Street musicians play their instruments as tourist walk past the stage where President Barack Obama will deliver his public speech on Sunday April 5, at the Hradcanske Square in Prague, Czech Republic
On Saturday night, Barack and Michelle Obama will share a private dinner in romantic Prague, but elsewhere in the Czech capital, the President may find the ambience somewhat more chilly. Whereas the Czech Republic might once have been the most unquestioningly loyal of Washington's post-Cold War allies, Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek's comment last week that President Obama's economic stimulus plan is "a road to hell" underscores the fact that Czech support for the U.S. leadership is no longer a certainty.
The Obamas' private dinner may, in fact, be a way of avoiding political awkwardness in the Czech capital: They will not be joining President Vaclav Klaus (a skeptic on global warming) at a state dinner; nor will they be sharing delicious Czech lager at an informal pub visit with Topolanek, whose government collapsed a day before his comment about Obama's stimulus inferno. Czech sources insist that the Americans had turned down those two invitations before the Prime Minister's remark. (See pictures of the Obamas in Europe)
There's unlikely to be much awkwardness, however, when Obama encounters ordinary Czechs, among whom there is tremendous excitement over his visit. Thousands are expected to gather on Sunday when the President will speak at historic Hradcansky square next to the majestic Prague Castle, a site offering splendid views of the red-roofed, river-laced city. He is expected to talk about reducing the nuclear weapons proliferation. "I am absolutely thrilled," says Jiri Hlupy, 76, a set designer in the local movie industry. He hopes that Obama's presence will "wake up" squabbling Czech politicians.
Some Czechs are more realistic about the impact of the Obama visit on their own political class. The U.S. President's "goal is to address Europeans in the country [currently] presiding over the European Union and to have a picture taken with [former Czech president and anti-Communist resistance icon] Vaclav Havel," says political scientist Jiri Pehe, a former Havel adviser who heads Prague's branch of New York University. "I don't want to be cruel, but present-day Czech politicians do not interest him at all."
Czechs, on the other hand, remain keenly interested in U.S. policy. Most want to hear from Obama whether he plans to shelve plans for basing a U.S. radar station in the hills an hour's drive south-west of Prague, as part of the missile shield supposedly aimed at countering a potential Iranian threat. Moscow is vehemently opposed to the shield, and Obama has indicated that he may not press ahead with deploying a system that has yet to prove its effectiveness despite years of testing. And in his efforts to "reset" relations with Moscow, President Obama told his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday that "spheres of influence" was no longer a useful concept.
Not so fast, say some Czechs, who still remember living under Soviet domination. "I don't want to be under the Russian sphere of influence but under the American one," says David Cerny, 41, a celebrated if slightly infamous local artist. Cerny wants the U.S. to stick to the missile shield plan. "It would be really sad if this intelligent guy who succeeded Bush, about whom no one had a high opinion, would barter Eastern Europe for a better image of the United States," Cerny says, worrying that Obama is drawing too close to Russia.
Cerny, a proud provocateur, recently won some notoriety with a prankish sculpture at the European Union headquarters in Brussels mocking European stereotypes — the giant piece depicts France as a strike placard, Romania as a vampire theme park, the Netherlands as a submerged set of mosques and Bulgaria as a squat toilet. But even Cerny is happy that Obama is visiting. "It's a miracle that he is paying us a visit, after all," he says. "Well, he could have gone to Brussels."