ABSTRACT
One of the most famous Polish political rallying cries of the nineteenth century was ‘For Your Freedom and Ours’ (Za Wolnosc, Nasze i Wasze). This slogan characterised the politics of a generation or more of Polish radicals who spilled their blood in numerous revolutionary challenges to the established European order in the hope of regaining an independent Polish state. Today, Poland’s effort to contribute to the reshaping of the European order and promote its security following the demise of communism is an altogether more genteel and conventional affair. At the start of a new millennium, the new Polish slogan may be accurately described as ‘For Your Security and Ours’, reflecting the view that Poland’s place in the new European order is bound up with other states in the Euro-Atlantic area and vice versa. At the core of post-communist Polish foreign and security policy is institutionally based integration in the ‘Euro-Atlantic community of democratic states’.2 It reflects the view that Poland’s security is thus grounded in an overlapping triad of national interest, international norms and institutional integration into the transatlantic community. In his annual parliamentary address on 5 March 1998, Polish Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek summarised the key elements of Polish policy in relation to the new European order:
We are turning to the West and its institutions, having in mind the attainment of at least four goals: first, strengthening ourselves internally, second, introducing a new sensitivity and different historical experience to the West-European debate and the West-European understanding of Europe, third, strengthening NATO and the European Union not only by adding our potential to their strength, but also by showing new vistas and new challenges and, fourth, strengthening and accelerating the processes of the democratic reconstruction [of] the region and building a new European order. This four-part task is the kernel of the new geopolitics that we initiated nearly nine years ago in this part of Europe.3
