On my first night living in Poland last summer, I asked my host mother, a 44-year-old Polish elementary schoolteacher and mother of two, her opinions of President Barack Obama as we sat in her rural farmhouse eating slabs of unidentifiable meat on rye bread. She gave me two responses, meaning, she pointed to the two words in my Larousse Polsko-Angielski dictionary that first came to mind:
- Historia
- Hipokryta
As I wrote at the time, I was certainly caught off guard.
Though first surprised that any European country might possibly have the gall to like Bush more than Obama, from then on, I took note of what I have since come to acknowledge as Poland’s widespread anti-Obama sentiment.
This September, the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Trends report finally confirmed what I had come to believe over the past year: Poles, and indeed many other Eastern Europeans, are increasingly disillusioned with America.
In section six of the report entitled “Poland—An Outlier in the European Union,” the survey found that although Poland carried the highest popularity rating for Bush of any European country, in contrast, only 53% of Poles surveyed in 2010 approved of Obama’s handling of their country, the lowest of any European country surveyed. Similarly, 31% of Slovakians had an unfavorable view of the U.S., the highest in Europe.
While at first it is tempting to jump to say, “Well, clearly Poles are just missing the boat,” and cite Bush’s overwrought, hard-ball style stance on their issues as reason for their current sour feelings, it would be premature to do so. Instead, anti-Obama sentiments stem from a series of minor, yet significant, Polish grievances with the President.
In an open letter to the President in the summer of 2009, 22 intellects and former leaders from Eastern Europe presented their anxieties about being hung-out to dry by the U.S. at the hands of a revisionist Russia. Yet true to Eastern European fears, Obama scratched the Bush-designed missile shield slated for Poland in a bid to curry favor with the Kremlin, perhaps to gain Russia as an ally against the Iranian nuclear threat. Though a much smaller, modified military base has since been placed in northern Poland, Poles still envision America with its back turned on Eastern Europe. Against the will of the E.U., former Polish President Lech Kaczynski had gone out on a limb in favor of U.S. policies, such as the missile shield, and Obama had cut him down.
Similarly, many Poles express deep grievances over America’s visa requirements for them to travel to the U.S., with Poland as the only country in the Schengen Zone required to do so. Though over 2,500 Polish soldiers currently serve in Afghanistan, they and their families are not openly welcomed into the U.S.
In the wake of the tragic plane crash killing President Kaczynski and 10% of the Polish government, minor missteps have again hurt U.S. credibility in Poland. Canceling his agreement to attend the state funeral of the Polish President in Krakow due to Iceland’s volcanic eruption, President Obama proceeded to golf for the day instead—a story which has since become legendary throughout Poland. Again, hype ran rampant over Brazil’s announcement of three days of mourning for Poland’s tragedy, while the U.S., which contains 10 million Poles and whose president’s home city, Chicago, contains more Polish people than any city other than Warsaw, observed not one.
While it is fair to question whether the U.S. should bother to care about a small, largely homogenous, Eastern European country of 39 million people, truly the answer requires a broader knowledge of the region. Positioned in a complex area where countries sway to countervailing force—not the least of which is Moscow—Poland is that little country that wants so badly to be friends with the U.S., yet keeps getting shunned. By easily amending minor grievances, the U.S. can assure a valuable ally in a tense region, or through indifference, turn away an old friend (and its acquaintances) to the other side.