Eastern European Intellectuals’ Open Letter to Obama

A group of Eastern European intellectuals, including Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa and Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev, have signed an open letter to the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama.

The letter says that Central and Eastern European countries are no longer at the heart of American foreign policy. The authors believe that Central and Eastern Europe is at a political crossroads and today there is a growing sense of nervousness in the region. They say that the United States is likely to lose many of its traditional interlocutors in the region. The most important message in the letter is that the danger is that Russia’s creeping intimidation and influence-peddling in the region could over time lead to a de facto neutralization of the region.

The letter calls for a renaissance of NATO as the most important security link between the United States and Europe.