US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo wound up his tour of several European countries on Friday. In five days, he visited Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Belgium and Iceland. Though the visits of State Secretary to the US NATO allies Belgium and Iceland were merely formal, it is worth going into specifics of Pompeo’s visits to Hungary, Slovakia and Poland.  

The idea of fortifying the North Atlantic alliance amid the ‘mounting threat’ coming from Russia and China has become a certain ‘common denominator’ of the American top diplomat’s trip across the European continent, the first after the announced withdrawal of the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

Prior to Mike Pompeo’s European tour, a high-ranked official from the US administration, who did not want to be identified, admitted in an interview with Bloomberg agency that the lack of Washington’s involvement in the problems of the region had ‘created vacuums’ in the relations with European states. It comes as little wonder since US state secretaries have not visited Hungary since 2011, while such visits to Slovakia have not been paid for the past 20 years.

In this respect, one of the primary aims of the American State Secretary’s visit to Budapest, Bratislava and Warsaw should have been regaining the influence of the US on NATO’s eastern flank, as well as an attempt to diminish the economic influence of Russia and China in Europe in general, and in Eastern Europe in particular. Specifically, the United States is willing to squeeze Russia out from the gas market, whereas China has been quite actively working recently with those countries in the ‘One Belt One Road’ project, which Washington is trying to scuttle through every possible means.

Finding answers to those problems is going to be a tall order, especially given a raft of discrepancies between Washington and Hungary, Slovakia and Poland brought to light during Pompeo’s stay in those countries. It is no coincidence that considering the situation in all three countries, Ishaan Tharoor, an observer at The Washington Post, branded Pompeo’s trip as a “divisive march.”

It was particularly notable when US Secretary of State visited Budapest. Prior to his trip to that country, Washington made no secret of the fact that one of Pompeo’s foremost goals was to compel the Hungarian leadership to abandon participation in the Turkish Stream gas pipeline project and invest in completion of the project to build an LNG terminal on the Croatian island of Krk blatantly promoted by the United States. But obviously, Pompeo’s core task was to convince the Hungarian authorities of the danger of Budapest’s engagement in the Russian sphere of influence. Washington is not happy about the contacts of the country’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

However, the US State Secretary encountered substantial resistance via Hungary’s leadership as Pompeo was put on notice in Budapest that here Moscow is considered more an economic partner, rather than a threat to the country’s security. The position of Budapest is perfectly natural, since Russian gas is supplied to Hungary mainly through Ukraine, and taking into account Gazprom’s plans to drastically curtail Ukrainian gas transit, virtually has no alternatives to receiving gas from Turkish Stream. It appears that all Pompeo’s attempts to force Budapest to abandon using that project have yielded no results.

At any rate, the joint press conference of Mike Pompeo with Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto unraveled stark divisions particularly on that issue in the first place. The minister billed as “enormous hypocrisy” the policy of western states that continue their energy cooperation with Russia, concurrently criticizing it. Presumably, that was supposed to concern the United States as well.

There is also some strong disagreement between Budapest and Washington regarding the issue of Ukraine’s NATO membership. It bears reminding that earlier Hungary repeatedly blocked holding the Ukraine-NATO commission showing dissent at the education law passed by the Ukrainian authorities, which the Hungarian side views as discriminative towards ethnic minorities. PM Orban makes little secret of his reluctance to interact with the present Ukrainian authorities and is skeptical about the prospects of Kiev’s NATO accession, which today’s Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has already announced as his top priority in case he is re-elected for a second term.

The relations between the US and Slovakia, the second country Mike Pompeo visited while on tour, seem to have no serious irritants. The leadership of that country is more friendly to the United States, and criticizes Russia at times, which particularly pleases politicians in Washington. However, all is not right with the relations of that country with the US and EU states either. For example, Washington is very jealous of the growing influence of China in Slovakia, and, particularly, of the expansion of Huawei Technologies that is the world’s biggest producer of telecommunications facilities as of today, in the country.

There are frictions in other areas as well. For instance, Washington and Brussels have fired broadside at Bratislava recently due to the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak who investigated the connections of government officials with the international mafia. The US is fond of criticizing other countries for failure to respect human rights, and Slovakia is no exception in this respect.

Poland, the country considered ‘the most pro-American’ in the Old Continent, was the last stop of Mike Pompeo’s trip across Central and Eastern European countries. It is common knowledge that Poland remains to be one of the most fervent supporters of anti-Russia economic sanctions, though it is worth noting that they are not good news for it itself. But that aspect of Warsaw’s foreign policy makes Washington quite happy.

The key event of Pompeo’s visit to Poland was the participation of State Secretary in the Middle East Conference in Warsaw on February 13-14, where US Vice President Mike Pence, Donald Trump’s senior adviser (and son-in-law) Jared Kushner, as well as Washington’s Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt joined him. Initially the United States planned to gather a coalition against Iran at that conference. However, Washington failed to obstruct Tehran at the Warsaw conference, since many countries were simply opposed to worsening the relationship with Iran. By the way, the position of Poland itself towards Tehran is quite vague, as Warsaw has maintained fairly reliable political and economic contacts with Iran since the times of the People’s Republic of Poland.

In that question, the US can offer a certain compromise to Poland, as the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita reports: Warsaw drops close ties with Tehran, same as with the People’s Republic of China, while in return Washington can consider the possibility of deploying a permanent military base in that country already this spring, which the Polish side has been striving for. Notably, at the Poland’s expense. So far, that issue is ‘up in the air’, since Donald Trump’s administration is extremely angry with the fact that Warsaw adopted amendments to the law on the Institute of National Remembrance at the end of last year. The US interprets the ban to call Poland responsible for the Nazi crimes on its territory and use the term ‘Polish concentration camps’ almost as an attempt to deny the Holocaust during the Second World War.

Despite all Warsaw’s efforts, it has never managed to conciliate the White House, which is uncompromising regarding that issue, hence Poland, ‘the most pro-American’ state in Europe, apparently has quite a few divisions with the United States. For this reason, Warsaw is unlikely to become the main advocate of Washington in the European Union in the near future, to replace Britain, which is rushing out of it.

It stands to reason that during his recent visit to Central and Eastern European countries, US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo wanted to ‘drive a wedge’ into the growing cooperation between Russia and the countries of that region, though against all the odds he did not fully succeed. Appearances are that today the ‘new Europe’ wants a new life as well, clear of Washington’s interference into its internal affairs.