In Eastern Europe, U.S. Officials Talk Deals, Not Erosion of Democracy

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/world/europe/pence-pompeo-eastern-europe.html

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WARSAW — In Budapest this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned bluntly of security threats from Russia and China, but he did not overtly criticize the assault on liberal democracy by Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, who has systematically stripped the courts, media and academia of their independence.

And in Warsaw this week, Vice President Mike Pence spoke out against Iran, but had no harsh words for Poland, the first European Union member to face possible sanctions from the bloc for weakening democracy and the rule of law. Instead he praised Poland, still shaken by the killing of a leading opposition politician last month, as a “bastion of freedom in Central Europe.”

The trips by Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Pence made it clear that the erosion of democratic values and institutions in Eastern and Central Europe does not rank high on the Trump administration’s agenda. Just as striking, two years into President Trump’s term, is that no one was at all surprised.

“We know very well that the Trump administration is not interested in this topic,” said Roman Kuzniar, a professor at Warsaw University and a foreign policy adviser to Poland’s former President Bronislaw Komorowski. “They are coming from a different planet. From the moon. They are not a part of the global pro-democratic movement.”

American officials hoped to use the trip to reassert the United States’ role in the region, in part to counter Chinese and Russian influence, mainly by highlighting military cooperation and business deals. The centerpiece was the largest diplomatic meeting yet convened by the Trump administration, a conference in Warsaw where the administration hoped to isolate Iran, followed by the annual international security conference in Munich.

However, after Mr. Pence lashed out on Thursday at America’s traditional allies in Western Europe, accusing them of failing to recognize the dangers posed by Iran, the immediate impact of the meeting seemed to have been to further divide Europe between east and west.

The vision Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Pence offered diplomats was of a trans-Atlantic alliance built on transactional relationships rather than a strong defense of shared core values. That disturbs the more established democracies of Western Europe, but does not worry the leaders of some of the nations to the east that emerged from Communism and autocracy less than 30 years ago.

Jonathan D. Katz, a former State Department official who is now at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said that ignoring a retreat from democracy and human rights was a recipe for insecurity.

“It will have a dramatic impact on the trans-Atlantic alliance,” he said. “Countries like Hungary that are backsliding are much more vulnerable to malign influences, like Russia.”

In Hungary, Mr. Pompeo met privately with civil society leaders, but in public he addressed their concerns only obliquely. During a news conference, he vowed to “help Hungary in its fight against corruption, strengthening law enforcement cooperation, and providing mentorships, training and exchanges for independent media” with neighboring countries.

However, Mr. Katz noted that the administration has not backed up such statements with specific policy proposals or money.

Daniel Szephelyi, 27, an entrepreneur in Hungary, said the loss of the United States as a voice of support for liberal democracy still stings.

“We need help from the outside because we can’t solve this internally,” he said. “Given all that’s happened here in recent years, I think Orban didn’t deserve this visit.”

Since returning to power in 2010, Mr. Orban has meticulously reshaped the country, constructing what he has called an “illiberal state” that leaves little room for independent voices. He and his allies have exercised ever-greater control of the electoral process, the judiciary, news organizations, education and even cultural institutions.

In late 2018, restrictions imposed by the government forced Central European University, an American institution founded by the philanthropist George Soros, to move from Budapest to Vienna. Now, the government is taking control of awarding Academy of Sciences research grants, raising new fears about academic freedom.

“Hungarians came to realize that the U.S. government would be not hands-on in addressing issues of democratic institutions and rights in Hungary,” said Stefano Bottoni, 41, a historian and senior fellow at the Academy of Sciences’ Center for the Humanities.

Mr. Pompeo’s trip included a stop in Slovakia, a country that has struggled with corruption.

Last year, the country was outraged by the murders of Jan Kuciak, a journalist who was investigating ties between politicians and mafia figures, and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova. After hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest the killings — widely seen as a way to silence Mr. Kuciak — and what they saw as a weak government response, Prime Minister Robert Fico was forced out of office.

But Mr. Fico remains in charge of the ruling party, and on the eve of Mr. Pompeo’s visit, he was making a bid to lead the country’s Constitutional Court. He backed down but, as things stand, political gridlock fomented by Mr. Fico could hobble the court.

Mr. Pompeo made no mention of any of the events rocking the country as it heads into elections this spring. Instead, he focused on forging a deeper military alliance, praising the country for working toward meeting NATO defense spending commitments.

“Last year, Slovakia took a major step toward this goal by purchasing 14 of the most modern F-16 fighter jets from the United States to replace its aging fleet of Soviet aircraft,” he said in Bratislava. “It was the largest defense purchase in Slovak history.”

In Poland, there was no expectation that American officials would raise any difficult issues about the country’s direction, as President Barack Obama did in 2016. In fact, when Mr. Trump visited in 2017, he praised Poland as a defender of liberty, despite concerns about the ruling party’s attempts to exert control over the judicial system.

The party holds itself out as the defender of not only Polish nationalism, but also of European Christendom in the face of migration, unlike the more permissive West. Mr. Trump played into that theme in 2017.

“The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive,” he said in Warsaw. “Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?”

The American agenda this week in Poland was similar, this time with Iran as the focus rather than migrants fleeing war and deprivation.

The conference put Poland in the somewhat awkward position of trying to please the Trump administration without doing further damage to already strained relations with the European Union. Many other nations in the bloc oppose Poland’s direction and American efforts to isolate Iran.

When Mr. Pence spoke on Thursday, he accused Germany, France and Britain, stalwarts of the trans-Atlantic alliance, of seeking “to break American sanctions against Iran’s murderous revolutionary regime.”

But he had nothing to say about the antidemocratic drift of the host country. Instead, he praised Polish agreement to buy American weapons and energy, and plans for greater military cooperation with the United States.

“We have an abiding friendship that’s grounded in the ideals of freedom and democracy,” he said.