[From article]
It was the year 2009, and it was official. The Obama administration shelved the anti-missile shield from Poland and Czech Republic and let it marinate in an attic jar. The move was done with an unparalleled subtlety, on the same day that Poland was commemorating the 70th anniversary of its World War II invasion by the USSR. After months of ballet pirouettes in public statements where the Eastern Europeans were “reassured” that their concerns on the issue were totally groundless, the inevitable (and predictable) happened. The Obama administration, citing budgetary reasons, upended the agreements with two NATO allies by cancelling the Bush-era project that angered Russia.
[. . .]
In July, president Obama was addressed in an open letter signed by 22 prominent Eastern European leaders, who voiced their concern that the region had ceased to be a priority on the U.S. foreign policy agenda. The letter warned against “the misguided notion” that the region was largely stable and on a secure path to full trans-Atlantic integration. In reality, this traditional pro-American region was increasingly critical to the United States’ cave in to Russia’s “revisionist power pursuing a 19th-century agenda with 21st-century tactics.”
Had the administration wanted to show contempt for faithful allies in Eastern Europe, there was no better way than scrapping the planned anti-missile shield. It was obvious that, at that moment and even later, the United States did not consider Central and Eastern Europe as a priority any more.
[. . .]
In fact, this was Obama’s free gift to the Russians, offered with a red bow on a golden plate way before the September 2012 president’s tete-a-tete with Medvedev at the Seoul nuclear safety summit and during his “open mike” genuine moment of sincerity.
While it was obvious that U.S. world policy had turned 180 degrees since Obama assumed office, Russian policy continued to look disturbingly unchanged.
In terms of firsthand knowledge of communism, America should have given more credit to Eastern Europe. After all, the Eastern Europeans’ deeper understanding of the multiple facets -- theoretical, clinical, and practical -- of a totalitarian ideology and society exceeds by far Obama’s occasional exotic incursions in the Marxism-pigmented readings during his university years. And this goes for Obama’s international and domestic policies. His obstinacy in promoting collectivist ideas of a “fair share” type has managed to produce confusion in America and hilarity in Eastern Europe. In this context, Jimmy Carter’s 1977 remarks about being “free of that inordinate fear of communism” appear as an equally sinister and pathetic joke.
[. . .]
When he alienated the allies by allying himself with the aliens, he ended up looking more like Terry Crews, as the goofy president Camacho in Idiocracy. In the end, even Camacho came back to his senses. Let us all hope that we, as a nation, do not end up living those “idiocratic” apocalyptic times.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/05/the_american_idiocracy_and_eastern_europe.html
May 30, 2016
The American 'Idiocracy' and Eastern Europe
By Tiberiu Dianu
