Running about a month behind the Zeitgeist, PP McGuinness picks up the Old Europe/New Europe meme (the new European states will be pro-market, more friendly to the US etc). Oddly enough he picks on Vaclav Klaus, who recently became President of the Czech Republic, succeeding his former ally and more recent opponent Vaclav Havel.
In fact, Klaus’ career is an illustration of why the Old Europe/New Europe thesis is wrong on nearly every point, and McGuinness tacitly concedes as much.
Running about a month behind the Zeitgeist, PP McGuinness picks up the Old Europe/New Europe meme (the new European states will be pro-market, more friendly to the US etc). Oddly enough he picks on Vaclav Klaus, who recently became President of the Czech Republic, succeeding his former ally and more recent opponent Vaclav Havel.
In fact, Klaus’ career is an illustration of why the Old Europe/New Europe thesis is wrong on nearly every point, and McGuinness tacitly concedes as much. In the early days after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Klaus was the pin-up boy of the radical free-market reformers who wanted to remake Eastern Europe along the lines of the US rather than of social-democratic Western Europe. In particular, as Finance Minister and then PM Klaus undertook privatisation on a large scale.
Although noting “vociferous criticism in the Czech press” and the widespread view that the privatisation has been a failure, McGuinness asserts that Klaus has strong electoral support. If so, why is this former PM now reduced to what is, as McGuinness admits, a figurehead role, elected by Parliament [although PPM doesn’t note this, only because they couldn’t agree on anyone else].
More significant for the Old Europe/New Europe meme is the observation
perhaps surprisingly for an economist who has declared his admiration for free market processes he differed from the outgoing Havel in refusing to endorse the Iraq war, though being far from anti-American.
The reason is not that Klaus is a secret pacifist but that Czech public opinion, and that of New Europe more generally, is just as antiwar as in France or Germany. As a current politician, Klaus couldn’t defy this.
Even more striking is the absence of any fundamental criticism of the European Union, beyond familiar and non-specific complaints about bureaucracy. The fact is, as I noted some time ago, that Klaus the free-market radical has conceded defeat in his battle against social democracy. Now he’s just another politician trying to salvage a somewhat tarnished career.
John Quiggin 
Pity you don’t seem to to realise that Czechoslovakia disappeared as a country a little while back. Klaus is President of the Czech Republic. Your post goes downhill from there.
Corrected, thanks. Old habits die hard!
Do you have a substantive comment?
Maybe Klaus opposed the war because he is a consistent free-market liberal who believes that government action (war) should only go ahead if a clear and good case is made that the benefits will exceed the costs?
But you’re right – social democracy has won. It’s won in Europe, and it’s won in Australia and the United States. We are living in your world John. And I must admit… it’s not too bad.
Though, of course, my world would be better. 🙂
Vaclav Klaus isn’t old Europe. He is old, old, old Europe. His tragedy is that he should have been born 100 years earlier, so he could have run governmens for the Hapsburg empire.
I think the foreign policy and security disagreement with the US is even deeper than John is suggesting: Klaus explicitly rejected the idea of the Czech Republic to host US bases and troops on the ground of (negative) historical experience. The latest fashion is to make a mention of Brezhnev and the doctrine that bore his name. It seems that slowly the so called “new European” realise that the NATO of 2003 bears little resemblance to the NATO that patrolled the iron curtain, and that quite paradoxically the “with us or against us” rhetoric and the “obey or else” practices coming from Washington have a Warsaw Pact flavor to them.