How We Lobbied for NATO

Peter Bisek, AFoCR’s Director Emeritus, published an article in the Czech daily Lidove noviny describing the role his newspaper, Americke listy, and AFoCR played in supporting the expansion of NATO.

The following is a translation of the article published on March 12, 2024.

For me, the whole process began in 1995 in a conference room in a hotel in Cleveland, where President Bill Clinton invited publishers and editors-in-chief of American ethnic newspapers of former Soviet satellites. A dozen of us gathered. Quite by chance, I was sitting directly across the table from President Clinton and was the first to ask him the question: "Mr. President, what are you going to do about the power vacuum in Central Europe?" President Clinton reacted somewhat angrily with words to the effect of, "there is no power vacuum in that region!". Of course, the process of expanding NATO to Central Europe was apparently already underway.

(I have an audiotape of my exchange with President Clinton in one of the boxes in my daughter Veronica's garage on Long Island.)

In April 1990, we started publishing Czechoslovak Weekly, later renamed Americké Listy, in New York. By the mid-1990s, we already had a solid reputation, not just among our readers. It was extremely useful in the process of lobbying for the NATO expansion to include the countries of Central Europe.

Supporting the entry of the Czech Republic into NATO was a simple decision. It would be ideal if NATO was dissolved in parallel with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, but in the real world this would be suicidal. Today it is clearer than a cloudless sky. President Václav Havel, who was a moral beacon for me in many ways, was clear about this.

How to do it? Václav Havel is for NATO, I am for NATO. Do I have the courage to test the power of my new medium?

No formal experience in lobbying, short for time and money – at the same time I was coaching junior rowers. But, with the help of Peter Rafaeli, director of the just-born organization American Friends of the Czech Republic (AFoCR), graphic artist Oldřich Holubář and printer Bill Citterbart, I launched a campaign that, according to the words of the then Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US Senate, Jesse Helms, was more professional and efficient than Polish and Hungarian combined. Undoubtedly, the greatest credit for the accelerated acceptance of the Czech Republic into NATO goes to the US Secretary of State Mrs. Madeleine Albright. The already mentioned AFoCR and other expatriate associations, such as the Boston Masaryk Club and others, joined the lobbying.

First, we – Americké Listy – informed our readers about NATO with a series of articles. Then we sent them a survey card with a number of questions related not only to NATO, but also to visa-free relations between the USA and the Czech Republic, dual citizenship, restitution of assets, etc. The card was sent out with prepaid return mail, which ensured a large participation in this survey. I was amazed at the honesty of our readers, when, for example, one person admitted that he had four citizenships, including Czech and American. And he signed the card legibly.

And then came the main thing – a four-page pamphlet on NATO. Peter Rafaeli not only wrote a history of NATO, but also prepared a detailed list of all US senators, their names, work and email addresses, phone numbers, and in addition divided them into three groups: those in favor of NATO expansion, those against and most importantly those undecided, so that our readers would know who to focus on. I secured a greeting letter from Václav Havel, Oldřich Holubář sketched the two-color brochure graphically, I combined it all as best as possible in our typographic studio Typrints Company, and Bill Citterbart printed it for free on high-quality paper in his print shop. Postage? No grant, no subsidies, all from our own resources.

In retrospect, I am still amazed at how we managed something so new and unexpected so brilliantly. No egos among us, no jealousy and competition, who is better, smarter, more hardworking, more patriotic. The goal was clear – to make it as easy as possible for our readers to get involved so they could and wanted to pressure their senators. The result was great, a good thing succeeded.

During his state visit in Washington, DC in September 1998, at the Library of Congress President Václav Havel awarded me the Medal of Merit, 1st Order.

Peter M. Bisek

1990-2010 Publisher of Americké Listy (1990-97 as Czechoslovak Weekly)

1998 Medal of Merit, 1st Order (from President Václav Havel, for lobbying for the accelerated admission of the Czech Republic to NATO)

2005 Gratias agit (“For Spreading the Good Word of the Czech Republic Abroad, from Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda)

2010 Memorial Medal of the Chairman of the Senate of the Czech Republic (Přemysl Sobotka)

NATO Commemorative Medal

Ján Papánek Medal for Human Rights

Director Emeritus of the American Friends of the Czech Republic

Praha-Kobylisy, March 12, 2024