It seems that the Obama-phoria has its limits, and they pass along the line between Western and Eastern Europe. The election of the 44^th president of the United States marked the expected new beginning for the transatlantic relations and the end of the anti-Americanism on the Old Continent. But it also marks a sobering up regarding the relations between the United States and the Eastern part of Europe.

The magic of the new inhabitant of the White House does not work that well in the East and the Obama-mania is substantially a Western European phenomenon, according to a study of the transatlantic attitudes conducted by German Marshall Fund*. The romance between "New Europe" and the United States, which lasted nearly two decades, ended with the mandate of the preceding U.S. president George W. Bush. And the new Eastern European members of the European Union and NATO, which for long were considered the most fervent Americanophiles, have now considerably gone colder towards Washington and its policies.

In fact, the popularity of Obama in the western part of the Old Continent is not a surprise, but its proportions are impressive, especially in countries like France, Germany and Holland, which loved to hate Bush. In Germany for instance the ratings of the new U.S. president have escalated straight to the stratosphere and aer a whole 80 percent higher than those of his predecessor. In fact, Obama is much more loved in Western Europe than in his own motherland.

One of the reasons why the situation in Eastern Europe is a bit different is that there Bush was not at all as hated, and logically now the "Obama effect" on the attitude towards the United States is not so powerful, said Jolt Neery, director of the "Trans-Atlantic Trends" research from the Washington office of German Marshall Fund. "Bush was more popular in the former socialist block and to some extent this explains the division East-West now," Neery said for Kapital. The main reason, however, is that the European southeast already feels left behind by the United States, he added. Vessela Tcherneva, director of the Sofia office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares the same opinion. "First, Eastern Europe felt much more comfortable during Bush's time because then it was important and its opinion was being heard. Now, with Obama, this is not the case at all. He is an absolutely non-European president. And second, Obama symbolizes those universal things which are important for the Western Europeans, such as climate change and global threats for instance, but which are not so interesting for the Eastern Europeans," she says.

The evident cooling in the relations was also why on July 22 public figures from the region (among whom the former presidents of Poland and the Czech Republic Lech Walensa and Vaclav Havel, as well as the former Estonian prime minister Mart Laar and Ivan Krastev from the Center for Liberal Strategies) turned to Obama with an open letter. In it they sadly affirmed that the "countries from Central and Eastern Europe are not in the heart of the American foreign policy any more" and they appeal to Washington to invest in the renaissance of the Trans-Atlantic relations. The feeling of being left behind and the lack of trust towards the capacity of Obama to deal with Russia will probably become stronger after the news from last week that the White House has aborted its plans to build anti-missile defenses in the Czech Republic and Poland. "For Prague and Warsaw these plans were a guarantee that the United States are taking care of them," Jolt Neary said. And after the governments of these two countries invested a considerable amount of political capital in order to defend the project before the oppositions and their electorates, they now are completely justified to feel disappointed and betrayed. They are also justified to worry about whether Obama is not backing up too much in front of Moscow, which thought that the anti-missile defenses would be pointed against Russia and which continues to see Eastern Europe as its zone of influence.

The "Russia" topic shows a complicated and multi-layered divide in Europe, which does not follow the cliché of Russophobia in the eastern parts and Russophilia in the western. The security of the Russian energy supply, the relationship of Moscow towards its neighbors, and the specificity of democracy in the Kremlin worry the Europeans in all parts of the continent, though with various degrees of importance. The nuances are mainly regarding the harshness of the policies and the level of pressure, which needs to be applied to Moscow.

Even in Bulgaria we notice a slight decline in the love towards Russia (even though Bulgaria remains the greatest supporter in the European Union), which can possibly be explained with the gas crisis at the beginning of the year. "This means that the Russophiles of the Bulgarians are not so irrational. But to a great extent the tendency is abstract - Bulgarians don't want to switch their energy security with conversations about things like democracy in Russia, but they also don't want to put pressure on Russia in order to improve energy security. In other words, as long as it is not compulsory to bother the Russians, we are concerned about democracy, but let's leave this concern private," Vessela Tcherneva says.

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someone

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"The Obama Deception." See it on youtube.

Tuesday 22 September 2009, 08:38

someone else

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Great Comment.

Obama is a Puppet.
People that believe that he will CHANGE anything are so disgusting as well.

Saturday 26 September 2009, 09:12

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