In a compelling rebuttal to Viktor Orbán’s anti-Western rhetoric, Radosław Sikorski draws a sharp comparison: ‘We wouldn’t allow Chinese policemen to patrol the streets of Warsaw.’ With a touch of irony, he emphasises that perceptions of sovereignty vary widely, even among leaders like Orbán.
On 26 July, Visegrad Insight sat down with the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs to delve into European perspectives, peace prospects, the new transatlantic strategic communication initiative proposed by Poland in the EU and the resilience of Central and Eastern European alliances.
Wojciech Przybylski: Is this a good time for Poland? In 2008, a financial crisis erupted around the world. Against this background, Poland was then described as a ‘green island’. Now, against what Donald Tusk describes as a pre-war situation, Poland is again emerging as a country different from others in Europe.
Radosław Sikorski: I believe that in the field of security and defence Poland is a supra-regional leader. But it is, of course, wrong that one of our neighbours has invaded another of our neighbours.
How do we make the most of the time we have?
First of all, the armed forces and the whole security system should be modernised. We are also building deeper alliances in our region because we are finding out who we can count on in times of need. This is particularly the case for Ukraine, of course.
Our economy continues to grow. Several countries are debating whether Poland can overtake them—in countries that have traditionally been much wealthier than us. However, one must never rest on one’s laurels; we have structural weaknesses.
Margaret Thatcher once remarked that through the period of the peace dividend in Europe, there was also a relaxation in arms spending. George Bush senior spoke of wanting a whole and free Europe. Does Europe still have a chance of achieving that?
Poland took advantage of the historical window that opened after the collapse of the Soviet Union because we knew that it would not be open forever. We entered Western institutions, which cannot be said of all our neighbours. Thanks to this, today, we have American troops in Poland, the missile defence shield and the sacred oaths of Western leaders that they will fight for every inch of NATO land, and thus also Polish land.
Poland did not use this peace dividend for very long. I would remind you that it was under the Solidarity Electoral Action government (1997-2001) with Defence Minister Bronisław Komorowski that we introduced a law requiring the state to give the military two per cent of GDP as funding when others were spending half of that.
However, the West, and Europe in particular, did not just use the peace dividend for too long; we also allowed for the deindustrialisation of defence, which we now see as very difficult to bring back up to speed.
Let us now turn to the enlargement of the European Union. Isn’t it the case that the OSCE no longer fulfils its objectives since Russia annulled the Helsinki agreement, and the only instruments for peace-building on the continent today are the European Union and possibly NATO? Is this now what we should be saying to the Ukrainians in particular, that we should, therefore, consistently strive for enlargement?
I agree with your conclusion, but let’s stop at the original thesis. Where did the OSCE come from? As you say, from the Helsinki process. What was it about? In the simplest terms, the communist bloc of the time committed itself to respecting human rights and tolerating the opposition, and the Western world committed itself to recognising the borders established as a result of the Second World War, which did not end in a peace treaty.
Modern Russia has broken both of these commitments, as it has introduced a much more authoritarian regime and has more political prisoners than under Brezhnev. At the same time, it has started to change borders by force. The OSCE was an idea to stabilise security in Europe with Russia’s participation. For many years and decades, the OSCE liked Russia because Russia had a veto right in it. However, by now, it has violated all assumptions and principles – the UN Charter and the OSCE, which was practically created on its initiative.
This brings us to your rightful conclusion that, with Russia, as she is today, peace cannot be brokered because she wants to profit from aggression. Therefore, responding to this with force and not with concessions is necessary.
How, then, can we talk about peace? Because our aim is peace in Europe…
But Putin’s goal is peace as well—only that it be on his terms, that is, as a result of the capitulation of at least Ukraine and preferably the entire West. There are three answers to this. One can capitulate, repel the aggressor, or at least strengthen the victim so that the aggressor himself gives up.
Regarding strategic communication, Orbán and Putin seem to lead the narrative…
I disagree. Here, in Western Europe, political elites’ consciousness is being de-Russified. No one talks about transformation through trade anymore.
Where we have not won the war of arguments is the so-called global south, even though we have good arguments that it is a colonial war. Asia, Africa, and Latin America know what colonial war means. We need to show that colonialism was also practised by some white people against other white people, which is something that should not be so difficult for us Poles or Irish people to articulate. This is our Polish message, as well as the Polish-Western and Polish-American messages: the times of European colonialism are over, and no one should support the restoration of the Russian empire.
I said this to my Chinese counterpart in almost all of these words. China, after all, was a victim of the unequal treaties imposed in the 19th century by Tsarist Russia. Tsarist Russia colonised it at the same time as we were. Our ideas will finally break through.
Do you think Viktor Orbán’s recent trips to Xi Jinping and Putin are not such a problem?
I want to see the effects of these endeavours – ‘you will know them by their fruits.’ Of course, the Hungarian prime minister’s PR credentials have grown. Still, at the last FAC [Foreign Affairs Council] of the European Union, for example, Hungary did not have support for its position. What is more, they appear isolated when it is they who are asking for solidarity from Europe on the issue of oil supplies. They do not receive this solidarity because it is difficult to win friends if someone exudes selfishness.
There was also a discussion about where one of the Foreign Affairs Council meetings during the Hungarian Presidency should be held: whether in Budapest or in Brussels. I proposed as a compromise that it be held in Ukraine – either Lviv or even Mukachevo – which, at first, was met with enthusiasm by the Hungarian Foreign Minister. And let me remind you that the precedent was already set two years ago when this council meeting was held in Kyiv. However, during our meeting, the Hungarian minister seemed to receive other instructions from the capital and ultimately had to veto the proposal. He was left alone. So I don’t see how this Hungarian symmetry – situating itself between Moscow and Brussels – increases Hungary’s leverage. Instead, it irritates everyone else.
…and they limit sovereignty because Hungarians are wading into dependence on autocratic states.
We wouldn’t allow Chinese policemen to patrol the streets of Warsaw, but everyone perceives their sovereignty as they see fit.
During the FAC, Poland presented its concept of strategic transatlantic communication. What needs to change in the European Union for such strategic communication to bear fruit and for us to be taken seriously?
This is just a sharpening of what we are already doing. I think we are at such a unique moment when we have an important and interesting thing to say to those still unconvinced Americans who may not have been reached that it is the European Union that is spending more to help Ukraine and that the Member States have increased their defence spending and that we are no longer a stowaway.
We cooperate closely with the United States in matters of controlling the flow of technology, investment, or goods, for example, in the EU-US Trade and Technology Council. With these views in mind, the allies are not some kind of burden for the United States; they are just a necessary lever.
Do the EU’s partners in the European Union understand this? During your speech at the American Enterprise Institute, you declared that we are ready to spend more than four per cent of GDP on defence even in the following years. And in the European Union, they ask us where we get the money for this. At the same time, we want it to be a joint European debt to finance this expenditure.
Yes, I think it would be fairer that way. The flanking countries, which are also poorer, should not be that they finance the defence of the wealthier countries. If we agree that Putin is a threat to the whole of Europe because he sends death squads all over Europe, he recruits arsonists who cause destruction all over Europe; he attacks cybernetic networks, he threatens nuclear weapons, he uses energy blackmail, he sends refugees who move, after all, not just to Poland, but further afield, in other words, if this is a common threat, then the funding of measures to counter this threat should also be shared. Hence, my efforts, both in my previous role as an MEP and now, are to increase the European Peace Facility. As the name suggests, this is the European Union’s defence budget, which we finance in proportion to GDP. Hungary’s blocking of payments from this fund for the modernisation of the armed forces, therefore, arouses widespread irritation.
I have one more question regarding America. The US administration website reports a 131 billion dollar trade deficit with the European Union.
I hope someone will finally explain to one of the candidates that the trade deficit in tangible goods is one thing, and the gigantic surplus in trade in services is two. Europe doesn’t have platforms like Facebook, Google or Apple. If you balance this out, we are ideally compatible, so panic is unnecessary. There is nothing to accuse each other of but to continue the greatest family of joint investment, joint job creation and compatible standards. There is nothing to demonise each other with here.
We are talking about Polish defence spending. But who in the European Union would you most urge to increase defence spending?
At the recent NATO summit, we finally established that 23 of the 32 members will dedicate two per cent of their budget to military funding this year. However, that two per cent was supposed to be a peacetime baseline as recommended by NATO at the 2014 summit in Newport, Wales. We are in a crisis today, so this figure should be higher. Look at who is spending the least, and I would appeal to those nations [for instance: Croatia, Slovenia, Portugal, Spain or Italy].
Let’s turn to the upcoming Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union. I want to ask about Poland’s influence in Europe. The political one is obvious, and nowhere is the leadership of the mainstream parties as strong as in Poland…
This can be seen, for example, in the European Parliament, as in the European People’s Party, we are the most prominent governing party and the second largest overall.
Compared to our numbers within the institutions of European bureaucracy, our influence is not very high – barely 5.3 per cent of the management positions are occupied by Poles. However, proportionally, it should be 8.4 per cent.
The previous government failed to promote Poles for eight years and fought against good Polish candidates if they were not Law and Justice party members. Let me remind you that the NATO Secretary General twice personally asked Minister Waszczykowski to graciously agree that a Pole could become the director of the NATO office in Moscow, and the Polish government blocked it. So we have had eight years of pestering, and now we need to catch up.
Under our previous government, a Pole was the Union’s ambassador in Kyiv. And now? Recently, Polish diplomats broke through to the Bahamas. This is a very important post, but let’s agree that it is vital to our interests.
Do we have a plan or an idea of how to employ more Poles at top jobs in the EU?
I will not block leaves of absence or recommendations for Polish candidates [who want to apply for EU jobs]. However, it is not helpful when a candidate of Mr President Andrzej Duda [Tomasz Szatkowski, former Polish Ambassador to NATO], in secrecy, enters the competition for NATO Assistant Secretary General and thus lowers the chances of the official candidate [the official candidate was Adam Bugajski, Security Policy Director at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs].
And who do we recommend for a commissioner?
This decision has already been made, but it has yet to be announced.
Poland maintains relations within the V4 and currently holds the presidency within the Visegrad Group. However, the priority is the group of three Weimar Triangle countries. Both have been axes of Polish foreign policy since the 1990s. Has anything changed?
No, there is no contradiction here. We should be in both groups. A good performance of the Visegrad Group would even strengthen us in the Weimar Triangle because we would like to represent the V4 among the largest countries.
However, another problem with the Visegrad Group is that it is not a mechanism for imposing views on anyone but for agreeing on positions. Unfortunately, on the most important security issue in our region, we disagree, even though Ukraine borders three of the four Visegrad countries.
Poland and the Czech Republic are committed to helping Ukraine. Slovakia shifted to a neutral gear, and Hungary is getting in the way. The Visegrad Group can only act on subjects where we have common interests, so we need to get back to issues where they still exist, i.e. issues related to the communist past, with industry still obsolete in some areas, the need for EU funding for infrastructure, partly agriculture, youth exchanges, scholarships. The Visegrad Fund is working well, with EUR 10 million a year. This is the time to keep the formula going, which we still find useful, until better times, when Ukraine wins this war, which we hope. Maybe then, there will be a change of position.
The Czech Republic is the closest to us in the Visegrad Group in terms of perspective on security issues.
Yes. We greatly appreciate the Czech munitions initiative, for which we pledged 50 million euros.
The Czechs are asking when they will receive this money.
This is a very relevant question for the Ministry of Defence. I also ask it quite often.
Last question. Among the central European countries, we have a phenomenal relationship with the Baltic States and good relations with the Czech Republic. What about Romania?
We have a very good relationship with Romania because it is a country with significant military power and also cooperates very closely in the field of defence with the United States. I want to remind you that there is a missile shield base in our country and Romania. Recently, we had meetings in Poland as part of the interesting Polish-Romanian-Turkish triangle formula and had very interesting talks.
The interview was conducted in Polish
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Radosław Sikorski is the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland. A graduate of High School No. 1 in Bydgoszcz and Oxford University. He served as a war correspondent in Afghanistan and Angola (1986–1989). In 2002–2005, he was a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and the executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative. Radosław Sikorski was Minister of Defence (2005–2007), Minister of Foreign Affairs (2007–2014), and Speaker of the Sejm (2014–2015). In 2019–2023, he was a Member of the European Parliament, sitting on the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Security and Defence Subcommittee. He chaired the Delegation for relations with the United States. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard. As Poland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, he launched, together with Carl Bildt, the EU’s Eastern Partnership. He proposed and helped to establish the European Endowment for Democracy and the Solidarity Prize. In 2014, he headed the EU mission to Kyiv, which stopped the bloodshed on the Maidan. He was listed among the Top 100 Global Thinkers by the Foreign Policy magazine for “speaking the truth, even when it is not diplomatic”. He is the author of several books, including: Dust of the Saints: a Journey to Herat in Time of War, Full circle. A homecoming to free Poland, The Polish House: an Intimate History of Poland, Communism-freed Zone. An Interview, Poland Can Be Better. Behind the Scenes of Polish Diplomacy, and Poland. The State of the State. Radosław Sikorski is married to the writer and journalist Anne Applebaum. They have two sons. He is interested in history.
Wojciech Przybylski
Editor-in-Chief
Political analyst heading Visegrad Insight’s policy foresight on European affairs. His expertise includes foreign policy and political culture.
Editor-in-Chief of Visegrad Insight and President of the Res Publica Foundation. Europe’s Future Fellow at IWM – Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna and Erste Foundation. Wojciech also co-authored a book ‘Understanding Central Europe’, Routledge 2017.
He has been published in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, Journal of Democracy, EUObserver, Project Syndicate, VoxEurop, Hospodarske noviny, Internazionale, Zeit, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, Onet, Gazeta Wyborcza and regularly appears in BBC, Al Jazeera Europe, Euronews, TRT World, TVN24, TOK FM, Swedish Radio and others.
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Publish date : 2024-07-29 00:03:13
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