Obama's Eastern European Problem
President Barack Obama's scrapping of missile defense programs in the Czech Republic and Poland last week may not have been intended to downgrade relations with these NATO allies. The panic the move generated in Central and Eastern Europe is only partly of the administration's making, but it suggests that it must take these countries' security concerns much more seriously than it appears to do.
In one sense, the Obama administration has been made a hostage to mistakes made by its predecessor and by its western European allies. The Bush administration's error was to seek to kill two birds with one stone: beefing up defenses against a future Iranian missile threat, and at the same time, soothing the growing security concerns of Central and Eastern European states. The problem, of course, is that these security concerns had little to do with Iranian missiles. They were caused by the relentless efforts by Vladimir Putin's Russia to restore a sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and thereby to limit the sovereignty of the region's states, including that of the new members of the EU and NATO. Yet the Bush administration never openly recognized this problem, pointing instead at Iran when it knew full well what the real sources of concern in Eastern Europe were.
These concerns are not imagined or exaggerated. Since Putin's second presidential term began in 2004, Russia has selectively applied a host of instruments of pressure against Eastern Europe that has raised the temperature in the region to levels unseen in decades. Moscow's primary tool has been energy: whereas western Europeans continuously praise Russia as a reliable energy supplier, every single former Soviet republic has been the victim of politically motivated supply cuts. Moreover, to ensure that it can freeze Eastern European countries in the future without harming relations to European friends like Germany and Italy, Moscow is pushing exorbitantly expensive pipelines across the Baltic and Black seas - known as Nord Stream and South Stream, respectively - that would circumvent its former dominions.
Meanwhile, Russian state-controlled firms have used muscle, pressure and corruption to acquire downstream infrastructure across Central and Eastern Europe. The obscure Kremlin-controlled Surgutneftegaz' attempt at a hostile takeover of Hungary's MOL is only the most recent example.
Russian pressure has gone much further, involving subversion, the use of force and threat thereof. The pointing of missiles at Poland is one example; the Kremlin-orchestrated cyber-attack against Estonia in 2007 is another. Moscow has made a practice of constant intervention in Ukraine's domestic affairs, and now openly calls Ukraine's right to statehood into question. As if all this was not enough, Moscow's long-planned and premeditated invasion of Georgia last August convinced the entire region that their security environment was at the very least precarious. Since then, Moscow has also publicly called for the renegotiation of Europe's security structure.
In the face of these aggressive moves, Central and Eastern European countries feel increasingly isolated, despite their membership of the EU and NATO. Simply put, the problem is that the behavior of their Western European allies has led them to question the validity of NATO's Article 5. German policies in particular have caused alarm as Berlin and Moscow have grown increasingly close. Gerhard Schröder, Germany's former Chancellor turned Gazprom executive, may no longer be in office; but his loyal deputy, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, remains at the helm of German foreign policy. And on issue after issue, Berlin's policies align more closely with Moscow than with its NATO allies. To take just one example, this March Berlin vetoed the allocation of EU funds to the Nabucco pipeline project, the major prospective alternative supplier of natural gas to Europe not controlled by Russia. Germany's move paid no attention to the project's status as an official priority of the EU Commission, and only Romania's threat to veto the entire EU funding package restored funds to the Nabucco project. Germany also led opposition in NATO to granting even an action plan for Georgian and Ukrainian membership, and spearheaded Europe's meek reaction to Russia's invasion of Georgia.
In this situation, Poles and Lithuanians could be forgiven for wondering whether Germany would block moves to defend Poland in case of a Russian attack.
While most of the problems are not its own doing, the Obama administration is not without fault. Only this July, two dozen leading politicians and thinkers from the region sent Obama an open letter, stressing their concerns with diminished American commitment to Eastern Europe. Had the administration taken these concerns seriously, it would have acted in a way that calmed rather than exacerbated the region's growing sense of insecurity.
It is not too late, of course. The administration must now act rapidly to reassure Central and Eastern European states of America's commitment to their security. Simply relying on their NATO membership and acting if there was no problem will not do. The Administration could pursue several steps at little cost.
First, America needs to act to restore the region's confidence in NATO. Aside from placing American forces in one or several countries of the region, it needs to much more publicly affirm the importance of NATO in American foreign policy - a move consistent with Obama's multilateral approach. It needs to show, in word and in action, that it believes in the equality of all NATO members irrespective of size and location.
Second, as the Clinton administration did, the current administration needs to be considerably more active in promoting the building of alternative energy supplies to Europe, such as the Nabucco project. Providing Eximbank support for such projects is one concrete route to go.
Third, America's commitment to the security and democratic development of Ukraine and Georgia must be followed up by serious action. Filling the recently signed strategic partnership agreements with these countries with content will go a long way toward this goal. Likewise, the administration could examine much more seriously the role of Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan in the western supply route to Afghanistan, one that is dependent neither on Pakistan nor on Russia.
As proven by their commitment of troops to both Iraq and Afghanistan, Eastern European countries are among America's most reliable allies. Taking them for granted is no way to ensure that remains the case.
