{"id":518459,"date":"2010-04-06T20:32:34","date_gmt":"2010-04-07T00:32:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.szone.us\/f95\/obama-still-ways-go-central-eastern-europe-41916\/"},"modified":"2010-04-06T20:32:34","modified_gmt":"2010-04-07T00:32:34","slug":"obama-still-a-ways-to-go-in-central-and-eastern-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/518459","title":{"rendered":"Obama: Still a ways to go in Central  and Eastern Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>On 04.06.10 11:00 AM posted by Sally McNamara<\/p>\n<p>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/obama_russia0907061.gif\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/>&lt;\/p&gt;If President Obama thinks that signing his prized arms  control treaty with Russia  on Czech soil will repair the damage he\u0092s done to relations with Central and  Eastern Europe, he\u0092s wrong. Cutting a deal with  the Russian bear in Prague is hardly the way to  tell your allies that it\u0092s not all about Russia.<\/p>\n<p>Although cheering crowds greeted Obama a year ago when  he told adoring Czechs of his vision for a world without nuclear weapons,  Europe now is much more cautiously embracing  the President\u0092s risky and na\u00efve agenda. The new U.S.-Russian START Treaty &#8211;  reducing deployable nuclear warhead by a third &#8211; has come at a very steep price  for the U.S.&lt;spanid=&quot;more-30663&quot;&gt;&lt;\/span&gt; It sacrificed the &lt;atitle=&quot;http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/Research\/Reports\/2009\/09\/President-Obama-Must-Not-Surrender-to-Russia-on-Missile-Defense&quot; href=&quot;http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/Research\/Reports\/2009\/09\/President-Obama-Must-Not-Surrender-to-Russia-on-Missile-Defense&quot;&gt;Third  Site missile defense deployments in  Poland and the  Czech Republic, and the President now looks set to announce  that America\u0092s existing nuclear  arsenal will not be sufficiently modernized. In a humiliating slap-down,  Moscow announced this morning that it will  summarily withdraw from START if it deems future  U.S. missile defense plans  unpalatable. Romania, Bulgaria and other European nations in line to work with  America on missile defense should be expecting the same treatment that Warsaw  and Prague got when on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet\u0092s invasion  of Poland, President Obama ripped up the Third Site  agreement.<\/p>\n<p>Obama has been &lt;atitle=&quot;http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/Research\/Reports\/2009\/05\/President-Obama-Must-Not-Concede-to-Russian-Demands-over-NATO&quot; href=&quot;http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/Research\/Reports\/2009\/05\/President-Obama-Must-Not-Concede-to-Russian-Demands-over-NATO&quot;&gt;outplayed  and outfoxed by Putin and Medvedev. But this isn\u0092t just a game of politics;  as the leader of the free world, President Obama has  America\u0092s security in his  hands, as well as the future of the &lt;atitle=&quot;http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/Research\/Reports\/2010\/03\/President-Obama-Must-Not-Remove-Nuclear-Weapons-from-Europe&quot; href=&quot;http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/Research\/Reports\/2010\/03\/President-Obama-Must-Not-Remove-Nuclear-Weapons-from-Europe&quot;&gt;Atlantic  Alliance. Engagement with Europe\u0092s great  powers has had mixed blessings for the Czechs in the past. They will keenly  remember the \u0091engagement strategies\u0092 of 1938 and 1968 which saw German and  Soviet tanks respectively roll into their proud  nation.<\/p>\n<p>Negotiations are often a good thing, but as President  Reagan advised: always negotiate from a position of strength.  Iran,  North  Korea and other malign actors will  continue to seek and increase their nuclear arsenal regardless of President  Obama\u0092s \u0091vision\u0092. The letter that 21 Central and Eastern European leaders sent  to Obama last July, advising him against unilateral concessions to Russia,  should remind Obama that he still has a long way to go if he wants a genuinely  strategic relationship with his European allies which ensures transatlantic  safety and security.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/04\/06\/obama-still-a-ways-to-go-in-central-and-eastern-europe\/\" >http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/04\/06\/&#8230;astern-europe\/<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On 04.06.10 11:00 AM posted by Sally McNamara &lt;\/p&gt;If President Obama thinks that signing his prized arms control treaty with Russia on Czech soil will repair the damage he\u0092s done to relations with Central and Eastern Europe, he\u0092s wrong. Cutting a deal with the Russian bear in Prague is hardly the way to tell your [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-518459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}