POLAND: Poland is among the eastern European states set to benefit from having supported Bush's policies toward Iraq, reports Daniel McLaughlin
Poland announced yesterday that it would ignore public demands to withdraw all its troops from Iraq swiftly, in an apparent return favour for a huge boost in military aid that US President Bush promised his Polish counterpart this week.
Warsaw's pledge, and the warm White House meeting that preceded it, strengthened ties between a US administration that enjoys being seen to have allies across the Atlantic, and a "New Europe" that values the perks of being a superpower's friend.
"There is a decision by the president that Polish soldiers will be there until December 31st, 2005," said Poland's defence minister, Mr Jerzy Szmajdzinski, of his country's forces in Iraq.
"Up to 1,700 soldiers, plus an additional 700 troops on standby in Poland, that's how it will be." The announcement dashed the hopes of millions of Poles that recent elections would prompt the withdrawal of all their countrymen from Iraq, where Polish officers command a 6,000-strong multinational force.
But Mr Bush made clear his gratitude at the White House last week.
"Poland has been a fantastic ally because the president and the people of Poland love freedom," he enthused during his Oval Office meeting with Mr Kwasniewski, who has visited Washington at least four times in the last five years.
Mr Bush also made sure that his guest did not go home empty-handed to a nation that - while glad of US support against the perceived threat of its traditional enemy, Russia - is broadly against the war in Iraq and wonders why Warsaw has failed to win any significant contracts to rebuild the Gulf state.
A grant of $100 million from a new US "solidarity initiative" should give Mr Kwasniewski some ammunition to fight the doubters.
That is Poland's cut of a $400-million package that, in the words of White House spokesman Mr Scott McClellan, is intended to "assist nations such as Poland, which have taken political and economic risks in order to act on their convictions".
"These funds reflect the principle that an investment in a partner in freedom today will help ensure that America will stand united with stronger partners in the future," Mr McClellan said. "This assistance will support nations that have deployed troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other partners."
The aid will constitute a sliver of $81 billion in additional military funding that Mr Bush will request from Congress next week, and several of Poland's neighbours - the other countries that US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dubbed "New Europe" - are set to share in as a reward for sending troops to support the US, in most cases despite the opposition of their electorate.
The likes of Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine and the Baltic states are in line for a handout from the "solidarity initiative" which, in evoking the name of Poland's communist-era democracy movement, highlights the startling 15-year transformation of those countries from Soviet republics or satellites to new or aspiring members of the EU.
Poland worked closely with the US to help the reform-minded Mr Viktor Yushchenko prevail over a pro-Moscow candidate to become Ukraine's new president, an event that, in further shrinking Russia's historical sphere of influence, was warmly welcomed in both Warsaw and Washington.
Mr Yushchenko has not made a final announcement on his predecessor's plans to withdraw Ukraine's 1,650 troops from Iraq by July, and he discussed the matter with US Vice President Dick Cheney when they met last month in Krakow, Poland.
Bulgaria and Romania also figure strongly in US military plans, though perhaps less for the hundreds of troops they have deployed in Iraq, than for the strategic potential of their Black Sea location as a base for American operations in the Middle East.
Gen James Jones, the senior US commander in Europe, toured the region recently and concluded that US troops could be deployed to as many as 10 sites in Bulgaria and Romania, as Washington shifts troops away from Cold War-era bases across Germany.
The matter will not be far from the thoughts of Mr Bush and Romania's new president, Mr Traian Basescu, when they next meet, at the White House, on March 9th.
Before then, the US president will have set his personal seal on Washington's burgeoning relationship with Central Europe: he has chosen Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, as the venue for his first second-term summit with President Vladimir Putin.
Twenty years ago, a Kremlin leader would have approached the February 24th meeting with the confidence of a man playing on home turf; as will be apparent in 12 days' time, those days are long gone.