On the Scene: Atlantic Celebration

THE Congress of Prague convened on May 10 in Hradcany Castle, the city’s spectacular sixteenth-century citadel, in the ornate gallery of Emperor Rudolf II. The buzzing of conversation was interrupted by the blaring of a trumpet fanfare, as in walked Czech President Vaclav Havel leading a procession of dignitaries including Margaret Thatcher, Karel Schwarzenberg of the Bohemia Foundation, former U.S. Ambassador Edward Streator, and NR editor John O’Sullivan. Havel, the playwright and political prisoner turned statesman, marched with the diffident air of a man who still pinched himself every morning at the wonder of where he had ended up (though he did not appear so diffident, or so surprised, as John O’Sullivan).

Both Havel, in his eloquent keynote speech, and Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus the next day sounded a warning to the gathering. There are external dangers facing the Western democracies, Klaus said, but they are less dangerous than our own deficiencies. Among these he listed isolationist and protectionist tendencies in both Western Europe and America, a nostalgia for statist solutions to social problems, and a hesitation about consolidating Central Europe’s place in the Western family.

PW

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Peter W. Rodman

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THE Congress of Prague convened on May 10 in Hradcany Castle, the city’s spectacular sixteenth-century citadel, in the ornate gallery of Emperor Rudolf II. The buzzing of conversation was interrupted by the blaring of a trumpet fanfare, as in walked Czech President Vaclav Havel leading a procession of dignitaries including Margaret Thatcher, Karel Schwarzenberg of the Bohemia Foundation, former U.S. Ambassador Edward Streator, and NR editor John O’Sullivan. Havel, the playwright and political prisoner turned statesman, marched with the diffident air of a man who still pinched himself every morning at the wonder of where he had ended up (though he did not appear so diffident, or so surprised, as John O’Sullivan).

Both Havel, in his eloquent keynote speech, and Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus the next day sounded a warning to the gathering. There are external dangers facing the Western democracies, Klaus said, but they are less dangerous than our own deficiencies. Among these he listed isolationist and protectionist tendencies in both Western Europe and America, a nostalgia for statist solutions to social problems, and a hesitation about consolidating Central Europe’s place in the Western family.