WARSAW: If someone asked me to point to a decisive factor that helped build democracy and markets in Eastern Europe, I would jab my finger at western blackmail. As a word, "blackmail" may be overwrought, but it strips away cant and makes an underlying issue of today's diplomacy clear. Today's East/West blackmail, however, is of a peculiar sort in that, up to now, it has been accepted willingly by those being blackmailed. Moreover, this acceptance has worked -- for both sides, and nowadays there seems no easy way out from the practice.
WARSAW: If someone asked me to point to a decisive factor that helped build democracy and markets in Eastern Europe, I would jab my finger at western blackmail. As a word, "blackmail" may be overwrought, but it strips away cant and makes an underlying issue of today's diplomacy clear. Today's East/West blackmail, however, is of a peculiar sort in that, up to now, it has been accepted willingly by those being blackmailed. Moreover, this acceptance has worked -- for both sides, and nowadays there seems no easy way out from the practice.