"My great-grandmother had three photos hanging in front of her fireplace, one was my uncle Joe in police uniform, one was Pope Pius XII, and the other was Franklane Roosevelt, but after the meeting between Yalta and Potsdam, my great-grandmother took away Roosevelt's photo because she felt that Roosevelt had betrayed Poland."
Barbara was obviously very familiar with the essence of American political games and knew how to maximize profits. Clinton and his staff are old politicians who have experienced countless lobbying times, but in Barbara's calm narrative, some people's faces tremble slightly, while others have tears in their eyes.
(Barbara Mikursky)
What Barbara is fighting for from the top leaders of the US government is to let Poland join NATO as soon as possible. Her story was so widely circulated at the top of the U.S. government that some Republican lawmakers later recalled Clinton's determination to speed up NATO's eastward expansion, one reason was that they no longer wanted Barbara to tell the story repeatedly to his officials.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the last century, the U.S. government had major differences on whether to accept the former Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern Europe to join NATO. The newly independent Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Baltic countries expressed their desire to join NATO at the first time, but the newly appointed President Clinton did not give a specific timetable for these Eastern European countries to join NATO at the beginning, but only tried to balance the demands between the two factions as much as possible.
Although accepting these Eastern European countries in the long run has the effect of consolidating the fruits of the victory of the United States' "Cold War" and can restrict Russia from restoring its sphere of influence in Central and Eastern Europe after it becomes stronger again, considering that the then Russian President Yeltsin was making efforts to integrate into the West, the Clinton administration did not adopt a radical NATO policy of expansion in the east at first, but the widespread nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe echoed the Central and Eastern European ethnic groups in the United States and became an important bargaining weight to tilt the balance of the two factions' political game. Among them, Poland's nationalist sentiment is a role that cannot be ignored.
As a major Central European power, Poland was also a regional power in the Middle Ages. However, Poland, which is in the cracks between the Germans and the Russians, is actually very dangerous in its geographical environment. In military terms, because most of its territory is plains, there is basically no danger to defend, and its country has been destroyed three times in history. But the Poles' miserable national history did not weaken their radical nationalism. Even to this day, Poland is still one of the few countries in Europe that still have fanatical demands for their territory, and it also insists on exporting Polish culture and Polish national identity to the Polish residents of Belarus and Ukraine.
1990 On December 22, 1990, the elected Polish President Varessa took over the banner and seal of the First Republic of Poland from Kajorovsky, the last president of the Polish government in exile who lived in Britain. For the Poles, how to prevent being controlled by the Russians again became the top diplomatic task of the new government. Even though Russia was still in the Great Recession and political turmoil at that time, the fight and feud between the two sides in history had caused the "prisoner's dilemma" that both of them were extremely distrustful.
In October 1991, Polish Foreign Minister Skubiszewsky announced that Poland was ready to establish any form of cooperative relationship with NATO, including joining NATO. However, after Poland made public statements, NATO did not include eastern expansion into the formal discussion agenda. The US government has only come up with a compromise plan of the "North Atlantic Cooperation Commission" (NACC), namely establishing a security consultation mechanism including NATO countries and former Warsaw Pact members to solve security issues throughout Europe in a dialogue manner.
Obviously, this compromise did not satisfy Central and Eastern European countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. They were worried that their new countries would become bargaining chips for the exchange of interests between the United States and Russia at any time and become victims of the "Munich conspiracy".
The Polish American Congress took the lead in mobilizing and began to actively lobby the US government for supporting NATO's eastward expansion.
The trump card in the hands of the "Polish-American Congress" is that it is a major ethnic alliance of 3,000 Polish-American societies. It has 41 branches in 23 states of the United States and has more than 1 million members, claiming to represent the interests of 10 million Polish-Americans.
This is a force that neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party can ignore.
There are many "anti-east expansion" factions in the decision-making level of the Clinton administration, including Secretary of Defense Les Asping, Executive Deputy Secretary of State Rob Talbot, Joint Conference Chairman John Shalikashvili. Senior officials supporting the east expansion include Secretary of State Christopher and Assistant for National Security Affairs Lake. In such a stalemate, the Polish people decided to attract more lobbying forces. Subsequently, the "Polish American Congress" contacted 18 Central and Eastern European ethnic groups, including the "Hungarian American Alliance" and the "Romanian American Congress", and jointly claimed to represent the 20 million Central and Eastern Europeans in the United States.
This time, the joint mobilized the enthusiasm of a large number of Central and Eastern European Americans, so that the hotline to the White House was blocked for a while.
Clinton, facing election pressure, immediately felt the anger of Central and Eastern European ethnic groups in China. Even though senior diplomat George Kennan repeatedly criticized NATO's eastward expansion as the fatal mistake in US foreign policy after the Cold War, the voting house of tens of millions of votes is a force that no presidential candidate can neglect.
(George Kennan)
Central and Eastern European residents are concentrated in 14 states in the Midwest and Northeast of the United States, such as Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania and other states, with the number of voters reaching about 10% of the total number of American voters.
In fact, one of the key factors that Clinton was able to defeat Bush in the 1992 election was that the Bush administration was reluctant to recognize the independent republic from the Soviet Union in 1991, which aroused strong dissatisfaction among Central and Eastern Europeans. Clinton took the opportunity to win 12 of 14 states, with a total of 186 electoral votes, more than half of the number of electoral votes he received.
During the election campaign for Clinton to seek a second re-election, Republican presidential candidate Dore publicly criticized Clinton for delays and hesitation on NATO's eastward expansion, and publicly promised to Middle Eastern leaders that he would take a more positive attitude on the eastward expansion, and expressed his intention to formally invite new members to join at the 1998 NATO Prague summit, that is, the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Munich Agreement.
Faced with the aggressive Republican offensive, Clinton and his campaign squad leader reached a consensus after a fierce debate: a timetable must be given on the issue of NATO's eastward expansion as soon as possible to offset the Republican election strategy.
On October 22, 1996, Clinton delivered a foreign policy campaign speech in Hamtra, the Detroit Effective District where Polish people live, officially announcing that NATO will absorb Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into full members in 1999.
In 1999, NATO held an entry ceremony in the Independence City, Missouri, USA, and Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary became official members of NATO.
