The United States and Central Europe: Principles and Pragmatism in the Evolving Partnership

Abstract

In 1998, the American satirical tabloid The Onion featured an article entitled, ‘State Department To Hold Enemy Tryouts Next Week’ (Onion 1998), an amusing examination of the top prospects vying to become America’s main post-Cold War foreign nemesis. Like most good satire, the article — which surreptitiously circulated through State Department offices — captured a slice of political reality: the disruption caused by the disappearance of the defining principle of US foreign policy for nearly a half century and the search for something to replace it. While post-communist Europe simultaneously wrestled with domestic transformations and sought a new place in regional and global affairs, US policymakers toiled to formulate and conduct a coherent post-Cold War foreign policy and to sell it to an American public and Congress that, as is often their wont, largely had grown weary of foreign affairs. For much of the two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall — and from one administration to the next — the United States defined and redefined its national interests and priorities. Its foreign policy, not atypically, reflected a mix of principles and pragmatism, which varied over the years and across regions and countries. This process was evident in Central Europe, where officials’ assertions about the region’s importance to the United States often belied ambivalence about the level and nature of their commitment to the region.