What’s Next for Czech Foreign Policy?

Autor: Jan Jireš

The fall of Czech Republic’s centre-right government of Prime Minister Topolanek following the late March parliamentary vote of no-confidence can be best described as mismanaged political infighting. The opposition Social Democrats, who initiated the vote, certainly did not expect that their fifth attempt since 2007 to topple the government would be the one to succeed, nor did the government’s fall have much to do with the financial and economic crisis, which the Czech Republic weathers quite well.

 

What’s Next for Czech Foreign Policy?

The fall of Czech Republic’s centre-right government of Prime Minister Topolanek following the late March parliamentary vote of no-confidence can be best described as mismanaged political infighting. The opposition Social Democrats, who initiated the vote, certainly did not expect that their fifth attempt since 2007 to topple the government would be the one to succeed, nor did the government’s fall have much to do with the financial and economic crisis, which the Czech Republic weathers quite well.

 

However, in spite of its rather accidental character the end of the Topolanek government signifies realignment in the Czech politics that may have a lasting impact on the future of the country’s foreign policy and its relationship with the European Union and the United States.

 

Several years ago, Czech political scientist Petr Drulak came up with a useful matrix of the Czech post-Cold War foreign policy debate. He says there have been four major schools of thought: Atlanticist, Continentalist, Internationalist and Autonomist.

 

Atlanticists put special emphasis on bilateral relations with the United States. In their opinion, Czech foreign policy should never be in conflict with American foreign policy and Czech national interests should be defined in accordance with U.S. interests. They are critical of the European Union. The Atlanticist school is particularly strong in the rightwing Civic Democratic Party of Mr. Topolanek.

 

Continentalists prioritize Czech membership in the European Union and stress the country’s political commitments to the EU and its key members. They are critical of the United States. They dislike bilateral relations and promote multilateral cooperation. The Continentalist school is represented primarily by the Social Democrats.

 

Internationalists see relationships with the European Union and the United States as equally important. They believe it is neither wise nor possible to systematically prioritize one of them at the expense of another. Instead, it is desirable to treat both relationships as complementary and as balancing each other. The Internationalist school has formed the mainstream of the Czech foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. Its representatives include former president Vaclav Havel and his associates, and the small centrist parties, such as the Christian Democrats.

 

Autonomists regard neither of the two relationships as very important. When they deem it desirable, they oppose both the European Union and the United States. They believe the Czech Republic should define and then pursue its foreign policy goals unilaterally, which means independently of both Brussels and Washington. They often contradict policies shared by all major Western powers, such as the Kosovo independence, which brings them close to Moscow. The Autonomist course is espoused by the Communist Party as well as by President Vaclav Klaus.

 

The four schools described by Drulak are, of course, rough types. They do not entirely determine one’s behavior and individual politicians sometimes act outside the box because various other factors are involved.  Moreover, within each school there are differences stemming from varying emphases. For example, the Havelites of the Internationalist school (such as Alexandr Vondra or Vaclav Havel himself) clearly gravitate to the Atlanticist pole, though they have never gone as far as to regard the country’s relationship with the United States to be incompatible with its active role in the European integration. Yet Drulak’s matrix enables us to understand the relatively broad limits within which the Czech foreign policy debate evolved after the Cold War. 

 

Since 1990, the Internationalist course has been at the center of the Czech foreign policy-making. Whatever opinions parties voice when they are in opposition, they tend to accept the Internationalist compromise once they assume government offices. This can be explained by two major factors. One is the actual distribution of power in Europe, which objectively renders the Internationalist position the least risky. The other factor is the coalition character of Czech governments – Internationalism invariably ends up as a logical compromise between Atlanticist, Continentalist and Internationalist parties. The normally Continentalist Social Democrats thus did not oppose the U.S. invasion of Iraq and started to talk to the Bush administration about Czech participation in the U.S missile defense shield. The normally Atlanticist Civic Democrats submitted the country’s application to join the European Union and now support the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.

However, when the Topolanek government assumed office in the early 2007, it seemed it would shift the Czech foreign policy markedly in the Atlanticist direction. Critics feared that the strong EU-skeptic rhetoric espoused by the Civic Democrats (including the future Prime Minister Topolanek) when they were sitting in the opposition benches, combined with the anti-Brussels zeal of president Klaus and the peculiar brand of anti-German, though broadly pro-EU, Atlanticism of deputy prime minister Alexandr Vondra, would replace the previous Internationalist mainstream by one-sided Atlanticism. Supporters, on the other hand, hoped that Czech foreign policy entered an era of Atlanticist harmony in which all the country’s key policy-makers – president, prime minister, and the government – would share almost identical foreign policy mindset.

 

For two reasons, none of this happened. First, the leading Civic Democrats, including Prime Minister Topolanek, quickly adopted the Internationalist position and though they did not turn into devout euro-federalists, they made clear that they understood the Czech Republic’s U.S. and EU anchors as equally valuable. Topolanek signed the Lisbon Treaty and became its staunch advocate, despite the grumbling of Civic Democratic backbenchers and President Klaus’ attacks.

Second, President Klaus adopted clearly Autonomist positions. He has repeatedly found himself at odds with Civic Democrats, the party he founded in 1991 and led until 2002, on numerous foreign policy issues dear to both Internationalists and Atlanticists. He sharply criticizes the Lisbon Treaty. He termed the Czech EU presidency irrelevant and on several occasions tried to sabotage it. He has been far from enthusiastic about Czech participation in the U.S. missile defense project. He opposed Kosovo’s independence and openly sided with Russia during the last year’s war in Georgia. As a result, even the Atlanticists in the Civic Democratic Party, previously Klaus’ firm allies because of their shared opinions on the EU, became alienated from the President who was apparently ready to question the Czech Republic’s close relations with the United States and promote foreign policy positions championed in Moscow.

 

The Civic Democrats’ adoption of the Internationalist mainstream can be explained by several factors. The coalition character of the government once again resulted into an Internationalist compromise. Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg and Deputy Prime Minister for EU Affairs Alexandr Vondra are close associates of Vaclav Havel and their appointment contributed to President Klaus’ intense dislike of the Topolanek government.

 

Perhaps most importantly, the international context changed over the past couple of years. Many Atlanticists in the Civic Democratic Party have recently realized that their comfortable criticism of the European Union was made possible by the window of opportunity provided by Russia’s post-Cold War weakness. That window has been closing since the early 2007. The Atlanticists, strongly anti-Russian and firmly believing in the Czech Republic being an integral part of the West, became uneasy about the fact that undermining the European integration process and preventing European unity on issues such as energy security is actually something Moscow wholeheartedly desires and actively promotes. 

 

The Russian factor did not really matter before 2007, but after the dramatic surge in Russia’s international assertiveness things have changed. Is it perhaps the case that the Czech Republic, due to its geographic location, simply cannot afford opposing European integration, no matter how repulsive and misguided is Brussels’ regulatory frenzy? Czech Autonomists may see Russia as an informal ally in their struggle against the European Union, but this position is clearly unacceptable for a vast majority of Atlanticists. Moreover, after the American neoconservative intermezzo ended it became clear that the U.S. foreign policy mainstream still wishes for a strong and united Europe.

 

As a result of all these factors, many Czech Atlanticists softened their anti-EU stance and moved to the Internationalist middle ground. Even the Civic Democratic radicals in the European Parliament, such as Jan Zahradil, are now advocating the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty and the creation of an integrated EU energy policy. They are also increasingly critical of the pro-Russian positions of President Klaus, their former mentor.

 

In protest against Civic Democrats’ shift to Internationalism, Klaus resigned in December 2008 his honorary chairmanship of the party and subsequently helped establish two Autonomist, strongly anti-EU parties to compete with the Civic Democrats in the upcoming election to the European Parliament. In March, several Klaus loyalists among the Civic Democratic backbenchers joined the Social Democrats in voting against the Topolanek government. Without their defection, the vote of no-confidence would not have succeeded.

 

The fall of the government partly caused by foreign policy-related disputes, the growing Autonomist camp, and the fact that Vaclav Havel recently endorsed Topolanek’s Civic Democrats – something unimaginable just a year ago – all signify a major realignment in Czech politics with substantial roots in and repercussions for the country’s foreign policy. 

 

The anti-EU Atlanticism seems to be on the verge of extinction and the future dominated by a debate between Internationalists of various shades, who promote close relations to the U.S. as well as the EU, and Autonomists, who oppose both.

 

Jan Jires is a Ph.D. candidate at Charles University in Prague and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Center for Transatlantic Relations, Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC.

 

Článek vyšel 1. května 2009 v elektronickém magazínu Central European Digest, vydávaném think-tankem CEPA.