Czech Republic and the Iraq crisis – oscillating between the two sides of the Atlantic

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Created on Wednesday, 16 April 2003 00:00

An old Czech proverb says that you cannot sit with one back on two chairs. And it seems that it is this very proverb that applies to the Czech government positions over the current (now becoming rather past) EU split over the military action in Iraq. Or using another parallel, the situation can be described as that of a man standing on two boats that start going in different directions and he cannot decide which one to jump on. The Czech government feels it is forced to chose between the camp of allies (represented by the US and UK but also neighbouring Poland) and the Franco-German axis, taking a clearly anti-military stand and refusing any action without the UN Security Council mandate.

The public opinion – as in most European countries - is largely anti-war. The political representation is pretty undecided. The USA is still viewed as the most reliable ally (especially in defence terms) and the only one who is able to act in case of an urgent need. One must not forget that it was also the US who mostly advocated for the country to join the NATO. Even though it is not exactly the question at a stake here, the government feels that the Czech reputation in NATO could be damaged by a strongly anti-American stand. NATO is still a new phenomenon for the Czechs and its alliance identity still has to be built up.

As expected, the newly elected president (ex premier) Vaclav Klaus took a clearly anti-war stand by refusing the military strike as unsuitable way of solving the crisis. He was similarly against the NATO strike in Kosovo which already at that time surprised many EU leaders as this was far less controversial issue at the EU level. At a recent dinner with Mr Stapleton, the American Ambassador in Prague, he even pledged him to intervene with the US administration to cross the Czech Republic out of the list of allies. Although the president (unlike for instance in France) does not really make foreign policy, the imprint given to this office by Havel makes it difficult to neglect what he actually says.

The position of the government is quite inconsistent. It is given by several factors. First is the nature of the present government which is a coalition one this being quite a common feature of the Czech politics. The Christian Democrats and Freedom Union tend to support the allied action, while the Social Democrats are not so keen on it. Even in the Social Democratic Party (leading coalition partner) there are two streams. Two weeks ago at the Party Congress a large part of the delegates adopted the so-called “anti-declaration” or anti-war declaration, insisting on the SC mandate. The inconsistency is further underlined by the fact that the Prime minister and minister of foreign affairs come from different parties, again a usual feature of the Czech coalition governments.

Thus in a view of possible deep divisions in a fragile government relying on a very subtle support in the Parliament (101 out of 200 deputies in the Lower Chamber, including ex-foreign minister Kavan currently presiding the UN General Assembly), most of the discussion focuses on technical matters rather than on broad political issues (i.e. do we actually support the strike politically and morally). There was discussion about the mandate of the chemical unit operating in Kuwait, i.e. whether it should be allowed to operate in Iraq or not. Eventually its deployment in case of the chemical attack on the allies on the Iraqi territory was approved by the Parliament. The Parliament has also assented to sending a field hospital to Iraq, which is viewed by most people as coming too late and a gesture that cannot create a credible image of the Czech Republic as that of a reliable ally.

In a view of the relations with the major EU players, one cannot omit Chirac´s comments after the Brussels European Council that stirred the waves of public opinion quite strongly. The deputies had to tackle with many complaints from citizens who viewed this as an assault on the Czech sovereignty and many experts feared that this could damage the popular mood before the upcoming referendum (June 13 and 14). Eventually it was not the case, at least judging from the polls where the support for EU membership did not drop dramatically. Surprisingly enough there were even some comments in the Czech press showing understanding for Chirac´s stand and condemning the Czech representation for signing the Riga proclamation without consulting the EU member states. The whole issue though disappeared quite quickly from the attention of media. An interesting thing to note is that although Chirac did not speak in any EU capacity, his comments were still largely perceived as an EU related problem. It left huge doubts in the Czech population as to what extent the Czech Republic will really be able to influence the EU foreign policy once it becomes an EU member. However, bilateral Czech-French relations were not aggravated due to these.

As to the relations to Germany, there did not seem to be any particular problem in connection with the crisis that would harm the bilateral relations either. This was further highlighted by the official visit of Klaus to Germany (one of his first official visits in the presidential capacity) and by the fact that his views on the matter are very close to those of Schröder.

Britain is still viewed as quite a reliable ally in defence terms, especially as the Czech anti-chemical unit deployed in the Gulf since the First Gulf War was under British command and it seems that this co-operation has been a very smooth one. Even though the British positions in many respects diverged from the official Czech views, bilateral relations are very good on many other (largely economic) fronts – let it be social policy, European employment strategy, Lisbon agenda or open method of economic co-ordination.

One could thus think that the Czech government actually managed to “sit with one back on two chairs”, to some extent comforting the allies without aggravating too much the anti-military axis. This was, however, compensated by an overall frustration that the EU is not able to speak with a single voice in the most important questions of foreign relations and that the Czech Republic will have a very little say in the EU foreign policy. The lesson is especially hard for the government which would wishfully be Atlanticist but feels more obliged to push on the EU mainstream (viewed as Franco-German or anti-military) and also some frustration that it is the Franco-German tandem which is mostly heard and perceived to speak on behalf of the EU. The apparently irreconcilable polarisation of the problem goes against the traditional idea of multilateral diplomacy on which the Czech political representation, especially Havel, relied strongly since the ´90 s. It is certainly not a thing that any Czech government would easily give up unless it manages to make it an asset after our accession to the EU (in this opinion, Scandinavian countries are often cited as our best allies in this respect).

Likely development from the Czech perspective now is that the military action is a fait accompli and that most of the effort now will concentrate on the reconstruction of Iraq. It is quite probable that some Czech NGOs will play an important role here (e.g. the People In Need Foundation that built over 80 schools in Afghanistan and equipped many villages with basic infrastructure) and this will be definitely noted by the media. But as the situation in the region is by far uncertain with the threat of further military action against Syria, the government might face some further problems and divisions in this respect.

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