The Washington Diplomat

“A country which has American troops on its soil just does not get invaded,” Sikorski has said. Polish President Lech Kaczynski also voiced concern that the new plan left Poland in a dangerous “gray zone” between Western Europe and the old Soviet sphere.

That’s why it is no surprise that shelving Bush’s plan — even though many Poles opposed it — has not only opened up old psychological wounds, but forced some to ask why Poland ever sent 2,500 troop to Iraq to help with the U.S.-led war effort, given that the country has yet to see anything tangible in return.

With this as a backdrop, Tauscher used a forum at the Washington-based Atlantic Council last month to drive home the message that Poland and the Czech Republic still have a great opportunity to be a partner — “plug and play” — in the reshaped missile defense plan.

“The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defense against these missiles, and we will continue working with them in many areas to broaden and deepen our bilateral relationships,” Tauscher insisted, assuring the audience that there was no attempt to “curry favor with the Russian government, or to secure some kind of tradeoff in negotiations for a START [Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty] follow-on treaty.”

But Tauscher admitted: “The rollout could have been handled better.”

Indeed, many say the Obama administration shot itself in the foot, especially if it was trying to subdue any lingering concerns Eastern Europe had about U.S.-Russia relations. Not only were Warsaw and Prague surprised by the move, having only received an overnight phone call from the president prior to his official press conference, the announcement came days before Obama met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in New York and fell on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland.

Daniel Kostoval, deputy chief of mission at the Czech Embassy in Washington, says the anger is now subsiding as people have had time to digest the details of the plan.

“Of course, somethings are not 100 percent perfect,” Kostoval told the crowd gathered at the Atlantic Council forum. “So the decision of the current U.S. government came in the way that sends out emotional waves in the Czech Republic. Nobody can deny this. But I think this emotional wave is over. We are eager and ready to participate in this new architecture.”

James M. Lindsay of the Council on Foreign Relations attributes the blowback to the messy rollout, partisan politics in Washington, and an overarching fear that Obama will not aggressively push missile defense.

Still, Lindsay told The Washington Diplomat that anyone who paid close attention to the presidential campaign and news reports over the summer should not have been surprised by the policy shift.

He pointed to an August report in the New York Times in which the administration was said to be mulling over adjustments to the missile defense plan so that it dealt with “what they see as an accelerating threat from shorter-range Iranian missiles.”

In the story, the spokesman for Poland’s foreign minister was also quoted as saying, “The missile defense system is now under review. The chances it will be in Poland are now 50-50.” Even prior to that, Poland had dragged its feet in the negotiations with the Bush administration for months to extract more military concessions from the United States before agreeing to host any system (and though the agreement with Bush had been signed, the Polish Parliament hadn’t gotten around to ratifying it).

Now, the world is watching to see if the United States is able to extract any concessions from Moscow. Despite repeated assurances, the jury is still out on whether the United States reworked the missile plan as part of its efforts to “push the reset button” with Russia. Many still wonder whether Russia will return the favor by cooperating on Iran, which so far it hasn’t. Some say Obama has given up a major leverage without getting anything in return. Others say reworking the missile defense has removed a needless irritant in the relationship — at least for now.

“I think the administration was wise to revamp the program without trying to negotiate something with the Russians or extract something from the Russians,” Lindsay said. “Russia’s outrage served as broader strategic ends and the missile defense plan became a convenient whipping boy that was used against the U.S. They were not going to make concessions for closing down the program because it serves a useful purpose for them,” he argued.

Whatever the case, history and the geopolitics of today suggest the long-term safety and security of countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic hinge on how Russia’s attempts to reassert itself as a world power evolve.

“I think what they want is a bigger say in world affairs,” the Czech Embassy’s Kostoval said. “They think they are being kept in a certain cave, not being let out.”

That foreboding specter of Russia’s intentions also colors the views of many Poles, who are struggling to find their new position in a post-Cold War environment where they both need their powerful neighbor yet can’t shake the memory of what that power is capable of.

“They say it’s a phobia, and it is a phobia, but it’s a phobia based on experience,” Zbigniew Lewicki, head of American Studies at Warsaw University, recently told the Los Angeles Times. “Nobody is worried that Russian soldiers will come marching now, but in 10 years, in 20 years? Russia wants to dominate the world as much as possible, and they have not given up on this part of the world. They still think it belongs to them.”

So whom can Poland turn to in the face of renewed Russian aggression? “It is time now for a mature look, stripped of illusions, at our possibilities and our future,” Foreign Minister Sikorski recently told Rzeczpospolita. “I think today we all know that if we are to look to somebody, we have to look to ourselves.”

Seth McLaughlin is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.