A Faustian Bargain: US Clients in the ‘New Europe’ and Regime Change Wars.

This article investigates the performance of Poland and the Czech Republic in the US-led regime change wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The article indicates a significant gap between the Czech and Polish discourses and practices related to the two countries' contributions. In the two crises, discourses revolved around the notion of universal values and support for legal and legitimate peace support operations mandated by the UN. But the practices did not match those discourses and were actually driven by the beliefs that form the Atlanticist ideology. The article analyses the successful internalization of US discourses and threat perception in Poland and the Czech Republic through the use of ‘cascade argumentation’. The practical results of this internalization are then examined. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]