If Poland’s new center-right ruling coalition government
survives its November 10 confidence vote, Radek Sikorski, a
brilliant former Polish deputy defense minister who spent the last
few years serving as the executive director of the New Atlantic
Initiative at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
before returning to Poland where he was elected to its Senate in
recent elections, will head up the country’s defense ministry.
There is little doubt that the charismatic Sikorski will be an
asset to his country. Beyond that, however, it will be useful for
this and future U.S. administrations to have to deal with a man
such as Sikorski: A pro-American leader who understands the
political realities in both countries and wants to create strategic
partnerships, but who is also willing to address the inequity of
recent bargains between the U.S. and Poland, especially, but not
limited to, the downright disgraceful way the American ally and
active participant in the Iraq war was left out of major Iraqi
reconstruction contracts as well as the inexplicable persecution of
Poles seeking U.S. visas. (Both of which the new Polish
government promises to address forthwith.)
When it comes to arenas outside U.S./Polish relations, Sikorski
— who was educated at Oxford and is married to Washington
Post columnist Anne Applebaum — is almost the perfect
combination of pragmatism and idealism. He’s described the UN Human
Rights Commission, for example, as “morally repugnant and
politically counterproductive” and further noted in an AEI
publication that “many of the claims that its enthusiasts make on
behalf of the UN seem to apply not to the organization as it is,
but as it should be.” (For more on that point click here.)
As for the European Union, Sikorski said he believes a looser,
less centralized union would be more effective and fair. In one
interview he noted, “The EU needs to become more transparent, it
needs to become more democratic. It needs to clearly define the
responsibilities of nation-states and of the central E.U.
government. Many people are afraid of ever-closer union, that we
will integrate until we are all identical Europeans. We don’t want
that. Countries should remain independent.”
The appointment of a Reaganite like Sikorski is one of the
bright spots in the cabinet of Prime Minister Kazimierz
Marcinkiewicz, whose Law and Justice Party is something along the
lines of what we in the U.S. might call Buchananite. That is to
say, it is a party held aloft on the dual pillars of a social
conservatism informed by Catholicism and skepticism of free market
reforms that is at times unhealthy. It is this fear primarily that
has prevented a (still possible, if unlikely) power-sharing deal
with the pro-business, flat tax advocating Civic Platform, which
came in a close second in September’s parliamentary elections.
While the rejection of more extensive economic reforms is a bit
disheartening, the presence of Sikorski and other reformers in the
government is cause for optimism. They include Zbigniew Religa, a
heart surgeon hinting at de-socializing elements of the nation’s
health care service and Grazyna Gesicka as the regional development
portfolio holder. In that post Gesicka, a former adviser to the
Civic Platform, will distribute European Union funds.
I met Sikorski briefly last year at the American Foreign Policy
Council’s conference on missile defense, where he spoke eloquently
about the dissonance between the Bush Administration’s professions
of ever-growing partnership with what Donald Rumsfeld termed “New
Europe” and the reality after the war was finished and the
rebuilding contracts were handed out. Sikorski half-joked, “We buy
F-16s and in turn we can send troops to Iraq.”
It might seem a catty remark, but after their participation in
Operation Iraqi Freedom, al-Qaeda began threatening Poland in its
communiques. The EU threatened various retaliations. There was a
price to be paid for standing by America’s side. Imagine what it
must like to be a Pole, watching your government sign on and give
principled support to a war that is exceedingly unpopular on the
continent, only to watch U.S. reconstruction dollars flow
elsewhere. Imagine also how far those dollars would go in Poland.
If the U.S. truly believes in the utility of “New Europe,” it must
show it.
“I believe that what unites Europe and the United States is
still far deeper and far more important than what divides them,”
Sikorski said in testimony before Congress in 2003. “When the two
halves of our Western civilization act in concert, we rule the
world; when we divide, each suffers. It is therefore in the
interest of all our peoples to work for the improvement of our
relations.”
It is important that this alliance is preserved for political
and strategic reasons. There are struggles ahead even the most
prescient among us cannot fathom. Sikorski’s extensive knowledge of
the political milieu of Poland and America will be invaluable in
realigning the relationship between the two into something more
approaching a true alliance. The elevation of Radek Sikorski is
without a doubt the American Enterprise Institute’s loss, but the
world and future’s gain.
