The American Presidential Election from a Czech Perspective - Foreign & Security Policy
Interview
The American Presidential Election from a Czech Perspective
An interview with Jan Jireš, director of the Prague Centre for Transatlantic Relations at the CEVRO Institute, for the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Prague, October 2012.
What significance is placed on the American presidential election in the Czech Republic and how is the campaign being followed?
Czech-American bilateral relations have been perceptibly subdued in recent years. Czech foreign policy continues to place importance on cooperation with the US, but for a long time now it has been unable to find a specific agenda that would be of interest to the Americans.
At the same time, the ramifications of the Obama administration’s decision in 2009 to cancel the planned construction of a radar base in the Czech Republic for an American missile-defence system persist in the thinking of Czech foreign policy elites. Even traditionally pro-American Czech politicians have become more restrained, more pragmatic and more sceptical vis-à-vis the US as a result of this experience. They no longer expect much from bilateral relations, and realise that today the Czech Republic is not important for American foreign policy.
Very few Czech Atlanticists expect that a possible Romney administration would bring a fundamental increase in the intensity and significance of Czech-American relations. Although at the beginning of his campaign Romney declared repeatedly that if victorious he would return to Bush’s missile-defence project and that Obama had damaged US relations with Central Europe, he has not returned to this issue. Moreover, his statements have elicited only a cool response from Czech Atlanticists, as it was all too evident that Romney was using the issue purely for his own ends. In addition, after the disappointment in 2009, they do not want to get burned a second time by latching onto a project whose future would be extremely uncertain and which would impugn the multilateral missile-defence policy that was in the meantime agreed within NATO.
As a result, no political camp in the Czech Republic has any great expectations for this year’s American presidential election, and there is basically no debate on this issue at the political level. This is also related to the fact that there is a general expectation in the Czech Republic that Obama will be re-elected, and that current American foreign policy will thus continue. Most Czech Atlanticists also realise that as a pragmatic businessman, Romney would probably not differ much from Obama in practice, and would reaffirm America’s strategic pivot to Asian affairs. The Czech media present the American election rather anecdotally, like a great spectacle containing a range of elements which seem bizarre from a European perspective.
How do the Czech media size up Barack Obama’s four-year tenure as president? How is this tenure perceived by the Czech public and by Czech politicians?
Obama’s popularity in the Czech Republic (and other Central European countries) has always been weaker than in Obamamania-obsessed Western Europe. This was caused not only by mistrust of Obama’s left-wing rhetoric on the Czech right and by Czech right-wingers’ affinity with the American Republicans, but also by the general “post-communist” scepticism toward the mass political craze of the sort that swept Germany in 2008.From the beginning, the Czech media (which are mostly right-wing) waited for Obama’s mistakes and with satisfaction subjected them to derisive criticism. The scant left-wing media expressed disappointment with what it viewed as the Obama administration’s insufficient radicalism and its rather centrist policies, in many areas continuing those of the Bush administration.
Even the centrist Czech media, which had approached Obama with sympathy, often pointed to his administration’s surprising inability to explain and defend its policies effectively, and its tendency toward repeated diplomatic missteps. In any event, there is no competent public debate in the Czech Republic evaluating Obama’s term in office. At best, the media merely refer to debates underway in the US.
What impact would a win for Mitt Romney have on the Czech political scene?
Probably a small one.Of course, it depends on what the foreign policy of a Romney administration would look like in practice. Romney initially presented himself as a moderate pragmatist, but had to toughen his rhetoric in many areas for the party primaries in order to make himself more appealing to ideologically conservative Republican voters. The question is whether after an election victory he would return to his moderate, managerial style.
While it is true that neo-conservatives have dominated his team of foreign-policy advisers hitherto, this tells us little of his future policy in practice. In a Romney administration, we would see whether the moderate wing of the Republican Party represented by Robert Zoellick would prevail, resulting in a foreign policy reminiscent of that of Bush’s second term, or whether the neo-conservatives would triumph, resulting in a return to a foreign policy similar to that of Bush’s first term.
It is unlikely, however, that even the latter scenario would lead to a significantly greater intensity of relations between the US and the Czech Republic, and a renewal of the relatively prominent role which the Czech Republic played from 2007 until 2009 in connection with the Bush missile-defence project. Rather, the inability to define a relevant common agenda, with which Czech-American bilateral relations have struggled in recent years, would persist. And even if a Romney administration were to decide for a return to the Bush missile-defence plan, the Czech reaction would likely be sceptical and dismissive – even on the part of the right-wing Atlanticists who, moreover, will probably no longer be in government at that time.
Let’s come back to the issue of a US radar base in the Czech Republic. As you mentioned, this issue have subsided and overall the US has not played as important a role in the Czech societal, media and political discourse. Does this mark a retreat from the idea of establishing a “special” relationship between the Czech Republic and the US? Is the Czech Republic now less pro-Atlantic than it was four years ago?
The answer to both questions is yes. One of the lessons which Czech Atlanticists have drawn from the Bush missile defence experience is to abandon the idea that it is possible and desirable to establish an exclusive bilateral relationship with the US reminiscent of the traditional British-American “special relationship” (which itself is more of a myth than a reality). Czech Atlanticists came to understand that the power disparity between the Czech Republic and the US was so great that the former’s ability to control the agenda of bilateral relations was extremely limited, and that joint projects (if politically controversial) would inevitably be at the mercy of domestic political developments in the US. In addition, it is clear that from 1989 to 2009 the Czech Republic played a greater role in American foreign policy than was commensurate with its actual position in international relations. This was a result of the specific circumstances of the two post-communist decades, including the extraordinary prestige which Václav Havel enjoyed in the US. What occurred after 2009 was more of a normalisation of Czech-American bilateral relations. Pro-Atlantic Czech elites initially rejected this idea, although now it seems they have come to accept it.
Second, it has also turned out that in the case of certain Czech right-wing elites this was not genuine Atlanticism, by which I mean the conviction that close cooperation with the US is an objective and persistent interest of Central Europeans, but rather an ideological or personal affinity with a specific American political camp. At the moment when a politician of a different political stripe entered the White House, these declaratory Atlanticists lost interest in cooperation.
Third, traditional pro-Atlantic politicians have been gradually disappearing from the Czech political scene, or their political clout has diminished. Some were elected to the European Parliament and essentially no longer participate in the domestic political debate, others lost influence due to domestic political factors and their own mistakes, and still others have left politics of their own accord. A symbol of these shifts is the death of Václav Havel, the most important Czech Atlanticist.
Fourth, it became clear in connection with negotiations on the Bush missile-defence project that Czech society has long been less pro-Atlantic than West Europeans and Americans had thought, and perhaps that - with the exception of the early 1990s – it always was. Over the past twenty years, Atlanticism was maintained in the Czech Republic by a narrow political, academic and media elite, whereas the Czech public was much more restrained with regard to cooperation with the US.
What issues does Czech society follow most in connection with the US, and why? Is it the economic crisis, foreign policy or perhaps American domestic reforms?
It is difficult to determine what issues Czech society follows in connection with the US, because there are no public opinion surveys relevant to this topic. At best, one can say which issues are followed by Czech elites and the media. The most-followed issues during the past four years are undoubtedly the financial crisis and economic stagnation in the US, and the Obama administration’s approach to addressing them. In 2009 and 2010, US foreign policy was followed as well – mainly the cancellation of the Bush missile-defence project and the American “reset” in relations with Russia.
Are there “American” examples which Czech politicians refer to or use as an argument for or against a particular Czech policy? For example, Obama’s energy policy?
Not really. As I mentioned earlier, there is basically no competent public debate on the Obama administration’s tenure and results. The only exception was and is a debate among Czech economists about the best way to address the financial, economic and debt crisis in the US and in Europe, i.e. a dispute over whether the Keynesian solution implemented by the Obama administration (flooding the economy with new money, government bailouts for banks and support for threatened industrial sectors) or a liberal solution based on reducing public debt through budgetary austerity is more effective. Most Czech economists have always tended toward the latter position, and thus have been rather critical of Obama’s economic policy.