No Joke
KAMINSKI, MATTHEW
No Joke Poland is our best friend in Europe. BY MATTHEW KAMINSKI Brussek WHEN EUROPE THREW a big party in Copenhagen in December, Poland nearly spoiled the fun. unhappy with the membership terms...
...Ten million Polish Americans strengthen the bond...
...Far from widening the transAtlantic gulf, the enlargement of the E.U...
...members, only Poland—the most pro-American of the lot—has any strategic weight...
...to 25 countries and 445 million people (up from 15 countries and 378 million people today) might just make Europe better able to stand up to America in world affairs...
...On January 14, France and Germany (a.k.a...
...Inside NATO, the Poles are staunch defenders of the alliance and generally support military engagements abroad...
...So the debate over a divergence in "values" between Europe and America sounds baffling from Warsaw...
...The E.U...
...The Bosnian war remains a useful reminder that Brussels, Paris, and even London haven't yet proven themselves mature enough to look after their messy continent without U.S...
...A former sports minister in the Communist era and a savvy politician, Kwasniewski knows polls show the Poles to be among the most pro-American of nations...
...May be they're right...
...For now, the biggest question mark is whether Poland can get its domestic house in order...
...intervention against "rogue regimes," as well as its skepticism about a common European foreign policy and the E.U.'s military ambitions, will have an impact...
...During the drawn-out negotiations over membership, French president Jacques Chirac pointedly warned Polish foreign minister Bronislaw Geremek that Poland better not be the "American Trojan horse in Europe" or Paris might veto its accession (as de Gaulle once did Britain's...
...operatives out of Iraq (a story later made into a hit Polish film...
...The Europeans aren't the easiest allies...
...Polish prime minister Leszek Miller, a veteran of one of his country's last Communist governments, thanked native son Pope John Paul II for getting Poland into "Europe...
...Through NATO and in many other ways, the United States is a European power...
...The coming expansion of the E.U...
...But the relationship with America is sacred...
...For half a century, building Europe was about burying World War II and nudging France and Germany to get along...
...The theatrics in Copenhagen may be a foretaste of things to come in the expanded Europe...
...in 2004, Warsaw will need savvy diplomacy...
...The pique in Paris, however, was mostly for show...
...The incoming members had markedly different formative years...
...Germany's foreign minister Joschka Fischer and the E.U.'s foreign policy chief Javier Solana spent their youth protesting against America rather than feeling grateful for its role in ending the war and rebuilding Europe...
...To succeed in doing this after its accession to the E.U...
...The Poles can be a westward bridge and a good example for these and other former Soviet countries toward which the E.U...
...It's a deeply worrying prospect for the euro-nationalists...
...said a scandalized Serge Dassault, whose French concern, Dassault Aviation, lost out...
...There, America's "values" aren't rejected...
...At their White House meeting, President Bush said, "I have got no better friend in Europe today...
...At the moment, the most encouraging sign is an ambiguous one: No country has provoked so much grumbling in Brussels since Margaret Thatcher lived at 10 Downing Street...
...Fringe parties are growing more popular...
...And in a wider Europe, Poland will have potentially broad influence...
...After the jet sale, Kwasniewski went to Washington for the second time in six months...
...The link with the United States can help...
...Poland, the most important of the incoming members, with its 40 million people and strategic location on the E.U.'s future eastern frontier, is washington's closest ally on the Continent...
...Less than a year after communism fell, on the eve of the first Gulf War, Polish special forces spirited six U.S...
...While the jets will help Poland take a bigger role in NATO and any other U.S.-led coalition—the Poles, unlike the Germans, say they're ready to serve in Iraq—the planes were meant to send a clear signal...
...And while many different camps have a say in the often tedious debate over Europe's future, most are still tempted to define Europe against America, as in de Gaulle's day, and to see their values or interests as divergent...
...Only a few weeks after Copenhagen, warsaw bought 48 F-16 fighters from Lockheed Martin for $3.8 billion, snubbing two European offers...
...The farmers are hungry for subsidies that Brussels doesn't want to give...
...be up and running this year...
...The E.U...
...help...
...The national mythology touts self-sacrifice on behalf of the West against a Barbaric East, going back to the defense of Vienna against the Turks, the Polish army's victory against the Bolsheviks in 1920, and the Polish air force's role in the defense of London in World War II...
...And there's a better reason to welcome not only the Poles but the other East Europeans into the E.U...
...Some in the Brussels press corps casually refer to Poland as a "Fifth Column...
...Leave aside Poland's stagnant economy, its dangerous populists, and its corruption scandals...
...Its support for NATO and for U.S...
...The recession is hurting...
...The Balkans aren't that different from Bulgaria or Poland...
...Polish president Aleksander Kwas-niewski didn't seem to care about French feelings...
...And of the 10 incoming E.U...
...The E.U.'s constitutional convention, now underway in Brussels, aims to strengthen the common foreign policy after Europe's failure to stand up to America on Iraq, Kyoto, and the international criminal court...
...concern...
...For three days, his newspaper, the Paris daily Le Figaro, ran letters from readers calling the Poles ingrates and bad Europeans...
...These countries know it wasn't Germany or France that brought down the Soviet empire or that championed their entry into NATO and the E.U...
...a stronger voice, and a week later Paris sided with Germany's pacifistic stance on war with Iraq...
...should change the tenor and substance of relations for the better— as long as the United States retains its leadership role in NATO, and the newcomers master the rules of the E.U.'s sometimes bizarre political game...
...American diplomats and visiting congressmen, for their part, hope Poland, once inside the E.U., can assist in resolving nasty trade disputes...
...Poland's special forces unit, GROM, a standout in an outmoded military, was also deployed in Haiti in 1994...
...Poland is a pain because its heart isn't in Europe but across the Atlantic...
...A European military force will Matthew Kaminski is an editorial page writer for the Wall Street Journal Europe...
...The French, like the Poles, had known all along that the biggest military tender ever in the former warsaw Pact would go to a U.S...
...may hold the ticket to First World living standards, but America's "moralistic" foreign policy has more appeal to Poles than European realpolitik...
...Their eastern neighbors include Ukraine, which allegedly sells radar systems to Saddam Hussein, and Belarus, whose president is Europe's last dictator and another Saddam pal...
...With Europe, you have to talk and be on good terms," says Tomasz Lis, anchor of Poland's most-watched evening news show, Fakty...
...France and Britain failed Poland in 1939, and again at Yalta (while many Poles rationalize American complicity in the division of Europe, saying Stalin manipulated a frail FDR...
...A decade ago, the Europeans stood by as the Balkans descended into war, less than an hour's flight from Vienna...
...but in the Balkans and Afghanistan, they run the peacekeeping operations...
...An early post-Communist dose of "shock therapy" sparked an economic boom in the 1990s, but reform has stalled...
...From the Polish perspective, the attraction needs no explanation...
...Congress gave Poland a favorable loan to cover the purchase, and Lockheed Martin threw in more goodies, including about $10 billion of "offset" investments, than either of the European concerns could muster...
...The current crop of Western European leaders don't have the war to guide them: Gerhard Schroder, ousting Helmut Kohl in 1998, said Germany needed to free itself from its past...
...But there's a hitch...
...unhappy with the membership terms offered by the European Union, the Poles held out for a few extra billion euros, knowing full well the "historic" enlargement jamboree couldn't take place without the biggest of the Central European candidates...
...Poland needs to be a success story to matter in Europe...
...Old Europe) backed the creation of the post of European president, in part to give the E.U...
...And they sit on a still fragile frontier...
...They're still grateful to Washington for getting Poland into NATO—and ambivalent about the economic costs of joining the E.U...
...This eagerness to prove themselves good allies no doubt helped the Poles' cause at NATO and served their narrow national interest...
...As a thank-you present for entry into Europe, what a success...
...Soviet tyranny ended only a dozen years ago...
...has no coherent policy...
...But it also serves America...
...caved and put up extra cash, securing the claim to have "reunified Europe" and "buried Yalta...
...Not since Britain joined in 1973 has the old guard in Paris, Berlin, and Brussels been so uneasy about a new member...
Vol. 8 • February 2003 • No. 20
