Obama’s Chance to Make Up for Missteps Toward Poles (Rzeczpospolita, Poland)

Poland has never been a fan of President Obama. From controversy over the anti-missile shield, to sore feelings over his administration’s refusal to allow Poles to travel to the U.S. visa free, to the president’s gaffe calling Nazi concentration camps ‘Polish death camps,’ Obama has almost always rubbed Warsaw the wrong way. Now though, with the Russian bear threatening the hard-fought democratic gains of Poland and Eastern Europe, Rzeczpospolita columnist Jerzy Haszczynski writes that in Poland and across Europe, now is the moment that President Obama can begin a new chapter for himself and his country.

For Rzeczpospolita, Jerzy Haszczynski begins his combination plea and exhortation this way:

Russia is returning to the sphere of darkness. America must again lead the threatened West.

 

It would be difficult to find a more symbolic moment for the U.S. president’s visit to Poland. Barack Obama has arrived to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the collapse of communism, the farewell to Moscow’s domination and the Cold War. The celebration, however, is accompanied by a new fear about the future of the region. Poland and the other countries of Central and Eastern Europe may be sure of only one thing: communism will not be reborn here. And yet, the farewell to Russian domination and the Cold War may have been temporary. So says Vladimir Putin by unleashing a war in Ukraine.

 

Therefore, Obama is confronted with a task that could determine how his presidency will be judged. He has a chance, here in Warsaw, to present a vision for defending our Western world from a Russia that is breaking the rules and returning to its dark past – and then putting this vision into effect.

 

Our region needs confirmation that the armies of the United States and NATO will behave just as they did during the Cold War, when all of the West felt threatened, and when the allies treated their treaty obligations arising from Article 5 seriously, requiring them come to one another’s defense.

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