Whose Trojan Horses?

Abstract

AMIDST THE PARALLEL DEBATES over transatlantic relations and further enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), policy-makers and analysts have looked to the countries of central and eastern Europe as reliably pro-American counterweights to the increasingly sceptical, independent-minded states further west on the continent. Representative commentaries have recently described NATO's new and prospective members as 'Europe's most determined Atlanticists,'(1) 'desperate [for] a relationship with the United States,'(2) and thus key to long-term plans for forging an 'American commonwealth' in Europe.(3)Expressions of sympathy and support following the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 notwithstanding, however, the hopes of some and the fears of others along these lines appear increasingly unwarranted. Rather than serve as reflexively supportive 'Trojan horses' for the United States within Euro-Atlantic institutions, the nations in the region are being driven by six underlying factors to accord precedence to relations with their leading partners in Western Europe. Managing the impact of this trend will present a major diplomatic challenge for all sides of this evolving triangle and the next great foreign policy test for central and eastern Europe.FOLLOW THE MONEYFirst, despite greater dynamism in the United States, central and east Europeans have grown ever more tightly linked economically over the past decade with their more immediate neighbours to the West. The European Union now provides roughly US$3 billion dollars annually in pre-accession assistance for its candidate partners in the region and almost another US$1 billion in humanitarian and redevelopment aid for the Balkans.(4) Individual EU members and other West European states provide additional funds. Meanwhile, though America's direct military expenditures in Europe remain sizeable, annual United States spending on traditional aid programmes for eastern Europe each of the past three years has hovered around US$700,00 and is set to decline sharply in 2003.(5)Trade and investment present a similar picture. Central and east European countries individually conduct between half and three-quarters of their trade with the European Union, with Germany alone making up roughly half the total. In contrast, less than five per cent of trade is with the United States.(6) The foreign investment gap is smaller and is magnified by the practice of some American companies of routing regional acquisitions through overseas subsidiaries for tax purposes. Nonetheless, among the three countries that account for the vast majority of outside investment in the region, the recorded American share reaches a high of 25 per cent in Hungary and only 15 per cent and six per cent, respectively, in Poland and the Czech Republic.(7)MY GENERATIONSecond, the oft-repeated triple rationale for NATO - 'keeping the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down' - may retain some underlying logic, but it is losing much of its emotional resonance for younger generations on both sides of the Atlantic.(8) As baby boomers and their offspring take over positions of social and political leadership across the former Soviet bloc, they generally lack their parents' and grandparents' sense of existential threat from predatory neighbours. Even if other Russian leaders were to diverge from President Vladimir Putin's recent 'strategic commitment' to closer co-operative ties with America and Europe, Russia will remain a severely weakened shadow of its former imperial self for many years to come. Meanwhile, despite its increasing willingness to assume a higher profile internationally, Germany will, for the foreseeable future, remain a thoroughly 'tamed power,' committed to peaceful, multilateral foreign policy.(9)Given those realities, even as younger cohorts of central and east Europeans continue to be drawn to American popular culture, fewer of them will view the United States as the indispensable defender of their national freedom. …