As Obama arrives, Czechs fear appeasement and socialism. [View All]

[denem]

That Big Moment for Czechs? Not So Big

... Czech officials say they are privately praying that Klaus won’t lecture Mr. Obama on how to run the United States economy or offer him his latest book, “Blue Planet in Green Shackles,” which argues that the fight against global warming is a threat to freedom.

Even without the Czech political storm or the indomitable Mr. Klaus, however, the Obama mania evident across the Continent is tempered here. Czechs have looked with growing alarm at what many perceive as Mr. Obama’s forsaking of the free-market principles that this country ardently embraced after decades under Communism ...

Martin Kotas, 34, a bar owner and staunch supporter of Senator John McCain, the former Republican presidential candidate, recalled that he had literally cried into his beer the night Mr. Obama was elected president. “We don’t want to be under the influence of Putin’s Russia and we don’t want socialism,” he said.

Mr. Kotas said he worried that Mr. Obama, after completing a review of American security policy, would abandon plans to install a missile-defense radar system in the Czech Republic. The proposed system has polarized Czech society, but many nevertheless view it as an essential bulwark against Russia.

“I am worried that people are projecting all of their hopes onto Obama, that they are hypnotized by him,” Mr. Kotas said. His overriding fear, he added, was that Mr. Obama would “lead the world on a path of appeasement.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/world/europe/04czech.html?_r=1