controversy over the International Criminal Court are the most prominent examples. These disputes have undoubtedly added to the disorientation natural for a small country such as Slovakia, which is now having to find its own way without the benefit of substantial foreign policy expertise or any hope of making an impact in the “great power” debates. The data bears that out: Among those surveyed, Slovakia had the highest percentage of people who want the country to stay out of world affairs (25 percent) and the lowest percentage of those who think it best to play an active role (59 percent). Slovakia joined NATO only this year, but only 47 percent of its population believe the alliance is important for the nation’s security, and just 50 percent would support using military force to defend a NATO ally. Poles also seem to be caught somewhere in the middle, not only in the transatlantic relationship, but also in the role they wish to play in the world. Poland’s leaders want to carve out a role for Poland in Europe commensurate to the country’s size and economic potential. Yet average Poles seem unwilling to pay the price for an increased international role. Their widespread opposition to the war in Iraq (75 percent in the GMF survey, close to figures reported over the past few months in Poland) might be explained away as opposition to a controversial war that a great many people around the world condemn. But only 24 percent - the lowest percentage by far of the countries polled - approve of the deployment of Polish troops in Afghanistan, the site of a conflict seen internationally as much more justified.

‘New’ Europe, just as varied as ‘Old’ Europe

The notion of a united “New” Europe is just as unfounded as the notion of a united “Old” Europe - showing once again how inaccurate were the attempts by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to create these distinctions. Just as French and German attitudes toward the use of force and the future of Europe remain far apart, so do attitudes in Central and Eastern Europe differ, sometimes dramatically. In some areas, Poles and Slovaks display vastly different opinions. While 55 percent of Slovaks feel it is justified to bypass the UN when the vital interests of their country are involved, only 46 percent of Poles feel the same way. While 44 percent of Poles - the highest percentage in any of the countries surveyed - felt the U.S. and Europe should move closer together, Slovaks were among the greatest proponents of the EU and U.S. taking a more independent approach. Such differences should hardly be surprising given - among other things - the historical experiences and sizes of the two countries, but they do call into question Kwasniewski’s assertion that “the chances that the EU will have a more transatlantic policy at 25 countries will be much stronger than at 15.” Rumsfeld and other policymakers also erred if they believed the new members of NATO and the EU would be strong boosters of US policy, acting as counterweight to Europe’s veterans. The survey emphasized that the US cannot count on Central Europeans to be forever grateful to the U.S. for helping end the Cold War and then providing massive assistance in the transition to democracy and free market economies.

‘Thermometer’ of warm feelings

For example, on the survey’s “thermometer”, which shows the warmth of a nation’s feelings toward the United States, Slovakia comes in at 50 degrees - cooler than the European average (55 degrees) and cooler even than feelings among the supposed U.S. detractors, the French and the Germans. A full 68 percent of the Slovaks polled said that strong U.S. leadership was either somewhat or very undesirable. In a cogent analysis of the survey’s findings, Slovakia’s Institute for Public Affairs (IVO) reported that earlier public opinion polls had shown that a majority of respondents did not view the U.S. negatively, but rather as a blank slate” - a country that has no relation to their nation’s history.” According to sociologist Olga Gyarfasova - IVO’s program director, who coordinated the Slovak participation in the Transatlantic Trends project - the role of the U.S. during the Cold War and even during World War II is still not widely recognized, a lasting legacy of 40 years of communist propaganda. “The U.S. Embassy is doing a lot,” she says, “but more has to be done by the media and by educators to bring the issue more into the public debate.” “The post-communist mentality definitely tends to simplify, to see the world in black-and-white terms, conspiracy terms,” says Petr Lebeda, the director of Glopolis - the Prague Global Policy Institute. “There is certainly a strong distrust of big powers and their power games, and, of course, people are still less willing here to find their own information and more ready to join opinions that are already available, often polarized ones.” As examples contributing toward the animosity against the U.S. in Central Europe, he cited visa issues, the imposition of steel tariffs, the International Criminal Court controversy, and, especially in the Czech Republic, pressure to buy U.S. fighter planes (though the EU has also been guilty of heavy-handed tactics).

Rumsfeld’s political mistake

Gyarfasova also explains that Europeans - and Slovaks in particular - tend to put more stock in institutions or states that they believe can guarantee their economic livelihood, rather than their security in the military sense. “Most Slovaks feel secure in terms of ‘external threats’,” she says. “A sensitivity toward so-called post-modern threats like global terrorism has been emerging only in the past few years. In addition, the general public often has very naive and unqualified images about who would help us in the case of an emergency, and the capability of the EU is overestimated.” Poland, often lauded as a staunch U.S. ally, appeared third on the list of U.S. friends in the survey, behind only Britain and Italy. But even Poland may not be a sure bet in the future: Its figure has fallen by five percentage points in the last year, while most other European countries have shown little or no drop, despite continuing unrest in Iraq. The loss of Polish soldiers in the war has been a factor, as well as the US refusal to lift visa restrictions for its ally and the Polish failure to win more contracts for the reconstruction for Iraq. Even Kwasniewski has apparently had enough. In an interview with the International Herald Tribune earlier this month, he warned that it would be a mistake for Americans to adopt “the ideas of the neoconservatives of isolationism, to have full dominance in the world and to play a divide-and-rule policy.” And earlier this week, in an interview with the Swiss newspaper NZZ am Sonntag, he fanned the fire further, saying “From the beginning I warned President Bush against a policy of American dominance in Iraq and in the world.” He also labeled Rumsfeld’s division of a “new” and “old” Europe as a “political mistake”. “The situation is not yet at the ‘breaking point’, but it is coming under strain,” says Aleks Szczerbiak, a Polish expert and senior lecturer in Contemporary European Studies at the University of Sussex. “Most Poles still see the U.S. as the only really credible guarantor of hard security and the EU is not - yet - seen as being anywhere near a credible alternative in this respect. So while Poles are getting impatient that there is no payoff for their controversial support for the U.S. in Iraq, there is a long way to go before this critically undermines the relationship.” Still, while Poles remain largely pro-U.S. and the most supportive of bringing the two “sides” closer together, they are also the greatest backers of creating a more powerful EU to cooperate more effectively with the U.S. They also reacted most positively to the idea that Europe should become more of a military power in order to defend its interests without the U.S. “Europe has the full right to have its own foreign and security policy,” said Kwasniewski. “This policy means that it is necessary to spend more money to solve Europe’s problems, not to wait for the Americans in the Balkans, or in Moldova, or for bringing democracy to Belarus. This is our task.”

Elite versus popular mood

Politicians throughout Central Europe continue to support U.S. foreign policy in the face of widespread disapproval among the general population. “In that respect, the Slovak government is doing very well,” says Gyarfasova. “Despite strong objections to the presence of troops in Iraq - from the public, but also the political opposition - the government has stuck to its commitment and can be seen as a reliable ally. Here we are witnessing a very good example of the political elite’s leadership and sense of responsibility not being led by the public mood.” But most analysts doubt that such a course can be sustained in the long term, in Slovakia or elsewhere. In a forthcoming book, The “Easternization” of Europe’s Security Policy, Tomas Valasek, director of the Brussels office of the Center for Defense Information, takes the case of Smer, an opposition party in Slovakia. Smer leads opinion polls and could head a coalition after elections in 2006. Spurred on by the killing of three soldiers in Iraq, the party has adopted an increasingly anti-U.S. line and during recent European Parliament elections openly appealed to the EU to counter “U.S. hegemony”. As Valasek writes, “The swiftness with which Smer disposed of 15 years of Slovak foreign policy suggests that none of the V4 [Visegrad] countries, given the right circumstances, is inherently immune to a repeat of the German scenario [of US foreign policy becoming a major election issue] […] Without a doubt, Iraq is also wreaking havoc with the traditional preference for a U.S.-centric European security model […] Assuming continued difficulties in Iraq, opposition parties will at some point seek to fully explore the brewing discontent.”

Learning to dance on the EU parquet

It is therefore a open question how long politicians can hold their line, though the transatlantic survey suggests it may still be some time. Foreign policy and defense issues have traditionally played little role in post-communist Europe, or, for that matter, in Europe as a whole. In the survey, only seven percent of Europeans said the way a party handled foreign and defense policy was the most important issue for them at election time - compared to 17 percent in the U.S. In Slovakia and Poland the figures were similarly low, with the latter the lowest in all of the countries surveyed: four percent. That helps explain how Poland’s leaders have managed to fend off massive disapproval of the country’s participation in Iraq. “They are able to ‘get away with it’ because of the lack of political salience of this issue,” says Szczerbiak. “There were majorities against the Iraq war in all these countries, even Poland, but nothing like the depth of public feeling elsewhere, just tiny demonstrations compared to those in the West. So political leaders did not have to contend with it.” Finally, on a more positive note, survey data indicates that the warm feelings that most Europeans have for the U.S. have not cooled over the past year. And 65 percent of Europeans actually believe the U.S. and Europe are closer than or the same as they have been in recent years. That suggests that a change in foreign policy direction and style may be able to draw on a bedrock of shared values and mutual admiration to reinvigorate transatlantic relations. A crucial question for Central Europe will be how long the current troubles last - at a time when young countries such as Slovakia and potential powerhouses like Poland are forming world views that may become ingrained for generations. And also whether the region’s political leaders - relative neophytes to such debates and attempting their own precarious balancing act with public opinion - can play a major role. “There was a lot of hope that the ‘New Europe’ would contribute to repairing the rift,” says Gyarfasova. “But until now the newcomers have been too busy to adopt to the new situation - they are still learning how to ‘dance on the EU parquet’ and lack a clear vision.”

Jeremy Druker is the editor in chief of Transitions Online (www.tol.cz), an Internet newsmagazine covering Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the former Soviet Union. This article is an expanded version of a piece that appeared earlier on TOL.