European intellectuals and pro-American continental politicians are increasingly anxious that the United States is withdrawing from decades of trans-Atlantic comity — just as Russia is swaggering with renewed aggression.
From tourism to diplomacy, there is, to many Europeans, an ominous shift taking place.
American tourists have long been the butt of European exasperation, but we’ve also been the boon of the European tourism industry. Alas, the shriveling U.S. dollar has made travel to Europe prohibitively expensive for most Americans. American accents have apparently almost vanished from Europe’s cafes, cathedrals and public squares.
This puts both sides in a bad situation: American citizens cannot easily gain access to the cultural treasures and influences that gave rise to our own society, and are perhaps more easily inclined to look inward.
Meanwhile, on the continent we defended from Soviet expansionism — and in those parts of it where the Soviet tyrant was expelled only a generation ago — merchants and cafe operators must seek their custom elsewhere.
I’m told by friends in Europe that waiters and taxi drivers (and students) are now making a point of learning conversational Russian, so as to relate better to the visiting foreigners who have money to spend.
This is not a trivial thing. When a waiter in Wenceslas Square finds it more remunerative to speak to his customers in Russian than in English, something more than simple commerce is transpiring.
It is a street-level version of what pro-American Europeans fear most: The political and economic vacuum left by a distracted, impoverished United States will be filled by the belligerent oil-rich heir of the Soviet empire.
The situation is sufficiently unnerving that 22 European intellectuals and former policymakers have written an open letter to President Barack Obama, beseeching him to re-engage with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
Among the letter’s signatories are two heroes of communism’s fall: Vaclav Havel, the playwright and dissident who became president of the Czech Republic after the 1989 “Velvet Revolution,” and Lech Walesa, the co-founder of the Solidarity movement who served as president of Poland from 1990-1995.
It’s been 20 years since the Iron Curtain fell, and, as the authors write to Obama, “all is not well either in our region or in the trans-Atlantic relationship. Central and Eastern Europe is at a political crossroads and today there is a growing sense of nervousness in the region.”
NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that was the principal guarantor of free Europe’s liberty during the Cold War, “today seems weaker than when we joined it. In many of our countries, it is perceived as less and less relevant — and we feel it.”
The signatories speak of their dismay of the events of last summer, when the Atlantic Alliance — and Washington — stood by as Russian tanks rolled into NATO-linked Georgia.
“Russia is back as a revisionist power pursuing a 19th century agenda with 21st century tactics and methods,” the signatories warn, adding, “it uses overt and covert means of economic warfare, ranging from energy blockades and politically motivated investments to bribery and media manipulation in order to advance its interest and to challenge the trans-Atlantic orientation of Central and Eastern Europe.”
The letter to Obama is earnest and friendly, but there is no mistaking the tone of alarm.
Six months after Obama took office, there has still been no American ambassador announced (let alone appointed, confirmed, or sent), to most European capitals.
Currently we have no ambassador in Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Denmark, Italy, Serbia, Switzerland, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, or the Czech Republic. We do, it so happens, have an ambassador in Moscow.
Ambassadors are not, of course, as important as they once were, and the wheels of bureaucracy do grind slowly, and no doubt fine civil servants are carrying on in their absence — but it is hardly a situation designed to reassure Europeans who fear that Obama is, shall we say, not that into them.
“The United States is back,” announced Secretary of State Hilary Clinton when she landed in a foreign capital earlier this week. Unfortunately for pro-American Europeans, her plane had arrived in Bangkok; she was talking about Asia.
Examiner Columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of the the Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner column appears on Thursday.
