WASHINGTON -- Former Polish President Lech Walesa, who was in the U.S. capital this week with a message for Americans about the importance of continuing their support for Ukraine, says the world currently has a unique opportunity to force political change in Russia and should not let it pass.
Walesa stressed during a rare public appearance that while Ukrainians are fighting "courageously" and Western countries are stepping up to help, the struggle to seize the narrative through what he called “peaceful propaganda” is the real key to victory.
The 80-year-old labor leader turned politician and Nobel Peace Prize winner said he came to Washington mainly to stress the importance of commanding the information space and to encourage the country not to retreat from its leadership role.
Numerous civilizations in the past have crumbled because somewhere along the way they forgot about leadership, and we are heading in this direction. We will destroy our civilization unless the United States retakes its leadership role."-- Lech Walesa
“The whole world has joined together against Russia. It has never been like this. It’s our great opportunity to finally put some order into this world,” Walesa said in an address on February 8 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank.
Walesa said fate has given the United States the role of leader in meeting these challenges and it cannot retreat now.
“Our grandchildren will never forgive us” if it does, he said.
The co-founder of Poland's Solidarity movement, who served from 1990 to 1995 as Poland’s first postcommunist president, said he fought his struggle against the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact more than 40 years ago mainly with information and he encouraged the United States to do a better job “fighting with propaganda” against the current regime of Russian President Vladimir Puin.
This includes tactics such as publishing data about the number of Russian soldiers killed and maimed in the war and the stories behind those losses. Ordinary Russians must be reminded that their neighbors or their neighbors’ sons may no longer be alive because they were sent to “die for Putin.”
Westerns should help Russians “internalize what needs to be done.”
In the decades since he left politics Walesa has been a champion of democracy and the rule of law, encouraging Eastern Europe’s formerly communist countries to pursue progress through democratic means. Walesa was celebrated in Washington in 1989 as the man who did more than any other single individual to bring down communism in Eastern Europe and addressed a joint session of Congress.
There was little fanfare for his current visit and no indication that he made a stop at the U.S. Capitol to lobby for President Joe Biden's proposed $60 billion military aid package for Ukraine that is being held back by demands from Republican lawmakers that it be accompanied by deep changes in domestic border policy.
Sporting a lapel pin with the blue-and-yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag, he told the audience at the CSIS that military aid must continue while he fretted over America abandoning its leadership role.
“Numerous civilizations in the past have crumbled because somewhere along the way they forgot about leadership, and we are heading in this direction. We will destroy our civilization unless the United States retakes its leadership role,” he said.
With the U.S. presidential election on the horizon and the possibility that voters could elect populist Donald Trump for a second time and endorse his nationalist agenda, Walesa also warned against demagogues, saying when there is a dearth of solutions offered, that type of leader tends to rise to power.
He said Poland “made a bad choice” -- a reference to the Law and Justice party, which governed Poland for eight years with a conservative, nationalist, and sometimes anti-EU agenda until it lost its majority in parliament in October.
He urged Americans to avoid the mistakes made by Poland, adding, “In your country I also see some poor choices are being made.”