Mr. Miller goes to Washington

It has been a busy week for Prime Minister Leszek Miller. In the space of a few days, he managed to travel to Rome to meet Pope John Paul II, come back to Poland to cross swords with the Monetary Policy Council (RPP) and defend current Treasury Minister Wiesław Kaczmarek in a vote of no-confidence in Parliament, before flying off to the United States for a two-day visit, meeting most of the senior players in the U.S. administration. That means that within three months of taking office, Miller has ticked off most of Poland's strategic partners on his "must see" list: apart from these destinations, he has also been to Moscow and Berlin. But there is little doubt that Miller's first official visit to the United States is perhaps the most important for him. In historical terms, the fact that this and previous governments viewed the United States as the country's key strategic partner is no surprise. The "special relationship" between the two countries has many roots, some being ethnic - the fact that millions of Americans are of Polish descent - and others historical. But as the Polish saying goes, "in politics there is no sentiment," which means that the depth and strength of U.S.-Polish relations is based on real political and strategic interests. The United States sees Poland as the key country in stabilizing Eastern and Central Europe: a successful Poland means greater chances of political and economic success in Ukraine, the Baltics, and eventually Russia itself. And the United States is interested in seeing Poland succeed because of its own strategic interest in ensuring continued NATO expansion. As for Poland, its own size and geographic location make the country the natural leader of the Central European region. And most Polish politicians recognize only too well that its strategic position in the region derives from the long-term benefits that only a privileged relationship with the United States can provide. Of course, Poland's relationship with the European Union (EU) will be the key issue on the foreign policy agenda for the next few years. But EU politicians who feel that they can bully Poland into making choices that alienate the United States are making a serious mistake. Last week, President Aleksander Kwaśniewski made it clear that Poland has no desire to choose between Europe and America, and attempts by Europeans to foment divisions between the two would mean that the EU had been transformed from a "community of nations" into an "international bazaar." As for Miller, many suspect him of being a closet Europhile because of his own communist past, and the close links between the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) party that he leads and other European socialist parties, such as the British Labor Party or the Swedish Social Democrats. Yet Miller is nothing if not a consummate politician and eternal survivor, and he has achieved that status by being fully alert to the way the political wind is blowing. One dramatic illustration of that was when he was interior minister, from 1996-1997, in the previous SLD government and Professor Zbigniew Brzeziński, the United States' top foreign policy guru, persuaded him to initiate a process of pardoning Colonel Ryszard Kukliński. Kukliński was a former aide to General Wojciech Jaruzelski and the CIA's top asset in the then Soviet-bloc. Although he escaped to the United States in 1981 he was sentenced to death in absentia. Miller, however, initiated the process of having the death sentence revoked, despite the fact that Kukliński was reviled among former communists. Miller's gesture over Kukliński was in the context of Poland's then-aspiration to join NATO, and showed the degree to which he has been able to cross his party base when he recognized that the broadest national interest demanded it. Miller's agenda in the United States reflected the breadth of issues that link the two countries but which in the past have also been the source of strain. In terms of specific bilateral issues, Miller pressed for more open trading conditions in U.S. markets (steel and, bizarrely, cheese are the two big stumbling blocks) and held high-level discussions over Poland's forthcoming aircraft procurement for its armed forces. The Polish government also laid the groundwork for Poland's participation in the Afghan peacekeeping operations by announcing just prior to the visit that Poland's elite GROM antiterrorist units were ready to move into the Middle Eastern country. Because of Poland's lack of transport equipment, that will be possible only with U.S. assistance - another illustration of Poland's strategic dependence on America. More difficult for Miller, however, were his discussion with the Polish émigré community in the United States and representatives of the Jewish community seeking property restitution in Poland. The émigrés traditionally have been anticommunist and Miller recognizes that this distrust must be lessened if Polish interests are to get a fair hearing in Washington over the next few years. By the same token, the new SLD government is anxious to defuse the risk of a potential wave of lawsuits from Jews seeking compensation for property lost during World War II and is planning a new property restitution law that goes some way to meeting Jewish complaints. In all these cases, however, Miller's agenda was to move closer to the United States and to remove sources of potential conflict. The reason? Miller is anxious to position himself for this year's NATO summit in Prague as a key force supporting further NATO expansion and although he will wish to be remembered as the prime minister who led Poland into the EU, he will not want to go down in history as the politician who isolated Poland from the United States and thereby neutered Poland's ability to leverage its current privileged position in regional politics. Above all Miller is aware that the events of Sept. 11 have demonstrated that there is only one global trend setter, which is also demonstrably the ultimate force in global politics: the United States. Despite the temptations put before him by his European colleagues, the latter may yet be surprised to find Miller demonstrating that, for Poland at least, all political roads do indeed lead to Washington. Marek Matraszek is the Warsaw Director of CEC Government Relations. He can be e-mailed at director@cec.com.pl