REALPOLITIK IN POLAND
Radoslaw Sikorski’s star is rising
KYIV, UKRAINE— Andrei Deshchytsia, foreign minister in Ukraine’s transitional government, taps the note cards on the table in front of him and begins to speak. He is nervous, his “th” in English sounds more like a D and his Rs roll a bit too much. But his words are polite: he says it is good to have a neighbour who “understands us.” Seated across from him is his Polish counterpart, Radoslaw Sikorski. He waits patiently until his Ukrainian colleague is finished, before quoting an old Polish proverb: “Only in poverty do you realize who your true friends are.” Poland is Ukraine’s friend, he says, before adding: “We are strategic partners.” The foreign minister from Warsaw is everything Deshchytsia is not. Sikorski speaks perfect English. And he knows exactly what he wants. Kyiv, he says, must push through reforms, battle corruption, improve control of its borders and do everything in its power to stop the bloodshed in eastern Ukraine. And, he demands, the Ukrainian government should finally eliminate import quotas for Polish products. Married to American journalist Anne Applebaum, Sikorski, 51, has led the Polish Foreign Ministry since 2007. But his role in the European Union and its relations with its eastern neighbours has become much more crucial. Europe’s history, he warned before anyone else, would be decided in Ukraine. At the time, nobody listened: not the French, who were more interested in the Mediterranean, and not the Germans, who were blinded by their efforts to maintain positive relations with the Russians. But Sikorski was right. And now, this man wants to prevent a neo-Soviet shadow from being cast across Eastern Europe. In recent weeks, he has shuttled between Brussels, Berlin, Warsaw and Kyiv, often accompanied by his German and French counterparts, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Laurent Fabius. In February, the trio mediated between Maidan protesters and the regime of ousted president Viktor Yanukovych. It was a successful visit, with Sikorski helping to hammer out a compromise aimed at ending the chaos in the Ukrainian capital — only to watch it all fall apart within 24 hours. Many Poles are pleased by their foreign minister’s decisiveness in the crisis. The Warsaw-based magazine Newsweek Polska said Poland is finally pursuing realpolitik in Europe. Sikorski’s predecessors, the publication wrote, always played the victim. Though perhaps Sikorski’s timing helped: he came into office just as the wounds of the Iron Curtain were finally fading. Poland became a member of NATO in 1999, and joined the EU in 2004. Sikorski became involved in the anti-communist resistance as early as grade school. When the country’s communist leaders in 1981 quashed Solidarnosc (Solidarity), imposed martial law and arrested thousands, Sikorski was in Great Britain. He stayed there, going on to study philosophy, political science and economics at Oxford. After earning his degree, he worked as a journalist, reporting for British magazines and newspapers from Afghanistan, where he spent months accompanying the mujahedeen in their fight against the Soviet army. He won a World Press Photo award for one of the images he took. Soon, though, merely writing about world events wasn’t enough. In the 1990s, Sikorski entered politics and became deputy defence minister. An early goal was ensuring that Poland would not be a second-class member of the NATO alliance. He was particularly bothered that the trans-Atlantic alliance did not maintain a base on Polish territory, yet the country’s military was nonetheless expected to contribute to foreign missions such as the one in Yugoslavia. It is an issue that still bothers him today. NATO, he says, “has grossly neglected its eastern flank,” he said recently. Because the alliance was wary of offending Russian sensibilities, it refrained from establishing bases in Poland or the Baltic states.
“The Red Army was deterred by a large number of American soldiers, weapons, tanks and nuclear weapons. Diplomacy had nothing to do with it.” This comes not from Sikorski, but from his wife, Anne Applebaum, writing in Germany’s Die Welt newspaper.
Applebaum is a critically acclaimed expert on Soviet history and received the Pulitzer Prize for her book The Gulag. Her most recent, The Iron Curtain, describes the early era of the Eastern Bloc and the methods employed by totalitarian systems.
Applebaum believes the Iron Curtain only fell because the West ultimately proved to be militarily stronger than the East. It’s an estimation shared by her husband.
The couple first met in 1989. Sikorski had just returned to Poland and on Nov. 10, the two found themselves waiting for a scheduled press conference by German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Warsaw. But with East Germany having opened the Wall the night before, Kohl immediately returned to Berlin.
Sikorski and Applebaum, both journalists, waited in vain before deciding to drive together to the German capital. “We spent nine hours on bad roads in my unbelievably small Daihatsu,” Applebaum recalls.
Since then, the two have become something of a Camelot story in Polish politics. They have two children and live on a farm near Bydgoszcz, one of Poland’s most important industrial centres.
The white mansion has columns at the front entrance and is surrounded by a park. In Poland, Applebaum is better known for a cookbook of her favourite Polish dishes than for her political work.
“Only in poverty do you realize who your true friends are.” RADOSLAW SIKORSKI POLAND’S FOREIGN MINISTER, QUOTING AN OLD POLISH PROVERB
Sikorski sees his future at the head of a top international institution. He wouldn’t say no, for example, to the post of NATO secretary general — and his prospects aren’t bad.
Though Jens Stoltenberg, the former Norwegian prime minister, was recently tapped to take over the NATO leadership later this year, Sikorski could generate significant support five years from now.
There are some who believe it is time for an Eastern European to take the helm. It is also likely that Sikorski would be a candidate palatable to the Americans. From 2002 to 2005, he served as the director of Washington’s American Enterprise Institute, one of the American conservatives’ most important think tanks.
But Sikorski is no blind supporter of the U.S. Right at the start of his term as foreign minister, he declared that Washington had provided Poland with too little in return for its participation in Iraq, where Warsaw had been responsible for its own zone. He also criticized President Barack Obama for abandoning American plans for a missile defence system in Eastern Europe.
Back in Kyiv, though, the focus is on a different danger, and once again Sikorski has been called in to mediate. During a recent visit to the Ukrainian capital, his convoy rushed past Independence Square. Heavily armed police guarded the area around the presidential palace; in front of the building, a few hundred people could be seen protesting. They waved Ukrainian flags and demanded that the West not abandon their country.
Sikorski climbed out of his sedan, waved and climbed the stairs. If it wasn’t already clear then, it certainly is now: Poland has firmly become a part of the West.