Sikorski and Clinton in Washington in 2009
In the early days of U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, then-U.S. Ambassador to Poland Victor Ashe wrote to the White House that Polish leaders were beginning to fear that they had “become an afterthought, or even a nuisance, in Washington circles.”
“This is particularly hard to swallow for a country that considers itself a loyal ally and important contributor to U.S. strategic interests in greater Europe and Afghanistan,” Ashe wrote.
The cable, which was marked “confidential” and titled “Are we sincere?” was written shortly after Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski’s first meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in February 2009, but the Polish government, at the time, was already growing impatient waiting for the newly inaugurated Obama to agree to a meeting with Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
“[Polish] officials have told us the Prime Minister will lose credibility if he does not get a Washington visit by the end of April,” Ashe wrote.
The two would eventually meet in Prague in August 2010 and Obama is scheduled to travel to Warsaw in May where he will meet with Tusk again.
The cable also alludes to Poland’s concerns about the U.S. government’s commitment to improving relations with Russia, which Polish leaders saw as a likely gateway to the two countries making deals with one another without consulting or including Poland.
Ashe wrote that U.S. diplomats in Warsaw had given Polish officials, “numerous assurances that the U.S. intends to move forward with our strategic relationship and will consult on [missile defense] but Poles are keenly aware of the lack of actual consultations — either on the Administration’s thinking on [missile defense] or dialogue as envisioned in the August 2008 Declaration on Strategic Cooperation.”
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