University of Nebraska-Lincoln political science major Michal Cvejn is from the Czech Republic and says that their worries are different than the worries of the Obama administration. Photo: Kelli Sajevic NewsNetNebraska
Some never liked the original plan. Some wished the President would never have changed his mind. And some are ambivalent.
President Obama issued a statement Sept. 17 about his decision to withdraw plans for the anti-missile base in Brdy, a town 55 miles south of Prague. The original agreement was developed in 2002 under the Bush administration. Obama and his advisers reviewed the plans for the base and devised an updated plan that "best responds to the threats that we face and that utilizes technology that is both proven and cost-effective," according to his statement.
Mila Saskova-Pierce, associate professor of modern languages and literature at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said it has been difficult to watch the situation unfold through the U.S. media. The details about the situation and a portrayal of the Czech point of view have been absent because this isn't big news for Americans, she said. Using the Internet, she managed to gather more information.
Click here to see what Czech professors have to say about Obama's decision to cancel the Eastern European missile defense system.
Katarina Cermakova, a lecturer of modern languages and literature at UNL, agreed. She said the people of the Czech Republic themselves were not well-informed, so they had difficulty formulating their opinions.
"I don't think you can say the people don't care; that's not true," she said. "They would like to care."
Saskova-Pierce said the Czech public was not completely opposed to the base, as some U.S. media sources reported.
Those who opposed the base had many different reasons, she said, such as worries about the nature reserve located in the area.
Cermakova said the way the plan was originally presented confused many Czech people. The missile base was presented as an army project, something many Czechs are wary of after the Russian invasion of their country in 1968. Cermakova wasn't surprised many opposed the base at first. She credited generational fears as part of the problem.
"It wasn't easy for them to wake up in the morning with an army in the country," she said.
Although there was much resistance in the beginning, Saskova-Pierce estimated about 40 percent of the population was in favor of the military base. She has friends in the Czech Republic who live near the proposed building site and were counting on jobs brought in by the base.
Now everyone is confused.
"They don't know what their reactions should be. Those who supported feel angry and misled," she said. "Those who opposed it suddenly feel they perhaps were successful in the opposition, but they're not sure that they counted."
Michal Cvejn, a political science major from the Czech Republic, said the Czech people have different political worries than the Obama administration.
"Anti-missile defense - in our point of view - is not important because of Iran or North Korea," he said. "For us, it's important because of Russia."
Saskova-Pierce and Cermakova both agree the major threat to the Czech Republic is Russia, which has a complicated relationship with the Czechs.
Saskova-Pierce, along with many other people of Czech descent, is conflicted about the change in plans in her homeland.
"I am as much American as I am Czech," she said.
If the base plan didn't work, the United States would have spent billions of dollars for something that had primarily symbolic value, she said.
"The symbolic value was that the United States affirmed its presence in Central Europe facing Russia," she said. "Americans were the symbol of defense against a repetition of history."
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