Strategically located, the Czech Republic is central to the wider European security. On July, 20, 2011, the Czech government made the first attempt over the past eight years to spell out a conceptual framework for the republic's international relations when it finally approved a document defining the country's priorities and foreign policy objectives. The document re-established that Germany and Poland, the top-powerful neighbors of the Czech Republic, would continue to be regarded as its key European partners, and that, consequently, Prague would mainly be coordinating its foreign policies with Berlin and Warsaw. The geographically close countries listed lower on the Czech foreign-policy agenda – Hungary and Austria – are, along with Slovakia and Slovenia, given the roles of regional economic partners. As before, the US and NATO are supposed to act as the Czech Republic's national security guarantors, while the EU countries are seen as key economic and political partners.
The vision of a Prague-Warsaw geopolitical tandem used to be a recurrent theme in the minds of both Polish and Czech politicians even though the feeling occasionally surfaced in Warsaw that Prague was an unwelcome alien whose very existence stood in the way of creating a common border between Poland and Hungary, the two Roman Catholic countries. In 1930ies, for example, this perception led pro-German Polish politician and publicist Władysław Gizbert-Studnicki to advocate a tightly knit alliance between Poland and the Third Reich, one of the stated benefits of the plan being an opportunity to jointly “annul” the Czech Republic. In the 1940ies, Polish statesman Józef Beck, who for a period of time served as the country's foreign minister, laid out an essentially Russophobic vision of a “Third Europe”, an eclectic formation comprising Poland, Hungary, Romania, Carpatho-Ukraine, Italy, Turkey, Sweden, and Finland but excluding the Czech Republic. At the peak of World War II, Prime Minister of the Polish Government in Exile Władysław Sikorski put together the concept of a Central European Union which, in contrast, held a place for the Czech Republic. Interestingly, Sikorski's union was not meant to accommodate Ukraine which, in his view, did not belong to the West-European civilization.
Unlike the projects churned out by high-profile political figures, the concept of a «Central European federation of people's democracy countries» invented in 1957 by Polish economist Mirosław Orlowski remained relatively obscure. The formation was to embrace Warsaw, Berlin, Budapest, Bucharest, and Prague, and the Czech Republic which, for Orlowski's federation, could be instrumental in gaining control over the Balkan region and the Danube basin, was to serve as the pillar of the whole alliance. The idea likely resonated with the Czech elite but made Moscow suspect that the plan to unite a number of East European countries under an alternative geopolitical umbrella – that of Warsaw or Prague – was an unannounced re-edition of Friedrich Naumann's Mitteleuropa doctrine of 1915. For Naumann, who formulated it as World War I was raging, the obvious motivation was to insulate East Europe from Russia and to spread the German influence over the region. By sending, in 1968, the Warsaw Pact forces (including those of Poland) to Czechoslovakia which was acting with increasing independence vis-a-vis Moscow, the USSR in fact preempted Prague's attempts to build an anti-Soviet bloc in the middle of East Europe.
These days it is an open secret that the Czech Republic which joined NATO, thus took the role of a barrier between West and East Europe and is helping the US implement its colonialist designs. The Czech line of conduct depends entirely on Washington which is comfortable with Prague's and Warsaw's shared leadership in the Visegrád Group, a military-political alliance of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia with a distinct anti-Russian flavor. The Visegrád Group being the geopolitical heart of East Europe, the US is predictably interested in further strengthening the Warsaw-Prague link. The Czech Republic and Poland are used by Washington to keep Moscow and Berlin apart in line with the Anglo-Saxon strategy aimed at suppressing any tendencies towards a Russia-Germany continentalist bloc. Prague is charged with supplying the agenda to the Visegrád Group, and Poland as the country with 27 votes in the Council of Europe and 50 seats in the European parliament (compared to the Czech Republic's 12 and 22) – with drumming up pan-European support for the corresponding initiatives.
Recommendations are also issued to the Czech Republic to cultivate a partnership with Bulgaria and Romania so as to draw them into the process of putting the Visegrád resolutions into practice. Bulgaria pushes for the admission of Serbia and Macedonia to the EU, has considerable sway over the Balkan region, and espouses deeper involvement with Turkey. Romania is hyperactive in the east (in Moldavia and Ukraine), presses for Russia's withdrawal from Transnistria, and enjoys Poland's strong support (Warsaw and Bucharest signed a strategic partnership agreement in 2009).
In the interpretation of US experts, Central and East Europe appears to consist of three macroregions – the East European plane (Poland and the Baltic republics), the Danube basin (Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia, and Slovakia), and the Czech Highlands (the Czech Republic). The East European plane countries – Poland and the Baltic republics - are known to be the least open to dialog with Russia. The Danube basin countries, with the notable exception of Romania which is constantly worried that Russia threatens Bucharest's influence in Europe, are much more prepared to talk to Moscow. As for the Czech Republic, it has a natural border in the form of mountain ridges in the west and in the north and borders with allied countries in the east and in the south. Feeling relatively secure due to the reasons, Prague does not feel directly threatened by Moscow but, being interested in permanent US patronage, synchronizes its policies with Washington's anti-Russian course, building stronger ties with Warsaw being a part of the strategy. The White House also believes that, as the global economic crisis lingers, the Czech Republic should connect economically to Berlin and Paris, particularly in the energy security sphere where the options suggested include the creation of a consultative body charged with the mission of easing Europe's energy dependence on Russia. If implemented, the latter proposal would translate into an impressive Paris-Berlin-Prague-Warsaw geopolitical coalition dominating both West and East Europe, but at the moment the plan essentially remains on paper.
