A tale of two Vaclavs.

• Author: Kraus, Michael
• Position: Letter from Prague

"Which is the most neutral country in the world? Czechoslovakia. It refuses to intervene even in its own internal affairs." So went an anecdote I heard twenty years ago in communist-era Prague. But now it is June 2007. The Czechs joined NATO in 1999 and the EU in 2004, and President George W. Bush has visited Prague to make his case for the U.S.-built anti-missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland to be built by 2012 to cope with threats from rogue states such as Iran. Formal bilateral negotiations are only just beginning; it remains unclear whether this anti-ballistic system can work or how it relates to NATO's plans or whether the U.S. Congress will actually fund it. But none of those uncertainties forestalled Russia's President Vladimir Putin from threatening to put those two central European facilities in the cross-hairs of Russian nuclear missiles. How popular is the shield in the Czech Republic? The center-right Czech coalition government, headed by Mirek Topolanek of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), says it wants it. But for months, Czech public opinion has run about two-to-one in opposition to the shield, with 10 percent undecided.

The previous Czech government (2002-2006), a left-center coalition dominated by the Social Democrats and their leader, Jiri Paroubek, held a series of meetings with the Bush administration regarding the missile shield. These meetings were merely exploratory, and the government kept rather mum about them, so the anti-missile shield issue in fact did not enter last year's election campaign.

In bitterly contested elections in June 2006, the ODS narrowly edged out the Social Democrats, by such a slim margin that it took seven months, until January 2007, for the new coalition to win a parliamentary vote of confidence. It took so long, at least in part, because two potential coalitions were neck and neck, each with nearly half the 200-seat Chamber of Deputies. One group compromising the ODS, Christian Democrats and Greens finally succeeded in forming a government under Prime Minister Topolanek. The winning coalition had said in the campaign that it was willing to consider the U.S. proposal; the losing one, making up the opposition, comprises the Communists and Paroubek's Social Democrats. The Social Democrats are willing to consider the proposal provided that it is endorsed by NATO and approved by referendum in the Czech Republic.

Given the shape of public opinion, their position is not very different from that of the Communists, who oppose it outright. The Greens, who are divided about the issue, obtained 6.3 percent of the popular vote, entering government for the first time. That they narrowly beat the five percent minimum threshold for parliamentary representation was due to Vaclav Havel, who publicly endorsed the Greens before the elections. While in office, Havel had shied away from formally backing a political party. But this time, his best-selling book, To the Castle and Back, when it was published last year, was marketed with a green jacket inviting his numerous readers to vote Green.

The "other Vaclav"--Vaclav Klaus, who succeeded Havel as president in 2003--was the founder and is today the...