A huge story has broken in Poland with the leak of an alleged taped conversation between Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski and a fellow politician. Sikorski, who is married to the American journalist Anne Applebaum, is a staunch supporter of NATO and good relations with the United States; his name has been bandied about as a future NATO Secretary General. This conversation is therefore nothing short of explosive.
Here is the part of the quite earthy taped conversation, which has been read on Polish TV, that is of interest to foreigners (there is lots of edgy inside-baseball commentary on Polish politics as well). Sikorski is said to be talking with Jacek Rostkowski, the former finance minister:
Sikorski: You know that the Polish-American alliance is worth nothing. It is therefore harmful, because it gives Poland a false sense of security.
Rostowski: Why?
Sikorski: Complete bullshit. We will get into conflicts with the Germans, with Russia, and we will think that everything is great because we have given the Americans a blowjob. Losers, complete losers.
Later in the conversation, Sikorski bemoans Polish attitudes, stating, “We have very shallow pride and low self-regard. A kind of negro-ness*.” (*The word used is murzyńskość, which is very derogatory.)
Sikorski has denied the allegations, while Wprost, the newsmagazine that broke the story, claims it will provide the actual taped conversation in a day or two, which may resolve this explosive matter.
Watch this space ….
The XX Committee 
Please note that the leaked conversations were by no means public, and were conducted in private over dinners in a restaurant that has just turned out to have been bugged by parties unknown. They may reflect private feelings of Polish politicians, but cannot be interpreted as official policy indicators.
That said, Sikorski’s doubts are hardly unexpected. Defense policy of Central European NATO members is strongly predetermined these days and must rely on close ties with the US, especially in view of the recent German and France “tepid” reaction to Russian aggression against Ukraine. That does not make these countries love the situation of depending for safety on a superpower from another continent, one that has global interests and might sometimes appreciate some Russian cooperation…
Let’s consider a question: if Russia invaded, say, Latvia or Estonia, under pretense of defending Russian-speaking minorities, and Germany found some pretext to renege on its NATO obligations in return for discount on Russian natural gas, would the US commit ground troops to fight the Russian Army? If the answer is not “but of course!”, you can see what “false sense of security” Sikorski was talking about.
1. Everybody knows that. Any man who wears the uniform should know that you have to win your own war.
2. If US partnership gives someone ‘the false sense of security’, maybe he or she shouldn’t participate in strategic decision making process. We should take into account that US won’t help us at all and be ready for ‘then what’ scenario. I would appreciate if that scenario was NOT Warsaw Uprising II. Note that Russians are very good at systems analysis and cybernetics, so they will strike on many dimensions, the defence should be also multidimensional. One of that dimensions is diplomacy of course – US would be helpful there (?). Also, any defence that is only about defending is a mad man fantasy – according to Sun Tzu – so we should also think about counterattack.
3. I wouldn’t underestimate financial and economical warfare that US is really good at applying. Financial ban that struck North Korea ‘elite’ has been precise and sufficient to tell the bad guys to get back where they belong. Maybe it will be the same now with the use of shell gas. All that we really need in Poland is Germany (and France) to stop feeding the Bear and socializing with it, we can really handle the rest. There is no reason – beside from infiltration and corruption in the Army – that we should say that the task is impossible for Poland.
He told the truth, although over the past 7 years he did nothing to change it.
It’s tough to tell what’s actually going on here. Sikorski is a member of the American Enterprise Institute, Neo-Con central. He’s also married to Anne Applebaum, an American who has collected all of her inner rage and directed it towards Russia, aligning herself in the process with people like Vicky Nuland and John McCain.
More importantly, Sikorski has for some time now been angling to replace Ashton as chief diplomat of the EU. He’s already up to his neck in the Ukrainian situation, and if he succeeds in replacing her he will be effective in distancing Russia from the EU even more, which many agree is the American policy objective vis a vis Ukraine.
Known as America’s man in Poland (and Eastern Europe as a whole), this recording makes things a bit more complex.
It certainly does.
It might be worth noting that this recording is a year old and dates back to the time before the Ukrainian crisis, when the US was shifting its focus from Europe to Asia…
Isn’t Sikorski the one who made a racist cannibal joke about Obama’s family during the ’08 election?
yes indeed
Sikorski was allegedly taken prisoner in Afghanistan. Then was released (that is how he met some Poles that were accompanying the Soviets as war correspondents). You can draw your own conclusions along the same lines as in a prior article on this website. In ’92 he (along with Tusk) was instrumental in the overthrow of the government of Olszewski. He terrorized foreign born Poles by letting them come into the country and then, upon departure, requiring that these Poles – most of whom were not even born in Poland but may have had ancestors in Poland and had wanted to visit their ancestral fatherland as tourists – produce a Polish passport – and directing that they go the interior ministry to obtain such a passport before being allowed to leave! (this was ultimately mostly ended by Poland joining Schengen).
He constantly undercut the Kaczynskis even while part of their government – ultimately switching sides. The first thing he did when he came into office this time was to set up an inspection… errr… a meeting between all of Poland’s ambassadors and Lavrov. He has always supported people from the Soviet trained military intelligence circles and fought against attempts to purge them. He has constantly fought against patriotic Polish organizations and funnelled money to organizations hostile to Poles. He recently arrogantly redefined in a public speech in the Senate the meaning of the Polish Diaspora to mean “anyone whose Polish ancestors have lived in Poland” – Ever. Although he obviously is interested in Polish Jews, one wonders whether this will pick up former German (or Russian) inhabitants (Swedes? Tatars (these seem to have lost their homeland again so why not bring them to Poland – some have already arrived apparently – truth is stranger than fiction) . Based on the same reasoning, he has handed out hundreds of thousands of passports to people who do not speak Polish and, once obtained, head out to Western Europe as full EU citizens. His ministry recently expanded rent payments for people and their relatives who were Polish citizens during the war but no longer are (or maybe they now are – see prior sentence) even if they are receiving similar payments from countries of their current domicile. Times of Israel estimates 50k claimants in Israel alone. At the same time various Polish organizations have had their funding removed from the Sejm’s decisionmaking and placed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Polish organizations in the East have been constantly ignored and underfuned and the plight of Poles in Kazakhstan, Russia and elsewhere relegated to a backbench while Poland is importing immigrants from Libya, Chechnia etc.
He and Komorowski recently changed the citizenship laws to make it easier for non-Poles to get Polish citizenship. At the same time he and Sienkiewicz have began to enforce “hate” crime laws with the help of “breakout sessions” run by left-wingers associated with the Soros’ circle of “open [western] society” types that got booted out of Russia and, recently, are in the process of being booted out of Hungary. With all of that, he nonetheless managed to antagonize the prior US ambassador Lee Feinstein so as to cause the Administration to get him recalled.
His biggest achievements internationally consist of 1) recreating the pre-WWII cold war with Lithuania (obviously the biggest threat to Poland’s independence), 2) playing second fiddle to the French in freeing (see the supportive articles of Applebaum in the Washington Post) the pedophile Polanski from a Swiss jail cell (on account of his having been born in Poland apparently) and 3) threatening the democratic Majdan opposition with death unless they signed an agreement with Janukovich (even though the latter had already left for Moscow).
His meal and conversation with Rostowski was private when he complained about being taped. It became a work-related dinner when it was revealed that the dinner was $500 (though he claims – via twitter, of course – that he now has paid back for the wine). He, like the rest of the anti-Polish clique that runs Poland have repeatedly expressed derision for Poles actual real Poles (not the paper kind that are created when his Ministry issues all these passports).
All that being the case, what he actually said to Rostowski as regarding the US alliance is 100% true. One commentator has made a statement that this is a kind of an “exotic” alliance in that were one member of such an alliance to be overrun, the other would most likely not even notice.
If he is America’s man in Poland, then either we are talking about a different kind of America or the old saying with friends like these applies.
He also torpedoed the US missile defence project by always asking for more. The only people who like him are the Home Office crowd in the Economist (see the recent spread fawning over Poland’s “successes”). Who the Home Office is working for is, of course, anybody’s guess – though it
‘s a safe bet that it isn’t for the Queen.
BTW Polanski is said to want to move to Poland if the Polish government promises not to extradite him to the US. Seeing as Sikorski’s kids are now safely in Eton, the government may well grant him this request. Polish children – beware.
what is strange is this video posted by a Polish blogger where both people talk about the “assasination” (zamach) – freudian slip? note that the youtube version seems to have been removed for “multiple copyright violations”
http://wtemaciemaci.salon24.pl/596116,panie-ober-mlotek-do-pukania-w-glowe-dla-radzia
not strange at all (Sikorski in the back with hand on ‘heart’):
https://pl-pl.facebook.com/tusk.donald/photos/a.204417642942545.66219.204072239643752/235988159785493/?type=1
Sikorski has been among the first to report on Soviet atrocities in Afghanistan (his previous career as a journalist). Certainly the KGB/FSB apparatus has motives to bring him down…