Our Luck and Our Shame

1999-05 


Two months ago, we Czech people achieved something we have never had in our history: a guarantee of national security as a full-fledged member of NATO. However, it took only three days of NATO activity in Yugoslavia for us to pay NATO back with a demonstration of our innate inability to accept responsibility and our two-facedness.
This unpleasant – though predictable – revelation was principally the work of the majority of our leading politicians (with the notable exception of President Havel), who were quick in demonstrating their total inexperience in performing on an international stage. What they failed to grasp was that NATO and issues associated with it exist on the basis of established moral convictions, namely that people have a right to democratically decide their own future. Therefore when confronting these issues, a completely different set of rules, than is customary in our local politics, must be employed. One of the rules in matters of foreign affairs is that dissent ought to take place behind closed doors, and publicly politicians should pull together as a team. 


No wonder then, that the international press raised its eyebrows over statements such as Chairman of Parliament Václav Klaus’s claim that he „doesn’t like“ NATO’s solution, and the utterly inexcusable statement by our cabinet spokesman that „the Czech Republic was accepted into NATO only after the decision to bomb Yugoslavia was made.“
NATO’s Balkan action is not directed against Yugoslavia or its people, but against a regime that is engaged in full-scale ethnic murder and the forced expulsion of a two million people. The action came about because countless negotiations by numerous international mediators failed to induce a tyrant to add his signature to a peace agreement. Therefore, when Czech premier Miloš Zeman talks of „our long-standing historical tradition of friendship with Yugoslavia,“ our highest-placed public official commits the most primitive error: mixing his traditional, populist ramblings with a completely different reality of the day. This reality is well understood by Poland and Hungary, but not by our premier and others like him who simply cannot part with their undependable conduct. 


Our being accepted into NATO is our greatest stroke of luck to date. As for our politicians, they are no different from those in any other country, in that they are a reflection not only of themselves but of their nation and people as well. That being the case, our luck is balanced by our communal shame.
Martin Jan Stránský

Publikováno:

The New PresenceMay 1999

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