東中欧諸国と米国の単独主義

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タイトル別名
  • Eastern Central European Countries and U.S. Unilateralism
  • 東中欧諸国と米国の単独主義--イラク戦争への対応を事例に
  • トウチュウオウ ショコク ト ベイコク ノ タンドク シュギ イラク センソウ エ ノ タイオウ オ ジレイ ニ
  • A Case Study of Their Responses to the Iraq War
  • ―イラク戦争への対応を事例に―

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This article aims to analyze the responses of the Visegrad Four countries (Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) to the Iraq War which started on March 20, 2003. Central and East European countries, including these four countries, were considered to be“pro-American, ”particularly as demonstrated by their leaders' signatures to“the Letter of Eight”or“the Declaration of the Vilnius Ten, ”issued at the end of January, and at the beginning of February 2003, respectively.<BR>U.S. unilateralism was particularly notable during the period between November 2002, when the UN Security Council adopted resolution 1441, and May 2003, when the US declared an end to major combat in Iraq, and the UN Security Council adopted resolution 1483. Specifically during this period responses of the Visegrad Four countries to the crisis in Iraq differed significantly from one another. Poland, for example, sent its special forces unit (GROM) to Iraq at the beginning of the War. The Czech and Slovak Republics deployed their NBC weapon response units in Kuwait, however they did not engage militarily in Iraq. Hungary allowed the U.S. to use an airbase located in its territory as a training ground where Iraqi opposition members were trained by U.S. forces as police officers and interpreters, but it did not send any military units to the Middle East during this period.<BR>The military measures taken by the four countries varied in accordance with the different agendas of their respective key parties in parliament. Generally speaking, the main pro-American factions were the Trans-Atlanticists within the center-right parties, who oriented themselves toward mainstream European Christian democrats or liberal democrats. Realism among center-left social democratic parties, especially the parties in power, was another factor which encouraged conciliatory attitudes toward U.S. policy and the crisis in Iraq. At same time, however, a considerable group of social democrats opposed U.S. unilateral military actions in Iraq because of their high regard for maintaining multilateralism in respect to agreements established by international institutions, such as the UN, NATO or the EU. Therefore, center-left parties faced a dilemma in evaluating whether or not to support military action in the Middle East.<BR>Extreme leftists, nationalists and Catholic traditionalists were almost universally opposed to dispatching troops to the Middle East. However, most of these were only“protest parties”which did not have the actual ability to influence decision-making in parliament. One of the key factors which inhibited Central and East European participation in the U.S. military's intervention in Iraq was in fact heavy criticism leveled by populist opposition parties. These parties were sensitive to public criticism of U.S. unilateral military activity in Iraq and thus blocked local involvement therein.<BR>Thus, the differing responses of each country to the Iraq War can be viewed as a reflection of local political dynamics between the Pro- and Anti-American forces within each country's internal politics.

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