Barack Obama deliver a speech at the Prague Castle

Today, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered in Prague his  first major speech of his foreign policy. Speaking in front of a crowd of over ten thousand people, he referred to the founder and the first President of independent Czechoslovakia, Tomáš G. Masaryk, and to important events that shaped European and Czech history of the 20th century.

He also laid out a framework for his foreign policy, in a bold and ambitious call for a ban on nuclear weapon tests, strenghtening of the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, and a guarantee of every nation’s right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Using Prague as the setting to engage the world’s nuclear nations, Obama’s speech is symbolic on several levels. Although the country itself never acquired nuclear weapons, Czechoslovakia was a major supplier of uranium for Soviet military during the Cold War. Thousands of its citizens were imprisoned, tortured and used as slaves in inhuman conditions of its uranium mines in Jáchymov, Příbram, and other uranium mining centres. And finally, in the year that marks 20th anniversary of the unravelling of the Communist rule in Eastern Europe, 10th anniversary of Czech Repubic’s admission to NATO, and the first-ever turn of Czech Republic to hold the EU presidency, it signals that Czech Republic, after centuries of foreign or oppressive rule, is finally firmly in a community of free nations that, despite their occasional differences, treat each other as partners in a peaceful co-operation. (more…)

Communism and Nazism in European History

One of the many complaints Czech & Slovak Canadians have about the post-communist era in their old homelands is that the new governments have not been effective in dealing with the countries’ communist past.

Almost twenty years after the Velvet Revolution, many of the former ardent communists are still in their posts in the judiciary, in the police, in the military. Many have converted into the new capitalists, “tunneling” billions of Czech korunas into Swiss bank accounts or offshore jurisdictions. School history textbooks are lacking any serious description, nevermind analysis, of the communist era, and the current economic environment leaves many wondering if the communist state, with its centrally planned economy, was not a better alternative to the Eastern European version of laissez-faire capitalism. Those responsible for the worst crimes against humanity in the 1950s are either dead, very old, and it’s difficult to bring them to justice. Those responsible for the less extreme but still lawless oppression in 1970s have used their resources to successfully evade prosecution. The restitution program designed to return properties confiscated by the communist regime is considered by many as bureaucratic and ineffective. (more…)

Funny I should mention nationalism and protectionism just a few days ago. Yesterday’s summit of EU leader in Brussels reveal two worrisome developments: that the recession in Europe threatens to be more severe than in United States, and that the Western Europe has not quite yet come to terms with its commitments to the Central and Eastern parts of the EU. With Czech Republic holding the EU presidency, the war of words between Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek and the French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Hungary and Ukraine being on the verge of an economic collapse, EU’s future looks “interesting” – to use the words from a famous Chinese curse.

What is the greatest danger in all of this? It’s not the recession itself, of course – that will pass sooner or later. Nor is it the possibility of an EU “unity crisis” – that seems to be an ongoing problem. The greatest danger is that the neo-communists will take advantage of hard times and stir the emotions of those less fortunate to try to destroy the weaker democracies in Eastern Europe.

In 1989, Francis Fukuyama wrote his essay “The End of History?”. In 1992, the year the Soviet Union collapsed, he followed with a book “The End of History and the Last Man”, arguing that the advent of Western liberal democracy may signal the end point of humanity’s sociocultural evolution and the final form of human government. The Cold War was over, the “New World Order” was on, and the future of humanity was bright and peaceful.

It is 2009, and Mr. Fukuyama might as well attempt to write a sequel. At the beginning of 2009, the last twenty years look more like a temporary ceasefire: China has risen as a serious economic (and increasingly, military) player on the world stage. The Russians are more and more openly threatening military response to the planned US anti-missile installations in the Czech Republic and Poland, and now, they are testing the preparedness of NORAD, as is obvious from today’s report about Canadian fighter jets intercepting two Russian military bombers close to Canadian airspace.

Of course, Russia will deny any wrongdoing, like in the old days of Soviet republics. It would be seen as a weakness, and that’s the last thing any good Russian leader (and bureaucrat) wants to show. Instead, Russia will keep posturing, and when caught, it will turn to a proven trick: point its finger at the defender (in this case, Canada): “the statements from Canada’s defence ministry are perplexing to say the least and cannot be called anything other than a farce,” said an unnamed Russian military source.

People from former Czechoslovakia know this trick very well – after all, it was the “counter revolutionary imperialist forces” that threatened to destroy the country, and prompted the Soviet visit in August 1968, lasting almost 22 years. If anyone in the West is willing to give Russia benefit of the doubt, they should look at Russia’s history, its human rights record of recent years, the concentration of power in the hands of few top Russian oligarchs, or Russia’s increased military presence in the Arctic. The conclusion should be that Russia, as always, is testing the West, counting on its preoccupation with internal security and “War on Terror”.

Twenty years on, the tools may have changed, but the goals (and the rhetorics) of the Russian state have changed little: to deny opportunities to Russian people, oppress them with brutal totalitarian policies, and prevent the West from gaining enough political influence that could lead to an actual change in Russia.

With an economic crisis spreading around the globe, nationalist and protections tendencies are sure to be on the rise, and nowhere do they found more fertile ground than in the two largest communist powers: Russia and China (I can hear the objections to the ‘communist’ label, but they both have totalitarian governments any way you slice it). If the two become allied against the West, a Chinese/US trade war, combined with Russian military posturing, may well lead to the resumption of Cold War.

Surely enough material for Mr. Fukuyama to rethink the ‘end of history’. History is alive, and thriving.