March 7, 2003	Friday	Muharram 3, 1424

PARIS: When President Chirac of France accused the countries of eastern Europe of being ‘infantile’ in signing up as faithful followers of Washington’s policy towards Iraq, he stirred a hornet’s net.

There was even a veiled threat in his remark that the aspirant new members of the European Union (EU) would have to watch their behaviour if they wished to be accepted into the club.

Chirac was clearly angry at a provocative Washington-inspired open letter, signed by the heads of government of Britain, Spain and Italy, together with leaders of five other states, three of them waiting to join the EU. So why were the leaders of such countries as Poland and Hungary so eager to detach themselves from the ‘old Europe’ (as US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld characterised France and Germany), which opposes President Bush’s bellicosity maintaining that a peaceful solution can be found to the present Iraq crisis? One might have expected countries that lived for so long under the shadow of Moscow — that centre of what Ronald Reagan described as an ‘evil empire’ — might be expected not to seek another superpower to rule over their destinies.

In fact, fear of American hegemony is not integrated into the attitudes of eastern Europe, as it is most notably in France, where incursions of American commerce and culture have long provoked profound resentment. During years of submission to Soviet dictate and whim, eastern Europe yearned for the freedoms and prosperity America seemed to represent so ideally. This yearning was fed by letters to families at home from millions of emigres who had settled in the United States throughout the last century, and by countless broadcasts from the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe during the Cold War years.

The vast emigration to the New World has long coloured attitudes and policies in two continents. Chicago has as many citizens of Polish origin as Warsaw and they create a bond that is felt strongly today.

For years, eastern Europe yearned for western prosperity. Today, the shops of the capital cities in the region are well stocked with luxury goods and fashions for those who can afford them, and there are McDonald’s hamburger bars aplenty for those who can’t.

Oddly, a pro-American stance is promoted by leaders, such as those of Poland, Romania and Hungary, who only recently emerged from the deposed Communist hierarchies. The party apparitchiks of yesterday have transformed themselves with great skill and cunning into the full-blooded Anglo-American style managers of the today’s nascent capitalist economies.

How odd still that the recent adherence of ex-Communists to Nato has come about just in a period when the United States is leaving Nato aside as it increasingly develops its world strategy unilaterally.

A Warsaw wit said last week of Aleksander Kwasniewski and Leszek Miller, the two ex-Communists at the head of the country: “The Polish President and Prime Minister are examples of red setters turning into lapdogs.”

The eastern European governments have signed up with varying degrees of enthusiasm to the present war plans of Washington: in Hungary, cooperation has gone as far as providing facilities for training compliant exile Iraqis to participate in the administration of a post-Saddam regime in Baghdad.

In fact, while most eastern European governments have lined up behind Bush over Iraq, public opinion polls in Poland and the Czech Republic show large majorities opposed to war. While the governments of Europe, east and west, are deeply divided over attitudes to America and, specifically now, how to deal with the crisis in Iraq, a majority of the populations in all parts of the continent want a peaceful resolution to the conflict. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.