A Letter From Europe

U.S. leadership in the post-Soviet age is needed to face new challenges.

TWENTY YEARS have passed since the revolutions that restored freedom to what had been the captive nations of Central and Eastern Europe. That many Americans no longer give much thought to that part of the world testifies, in part, to the region's success. The eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union helped bring security, stability and growing prosperity; more important, the countries themselves have nurtured democratic and free-market institutions that in 1989 would have seemed unreachable.

Yet an impressive collection of former presidents and ministers from the first two decades of post-communism warn, in a letter released last week, that long-lasting success should not be assumed. "All is not well either in our region or in the transatlantic relationship," they caution. Since the signatories are staunch allies of the United States and of democracy -- ranging from Vaclav Havel and Alexandr Vondra of the Czech Republic to Lech Walesa and Alexander Kwasniewski of Poland to Vaira Vike-Freiberga of Latvia and Valdas Adamkus of Lithuania -- they merit a hearing.

The global recession has given room to "nationalism, extremism, populism, and anti-Semitism" in some of their countries, the former leaders acknowledge. At the same time, they say, "NATO today seems weaker than when we joined" while "Russia is back as a revisionist power pursuing a 19th-century agenda with 21st-century tactics and methods. . . . 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."

In response, they say, the Obama administration should recommit to NATO as a defense alliance, not just an expeditionary force with duties in Afghanistan and beyond. It should support pipelines that will diminish the region's dependence on Russian oil and gas. It should take care, as it evaluates planned missile-defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic that Russia opposes, to consult closely with the governments that have the most at stake. It should invest in relationships with younger generations that do not remember communism or the struggle against it.

None of this will come as news to President Obama, who has made clear, in Moscow and elsewhere, that the United States will not recognize a privileged Russian sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union or Warsaw Pact. Vice President Biden, who first delivered that message for the administration in a speech in Munich in February, presumably will reiterate it during his upcoming visit to Ukraine and Georgia. The administration nonetheless should take the letter to heart, not as a rebuke but as encouragement. Nations clamoring for a stronger U.S relationship, built on the ideals of freedom and alliance, are not so numerous that Washington can afford to take them for granted.